Report stage, 3rd reading in the Commons
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (Sarah McCarthy-Fry)Labour- Quote
- I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst)Conservative- Quote
- With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: New clause 6—Looked after status— ‘(1) The 1989 Act is amended as follows. (2) In section 85(4)(duty of local authority when notified of child accommodated by health authority or local education authority) at end insert “; and (c) consider whether, in the exercise of their functions under paragraph (b), the child’s welfare is best safeguarded and promoted by being a looked after child.”’. New clause 24—Responsibility for children in care who enter custody— ‘In section 20 of the 1989 Act after subsection (11), insert— “(12) Where a child was accommodated by the local authority under this section immediately before being detained, the child shall continue to be deemed a “looked after child” for the purposes of section 23(1)(b) and section 24 of this Act save for the provision of accommodation.” (13) In this section “detained” means detained in a remand centre, a young offenders institution or a secure training centre, or any other institution pursuant to an order of a court.” In section 22 of the 1989 Act after subsection (1)(b), insert— “(c) deemed to be looked after in accordance with section 20(12).”’. New clause 26—Support for family and friends carers— ‘After section 17B of the 1989 Act insert— “17C Support for family and friends carers (1) This section applies to a person (“P”) who provides full-time care and accommodation for a child (“C”) for more than 56 days but who is not— (a) a parent of the child, or (b) a local authority foster parent. (2) A local authority shall assess P’s need for financial and other support under Part III of this Act to care for C in any of the following circumstances— (a) where the child comes to live with P as a result of a plan made following an enquiry under section 47 (local authority’s duty to investigate) or a Family Group Conference; (b) where the child comes to live with P following an investigation under section 37 (powers of court in certain family proceedings); (c) where P has secured a residence order or special guardianship order in order to avoid the child being looked after, and there is professional evidence of impairment of the parents’ ability to care for the child; (d) where P has obtained a residence order or special guardianship order arising out of care proceedings; (e) where P is providing accommodation for the child and then secures a residence order or special guardianship order. (3) The local authority shall provide such support as is required to meet the needs identified by the assessment referred to in this section.”’. New clause 28—Collection of statistics— ‘(1) The Secretary of State shall collect and publish annually statistics on the accommodation arrangements for young people who were in the care of a local authority on 1st January of the year three years earlier than the year in which the statistics are published and were over 16 years old. (2) The statistics published under subsection (1) shall indicate in respect of the young persons the number who were with foster carers at the age of— (a) 19, and (b) 20.’. Government amendments Nos. 8 and 9. Amendment No. 13, in clause 9, page 7, line 41, at end insert— ‘(e) C does not have more than three placements within a 12 month period or more than two placements within the last year of compulsory schooling. (8A) If the requirement in subsection (8)(e) is not complied with, the local authority must provide C with a written explanation.’. Amendment No. 14, in clause 10, page 9, line 14, at end insert— ‘(c) a strategy with their Housing and Planning department for maximising the availability of foster care placements.’. Amendment No. 18, in clause 11, page 9, line 28, at end insert— ‘(2A) A local authority must offer the services of an independent reviewing officer to any relevant child for whom it is the responsible local authority.’.
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- Sarah McCarthy-FryLabour
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- It is a great pleasure for me to open the debate. I am conscious that, as we are on Report, there have already been many hours of debate and deliberation, of which I was not part, given that I have only just joined the Department. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan) for his dedication and hard work in taking the Bill through its previous stages, and wish him well in his new post. I shall introduce several Government amendments now and respond at the end of the debate to issues and questions that hon. Members raise. The first amendment grouping relates to three groups of children and young people: children who are provided with accommodation for three months or more under education and health legislation, the great majority of whom are disabled; children who are looked after or live with family and friends on the edge of care; and care leavers—relevant children who are 16 or 17 and former relevant children who are over 18. I will start with the group of the children who are in accommodation arranged under health and education legislation. Amendments similar to new clause 6 were considered in Committee. The Government highlighted the serious defects in those amendments and explained why they would have no practical effect. I do not propose to repeat that explanation. However, we all share the ambition to ensure that social services are actively involved in a timely and appropriate manner when a decision to accommodate a child away from home is taken, so that consideration is given in every case to the child’s social care needs and to the needs of his family for support, to enable them to sustain their involvement in their child’s life.
