Every child matters : ninth report of session 2004-05. Volume 1, Report together with formal minutes.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Education and Skills Committee
Date:
2005
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Every child matters : ninth report of session 2004-05. Volume 1, Report together with formal minutes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The Association of Chief Police Officers made a similar criticism of ‘joined-up’ policy in relation to youth justice: “We think it was an error to publish a separate agenda for young people who offend alongside Every Child Matters and we think the need to integrate and be very explicit and forward thinking from central Government in the integration of the youth crime agenda with the children's agenda in a way which does not deflect from the obvious priorities around tackling and preventing youth crime, but recognises that children who commit offences, without excusing them or trying to defend them, are exactly the same constituency as children who get excluded from school, children who become in need of protection or have CAMS [Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services] needs, and I think we need to make sure that we do not rehearse that separation in further working around this agenda. It has to be fully integrated across inepiece. 7? 205. We do not think that the challenges involved in dealing with children and young people in custody have been properly addressed by the Every Child Matters reforms. The youth justice system is not sufficiently distinct from the adult criminal justice system and is too separate from the mainstream children’s legislation and services. 206. A parallel case has been made with relation to the convergence of policies on asylum and immigration with those advocated in Every Child Matters. Like GPs, schools and others, a statutory duty to co-operate was not placed on the National Asylum Support Service through the Children Act 2004 (although it has since been made clear that immigration services will be encouraged to participate in local partnerships where appropriate). We have received submissions from agencies concerned with the welfare of refugee and asylum-seeking children and families, to suggest that in practice this is likely to militate against the implementation of a system where every child really does matter equally. The Refugee Children’s Consortium have argued, for example, that the detention of asylum-seeking children in custody is highly problematic and fundamentally in contravention with the expressed aims of Every Child Matters. 207. We asked the Minister to respond to the suggestion that immigration policy was fundamentally in contravention of some of the express aims of Every Child Matters. She told us: “when we considered this issue in relation to the Children Act, we had to be absolutely clear that the primacy in this issue has to be the immigration control and immigration policy. If we had given, for example, the duty to co-operate and duty to safeguard to the Immigration Service, I think that we would have opened a loophole which would have enabled asylum-seeking families and unaccompanied asylum- seeking children to use those particular duties to override the immigration controls and the asylum-seeking controls. That is a difficulty and we had to face up to it. I think that we took the right route, which is that the primacy is on maintaining a fair and just immigration system but, within that, we have always to have regard to the well-being and safety of children—and we do”. 160 Q 193 161 Q 534