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Mr. David Kidney (Stafford) (Lab)Labour- Quote
- May I congratulate my hon. Friend on her appointment to what is a strong ministerial team in the Department? May I also compliment her and the Department on how wide-ranging the amendments are and on how good the support is for families when their child is accommodated, perhaps hundreds of miles away from their home? That support includes help not just with travelling to meet each other, but even with going on holiday together. The proposal is a commendable amendment by the Government, who have responded to concerns raised in Committee.
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- Sarah McCarthy-FryLabour
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- I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. It was important that the Government responded to the concerns that were raised in Committee. We considered our response when working with the Every Disabled Child Matters campaign—a campaign that I got involved in when I was first elected to the House and one that works so hard for disabled children. We worked with that campaign to see what more we could do to promote the welfare of that vulnerable group. I also had the opportunity to discuss the issue with my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Lynda Waltho) earlier this week, on my first day as Minister in the Department. I am pleased to introduce the Government amendments, which will improve the well-being of the children concerned as part of a package that will make a significant contribution towards improving services for them. New clause 19 will require the local authority to have an appropriate tailored package of services suitable to meet the needs of children who are provided with accommodation under health or education legislation. In particular, the local authority will be expected to provide services that support the continuing active involvement of the parents in their child’s life.
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John Bercow (Buckingham) (Con)Speaker- Quote
- May I be the first from the Conservative Benches warmly to congratulate the hon. Lady on her deserved elevation? It is good to know that a long period of labour in the Back-Bench vineyard has received its just reward. In welcoming the thrust of new clause 19, may I gently say that it is not entirely clear to me—I do not mean to be pedantic; this is a serious point—why subsection (4), in contrast with subsection (1), says that the services “may” include the three categories set out? If the concept of the core offer to be applied universally is in ministerial minds, might it not be a good idea for the new clause to say not that the services “may” include those categories, but that they “shall” include them? That is a minor point, however; I wish the new clause and the hon. Lady well.
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- Sarah McCarthy-FryLabour
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- I thank the hon. Gentleman for his warm and kind words. I am not quite sure where the vineyard comes from, but we will worry about that later. The point about the services and the support package that we will provide is that we will consult further on statutory guidance and regulations to determine what that support package may be. There is therefore still an opportunity—we are not being prescriptive—and we may be able to look at the matter further.
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Lembit Öpik (Montgomeryshire) (LD)Liberal Democrat- Quote
- May I also welcome the hon. Lady, who has come from the Back-Bench vineyard? We know that the longer one leaves a wine, the more mature it gets. I agree with the intention of new clause 19, but it is not clear whether the services referred to under subsection (4)(a) could be provided by relevant third sector organisations such as Youth at Risk and Regenerate, in respect of which I declare a non-pecuniary interest. Will the Minister consider allowing third sector organisations with a relevant interest in improving young people’s fortunes to facilitate in the kind of guidance and counselling referred to the new clause? Is she willing to accept representations from those voluntary sector organisations on how they might be able to facilitate the outcomes that the new clause is no doubt intended to achieve?
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- Sarah McCarthy-FryLabour
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- I thank the hon. Gentleman for his invitation and his warm words. I am pleased to be able to say, in the spirit in which we consulted when tabling new clause 19, that we want to consult as widely as possible on how the support packages will be put in place. It is Government policy to encourage voluntary and third sector organisations to get involved in the delivery of public services. Voluntary sector organisations very often enjoy the confidence of parents and others with whom they have worked for a long time, who do not see the barrier that they might sometimes see between themselves and those whom they may consider as authority figures. What the hon. Gentleman proposes is certainly something that we would consider when we consult on how the statutory guidance goes forward.
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- I join hon. Members in congratulating my hon. Friend on her exciting new role. As president of Blackpool Advocacy, I mention independent advocacy virtually every time I stand up to discuss such issues. Will my hon. Friend look into the importance of offering accommodated children access to an independent advocate? When she liaises with third sector organisations, will she consult with those that represent independent advocacy services, which in my opinion are vital to so many young people?
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- Sarah McCarthy-FryLabour
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- I thank my hon. Friend for making that very valid point. My earlier point about parents and looked-after children having trust in the relationship and the people advocating for them is important. I will take that forward as we put the guidance together. The duty to arrange social work visits in clause 19 provides ongoing supervision for the placement that the local authorities will put in place and will ensure that the local authority can step in when there is any significant change in the child’s circumstances. One of the most important services that local authorities can provide is to take all reasonable steps to maintain contact between the parent and the child. New clause 19 therefore specifically refers to services “necessary to enable the child to visit, or…be visited by, members of the family” and to “assistance to enable the child and members of the family to have a holiday together”, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) pointed out. The Government expect agencies to work together when making long-term plans to accommodate children away from home. The existing requirement in section 85 of the Children Act 1989 for local authorities to consider their Children Act duties when notified that a child has been provided with accommodation by health or education is complemented by corresponding provisions in regulations made under part III of the 1989 Act and by education legislation and guidance, and is reflected at the structural level by the duty to co-operate in section 10 of the Children Act 2004, which underpins children’s trusts. Effective inter-agency working is essential for such children. However, we recognise that in some cases inter-agency working arrangements are not as effective as they should be, so we will use regulations made under clause 19 to require a visit to take place within the first seven working days of a placement or notification of a placement, unless an initial assessment has already been carried out as part of the placement decision. That will provide the reassurance that children’s social care professionals will be involved right at the start of the placement. It remains primarily the responsibility of the home local authorities to assess and provide services to meet the needs of the children being placed out of area under health or education legislation. Amendments Nos. 8 and 9 make that position clear beyond doubt. I recognise that, for many children in long-term placements, parental engagement may unfortunately be difficult to establish or sustain. We will therefore strengthen statutory guidance to provide greater detail on the considerations relating to parental involvement and children’s needs and on when it would be appropriate for the local authority to assume responsibility for providing accommodation under section 20 of the 1989 Act and thus for the child to become looked after.
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Kerry McCarthy (Bristol, East) (Lab)Labour- Quote
- I add my congratulations to those that have already been expressed to the Minister on her appointment. Will she confirm that when that statutory guidance is being considered, there will be consultation not only with groups such as Every Disabled Child Matters, which are obviously important in this respect, but with the families of the children, so that the guidance does not become something that they feel is being imposed on them by the local authority and that they are very much involved in the detail of it?
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- Sarah McCarthy-FryLabour
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- I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, which comes back to the point that I have made two or three times on the importance of trust between the parents, the child and those who are assuming responsibility and finding placements for them, and supporting them. I will be happy to ensure that we consult as widely as possible in order to put the statutory guidance in place. This is a comprehensive package of measures that was developed in partnership with the Every Disabled Child Matters campaign, which many hon. Friends cited in Committee. As Every Disabled Child Matters says: “These duties will make a huge difference to disabled young people in long-term placements, who are often placed far away from home, and can struggle to maintain contact with their families. The amendment should result in practical support to help families stay in touch with their children, such as help with transport costs, and also with essential advice and support to promote a strong relationship between disabled young people living away from home and their families.” That is why the campaign wholeheartedly welcomes the amendment. As I have said, we will continue that constructive dialogue with Every Disabled Child Matters and other stakeholders, with parents and, of course, with hon. Members as we develop the regulations and statutory guidance. As well as the Government amendments, hon. Members will discuss amendments relating to placement moves for looked-after children, support for kinship carers and strategies for securing sufficient fostering placements. In relation to care leavers, we will discuss support for voluntarily accommodated children who go into custody, reviews for relevant children and data collections relating to care leavers. As I have said, I will deal with all those issues when I respond.
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Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)Conservative- Quote
- First, I add my congratulations to those already offered to the Minister on her promotion and her joining the Department. It is an interesting brief that she has taken on, although we regretfully wave goodbye to the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan), who was a doughty champion of children’s issues—both in his ministerial role and in respect of his general interest—on this and many previous children’s Bills. He and I sparred on a friendly and positive basis over many years. He will be missed. I shall speak to the amendments in the order in which they have been selected and focus on those that stand in my name and those of my hon. Friends. I shall refer first to Government new clause 19 and the concomitant amendments, which we very much welcome. I would certainly be churlish not to congratulate the Government on having listened to the not inconsiderable lobbying from Every Disabled Child Matters and other interested parties. We supported the amendments in Committee, and the former Minister was sympathetic to what we were trying to achieve in doing so. In Committee, I tabled new clauses 6 and 10, which endeavoured to achieve what these amendments are now achieving, and I am glad that the Government have found a formulation of words that has enabled them to add the proposals to the Bill. Ensuring that the welfare of disabled children in long-term residential placements is promoted and protected affects a relatively small number of children, but they make up an important and potentially vulnerable group and it is right that they should be given special consideration in the Bill, as they now are. That is why Every Disabled Child Matters has welcomed what the Government have done and described it as a dramatic step towards ensuring that all disabled children who live away from home are well supported. We tabled our amendments in Committee in an attempt to require local authorities to consider whether disabled children in long-term residential placements should have the protection and support of looked-after children status and to retain the flexibility to ensure that the right solution was found for each child and family, but also to ensure that every child placed away from home in those circumstances had their safeguarding needs properly considered. It was not to be imposed on those children; it would have been done in consultation with the families to ensure that the right safeguards were made available to each and every child appropriately. We welcome the amendments and, in particular, the practical support that I hope they will achieve in helping families to stay in touch with their children, for example, through help with transport costs—the Minister reiterated that point—and with essential advice and support to promote a strong relationship between disabled young people living away from home and their families. Strengthening the guidance as she has promised is welcome. I echo some of the comments made by Labour Members, in particular the hon. Member for Bristol, East (Kerry McCarthy), who played a significant part in Committee. We must ensure that before the final regulations are devised, there is close consultation on them with the disability sector, but also with the families involved, because we are talking about a finite and easily identifiable group of children and their families.
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Anne Main (St. Albans) (Con)Conservative- Quote
- May I ask that consideration be given to grandparents and that the terminology for families is looked at as broadly as possible? Too often, grandparents have difficulties maintaining access to grandchildren—in a divorce situation, for example—and the difficulties are manifold in situations such as those that we are discussing.
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- Tim LoughtonConservative
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- My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is a key consideration that I am always aware of and which came up many times in Committee. When we talk about family, we are talking about not just the immediate family, but the extended family. As we know, grandparents are a lifeline in many cases, especially where there is a problem in relation to the child and the birth parents’ ability to look after that child. I am sure that the Minister will take that point on board as well. I welcome, too, the reference to strengthening the visitor role and, in particular, the immediacy of ensuring that a relevant professional visits and makes an assessment. Too often, the immediate concern is to find the placement and then the pressure is off, but finding the placement is only the first stage. We have to ensure that all the necessary support packages are in place, so I welcome the Minister’s comments in that regard. However, all this also hinges on the availability of the appropriate professionals, especially properly qualified dedicated social workers. We know about the problems related to the shortage of and turnover in social workers, particularly in the area of child protection and those with expertise in children with disabilities. That came up many times in Committee and it is quite a specialist area. Promoting the duty to notify will also be part of these considerations. Ensuring that the responsible authority has liaised properly with the host authority is a problem for children within the care system—both those who are disabled and who are not disabled—when they are placed out of area, as too many children still are. I hope that fewer will be as a result of other measures in the Bill. We welcome the Government new clause and the amendments that go with it. Our own lead proposal is new clause 24 and I need to notify you now, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that we would like the opportunity to vote on it. Given how the system works, that vote will come later rather than at the end of this debate, as our new clause is not the lead amendment. The new clause introduces a relatively new subject in terms of amendments to the Bill, but that subject has been of concern to me and my Conservative colleagues for some time. It involves the role of children in care in custody—a group that is very vulnerable and too large. Some 10,000 children pass through the secure estate for juveniles every year. At any one time, as we know all too well, approximately 3,000 children under the age of 18 are in custody in this country. It is not a good thing that we have locked up so many children and kept them off the streets; it is a sign of failure that they should have to be in custody in the first place. Many of us will agree that we need to think and act smarter as to how we divert those children from the custodial estate.
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- Mr. KidneyLabour
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- In a little while, I hope to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to speak about new clause 26, which relates to support for children on the edge of care. However, the hon. Gentleman talks about support for children at risk of going to prison, but there is one stage missing on the list that he has read out. It would be immensely helpful if social workers turned up at court with the children for whom they are responsible, so that magistrates effectively had the representative of the parent in front of them.
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- Tim LoughtonConservative
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- As is often the case, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I completely agree with him. We need to do far more preventively to keep children out of the custody system. That means better, closer working with consistent social workers, who are able to have a closer relationship. For those at the edge of custody, however, it also means ensuring that the key support person gives assurances to a court that steps could be taken to keep that child out of custody. That would require all the support packages on which he and I agree and to which his new clause alludes. The trouble is that 3,000 children are already in the custody system, of whom a majority are from the care system. When they get out, we need to make sure that they are supported appropriately and can go into a setting that will ensure that they do not return to custody, and that they get back into the mainstream as quickly and smoothly as possible. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would fully agree with those intentions. I do not want to read out the whole report, although some of its contents are startling. Another statistic that came out, however, is that only 2 per cent. of the current care population in prison “were placed there due to socially unacceptable behaviour of their own, the majority are in care as a result of abuse, neglect or family breakdown.” They are not career criminals, but deeply damaged children from deeply damaged backgrounds, who find themselves caught up in a vortex of unacceptable behaviour, the only response to which is an unsmart, unsophisticated one of banging them up. That is not good enough, and it is also highly counter-productive given the recidivism rates. For a child in the justice system—whether they are from the care system or not—at a young offenders institution, if placed on a sentence of less than 12 months, the recidivism rate is 92 per cent. That was the last statistic I heard. It is therefore virtually guaranteed that a child going into the system will make a career of offending. That cannot be right or helpful to the child, or to the community that must temporarily host that child before they get back on to the conveyor belt into crime. We must consider the extra stresses on young people in prison. The Mental Health Foundation, for example, has estimated that rates of mental health problems among children and young people in the youth justice system are at least three times higher than those in the general population. Children in the care system are much more likely to have mental health problems, and are exponentially more likely to have mental health problems when they go into the justice system. A vicious circle of deprivation exists. There is a triple whammy: perverse financial incentives to provide inappropriate kinds of custody; poor care, education and training in custody to prevent reoffending; and inadequate planning for release and support after leaving custody.
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Mr. Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)Conservative- Quote
- I am sorry that I have not read the report from which my hon. Friend has quoted. How much does it cost to keep a child in custody per year?
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- Tim LoughtonConservative
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- It is—[Interruption.]—a six-figure sum; that is what I am being prompted to say. Usually I have the figures at my fingertips. For someone who reaches the age of 18 who has gone into the youth custody system, I had a figure of well in excess of £1 million for all the costs of looking after them and of police investigations and detention. It is a substantial sum and much higher than the amount that could be put into prevention and early intervention to keep them out of the youth custody system in the first place. I am sure that the Minister would offer to write to my hon. Friend with the exact figure.
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- John BercowSpeaker
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- rose—
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- Tim LoughtonConservative
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- If my hon. Friend has the figure at his fingertips, it will save the Minister writing the letter.
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- John BercowSpeaker
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- I am extremely grateful. I am not in the business of preventing a letter from being written, but pursuant to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker), may I put it to my hon. Friend that it is often a question of spending now in order to save later? Does he not agree that the fact that there are 11,000 people in our young offenders institutions, of whom typically more than 60 per cent. suffer from speech, language and communication problems that prevent them from gaining access to education or training courses, is a damning indictment? Do not those people perhaps need an independent advocate or A. N. Other to trigger the provision of a relatively inexpensive service which will do those people and the country great good, and prevent the vastly increased costs that would otherwise be incurred at a later stage?
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- Tim LoughtonConservative
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- I thank my hon. Friend, not for saving the Minister from having to write the letter but for the point that he has made so well. He and I, along with other Members, discussed precisely that problem during a Westminster Hall debate this morning. We all agreed that, however the process is triggered—and there are different ways of triggering it—it is essential to ensure that early intervention support services are available to those with speech and language difficulties, autism and associated special educational needs. A disproportionate number of children in the care system suffer from communication difficulties of that kind which might have been avoided—or at least alleviated—through early intervention. I want to make a few more points about new clause 19 before turning to the other new clauses and amendments in the group. It is the largest group on the list, so—as I am sure you will be relieved to hear, Mr. Deputy Speaker—I shall not be as verbose as this later. If we are truly to help our most vulnerable young people, the children who are already looked after on entering custody should not cease to be looked after. They should be entitled to all the benefits conferred by section 20 of the Children Act 1989, bar perhaps the provision of accommodation by the local authority. That would ensure that all looked-after children entering custody did not become even more disadvantaged. In 2005-06, about a quarter of the number of boys and half the number of girls in custody were held over 50 miles away from their homes, according to the Youth Justice Board. Again, continuity of care in such circumstances is all-important. The new clause would ensure that local authorities were in a position to provide suitable accommodation and support for looked-after children leaving custody. The new clause is also important in safeguarding the longer-term provision of support for many extremely vulnerable children who at present should qualify for leaving-care assistance under the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000. A child is eligible under the Act if he or she is aged 16 or 17 and has been looked after by a local authority for 13 weeks or more, provided that the period began after the child had reached the age of 14 and ended after he or she had reached the age of 16. The 13-week period does not need to be continuous, but a series of pre-planned short-term placements of under four weeks at the end of which the child returns to the care of a parent, or a person who has responsibility for him or her, will not count. Periods during which a child is remanded in the care of the local authority or in remand in a secure training centre will count, but remand to a young offenders institution will not. There are anomalies in the system, and it will often be difficult to determine whether or not a child is eligible. At present, a typical scenario that needs to be considered would involve a young person being placed under section 20 of the Children Act 1989 owing to his or her chaotic circumstances, possibly as a result of court proceedings and bail requirements, but then being remanded to a young offenders institution or sentenced to custody before the 13-weeks were up. The child would thereby lose any entitlement to leaving-care rights. The hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) may wish to comment on that, as it is an issue of which he has a great deal of experience. Ensuring that those accommodated under section 20 do not lose their looked-after status on entering custody will entitle such vulnerable children to the support that they need to make the transition from childhood to adulthood and independent living, hopefully at liberty as well. The implications for successful resettlement when they leave custody are clear. However, as things stand there is a perverse incentive working in the system. I do not say that it is being taken advantage of or that it is happening a lot, but there is a perverse incentive for a children’s services department to foist a child in care on to the youth justice system so that the department no longer has responsibility, let alone financial liability, for the child. That is an enormous waste of money, and such deckchair-shifting is certainly not in the interests of the child—which, as always, must be our primary consideration.
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Miss Julie Kirkbride (Bromsgrove) (Con)Conservative- Quote
- My hon. Friend has just given the House a shocking figure relating to the number of placements with kinship carers. Why does he think so few people gain access to children with whom they have blood relationships? That seems absolutely bizarre, and perhaps answers the wider question of why children in care in the United Kingdom do so badly.
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- Tim LoughtonConservative
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- My hon. Friend has raised a good point, which she also raised—and we discussed—in Committee. It is a complicated problem, but I think that ultimately it is simply easier to place a child with a non-connected foster carer who may be on the local authority’s books, and whom a social worker may know to be a safe pair of hands. The extra work involved, and the extra risk that may be involved, in taking on a new and unknown quantity in the form of a kinship carer can be enough to tip the balance. I am not trying to attach blame to social workers; the blame lies with the system. As we know from last year’s report by our own commission on social workers, they are still under severe pressure. The lack of continuity among them makes it very difficult for them to form the close attachment to a case that should be required for, particularly, very vulnerable children. In Denmark some 40 per cent. of placements are made with kinship carers, which shows that it can be done, but for some reason our system militates against it. All the evidence shows that that lack of investment is a false economy, and that children placed with kinship carers fare as well as, if not better than, children raised by unrelated foster carers.
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- Miss KirkbrideConservative
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- I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing me to pursue the point. He is a great expert on these matters. Clearly, when a local authority goes out to look for foster carers it exercises a rigorous process of selection to ensure that the children involved will be safe and well looked after, in line with the high standards that we seek in a foster carer. Inevitably, if a child is placed with a kinship carer, the standard of parenting is likely to be lower because of the compensatory factors involved in the existence of a kinship relationship. How can local authorities solve that difficult conundrum?
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- Tim LoughtonConservative
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- I thought that my hon. Friend was going to mention a specific case that she and I discussed yesterday. A degree of political correctness had crept in: although the potential foster carers or, ultimately, adopters appeared largely to fit the bill in that context, some of their views were rather less acceptable. In fact, there is a degree of political correctness in the whole issue. We should be more willing to take a risk when there is a chance that a child may have a solid second chance of a stable life with a kinship carer. We debated the matter for many hours in Committee. Anything that we can do to re-establish some stability in a familiar environment, with familiar friends and with family members who one can trust, must be preferable, unless there is a clear risk of harm to the welfare of that child, which must always be the overriding consideration, to placing a child with an unknown foster carer.
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Angela Watkinson (Upminster) (Con)Conservative- Quote
- I wonder how widely family group conferencing, which is mentioned in new subsection (2)(a) of new clause 26, is used among local authorities. It was used by Essex county council when I was a councillor there. I understand that the concept started among the Maori community in New Zealand, where the idea of kinship was extended even further and a group of people were brought together who were involved in that child's life but were not necessarily family members. Those people worked together to prevent the child from being taken into care. I wonder whether there is a requirement on local authorities to investigate family group conferencing or is it a voluntary thing? How widely is it used?
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- Tim LoughtonConservative
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- My hon. Friend knows that we have raised the subject of family group conferencing before. It gained a lot of support from Conservative Members, and I think that other Members also felt that its use needed to be expanded much more. We tabled an amendment to reinforce the desirability of pursuing family group conferencing, but, alas, the harshness of Mr. Speaker’s selection process has not allowed it to be debated today. I am sure that he is right in his decision; it is just a shame that we have not been able to debate that amendment. However, we have had an opportunity, through my hon. Friend, to say how much we support family group conferencing and getting everyone around the table: extended family members, close friends and all the agencies and professionals involved. That must be the best way to determine what is the best and most appropriate action for the child, because it means that all the opportunities are explored at the same time and kinship carers who want to put themselves forward can do so at the beginning and all the pros and cons of that option can be investigated, rather than adopting the all too common “We’ll get back to you” approach. I seem to be lingering too long on a new clause which is not mine, but the hon. Member for Stafford will gather that there is support for what he is trying to achieve. New clause 28 was tabled by the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) with whom I concur about the paucity of information about accommodation arrangements for 19 and 20-year-olds. Once again, we are frustrated by Government replies that say that those figures are not collected centrally, because we need that intelligence if we are to discover the extent of the problem, especially given the fact that it does not exist just to the age of 16 or 18. I am aware that there is an amendment on the selection list tabled by the hon. Member for Warrington, South (Helen Southworth), on which we will reserve judgment until she has spoken about it. I will not try to pre-empt her, as I have the hon. Member for Stafford, but we had advance warning of what he is trying to achieve. Amendment No. 13 is not rocket science and what it proposes is not new. In fact, we went back to the matter on numerous occasions in Committee. Basically, it is about trying to put a cap on placements. I know that that is fraught with problems, but there is a strongly held view that the biggest issue undermining the chances of looked-after children getting a decent second chance is instability in their placements. If they are constantly being pushed from one foster placement to another, for the convenience often of the system rather than for their convenience, because it is easier to take a child in care from one foster parent to another some miles away than to try to provide the support package that that child needs to enable them to stay with the first foster parent—the child may have complex needs—that must be detrimental to that child's ability to get back on the straight and narrow. It must also be detrimental to efforts to secure some stability in the child’s education, particularly when a new placement means moving from one school to another. The amendment repeats the principles that we supported in Committee by trying to cap the number of placements that a child can have, other than in exceptional circumstances, particularly for those children who are reaching the last year of their compulsory schooling, when such moves can obviously have a detrimental effect on their capacity to take their exams and to pass them. We know that the educational outcome figures for children in care remain appalling. In school year 11, 64 per cent. of looked-after children obtained at least one GCSE or GNVQ, compared with 99 per cent. of all school children, and 13 per cent. obtained at least five GCSEs or equivalent at grades A to C, compared with 62 per cent. of all children. That gap has been widening. Although the achievements of children in care have been improving, that has not happened at nearly as fast a rate as among children in general. That is unacceptable. The amendment would fix a cap on the number of placements, and if that cap were breached, it would be judged an exception to the rule and the local authority would have to give a full explanation of why that had been allowed to happen and what had been done to prevent a repetition. Fostering is the backbone of the care system. Seventy-one per cent. of children in care are now in foster placements, but a National Foundation for Educational Research report found that 29 per cent. of children in care had had three or more placements during their secondary school years, and 25 per cent. of them had had six or more placements. Some survey work for a report by the Centre for Social Justice revealed that almost one in 10 of care leavers interviewed had experienced more than six placements before they were 16 and that some had been in as many as 30. It also found that 41 per cent. of foster carers thought that stability would make the biggest difference to children in care. As David Holmes of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering said: “The one thing that would make a difference to children is having a strong relationship based on strong attachment, intimacy and trust with at least one trusted individual which is going to be there for that child.” Research has shown the importance of stability and continuity of care and its long-term effects on mental health. In a study carried out by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, adults who had been raised in stable foster homes and received specialist support from a dedicated fostering agency were found to be more socially well integrated.
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- John BercowSpeaker
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- It is always a pleasure to listen to my hon. Friend’s mellifluous tones, but surely the overarching theme of our consideration in these remaining stages is the rights, chances and outcomes of some of the most vulnerable children in our society. Before he concludes his remarks, I wonder whether, referring to his important exchanges on 16 June in the Second Reading debate, he would care to say something about the arguments powerfully articulated by the hon. Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) for the independent advocate, which has not yet featured in our proceedings, but seems to me to be at the heart of the debate.
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- Tim LoughtonConservative
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- My hon. Friend makes a fair point, which is somewhat separate from the point here, because, again, I do not believe that Mr. Speaker in his wisdom has selected any amendments to do with the independent advocate. Therefore, he would not want me to traipse down that path, but hon. Members on both sides of the Committee had some sympathy with the proposal to enhance that role, particularly for the most vulnerable children. If social workers do not have the time to get to know children in care, they will be less likely to understand their true needs and to make effective decisions about the right type of care for those children. Furthermore, overstretched social workers find it harder to support children than those who look after them throughout their placements. Continuity and stability must surely be key, which is why we have tabled amendment No. 13. Finally, you will be relieved to hear, Mr. Deputy Speaker, amendment No. 14 raises a new issue. It is a probing amendment, so I trust that the Minister or any of my hon. Friends will not ask me to flesh out too much of the detail. Councillors and those in children’s services in various local authorities have mentioned problems with foster carers making adaptations to their houses or with housing a sufficient number of children, particularly in London boroughs. The shortage of foster carers is estimated at anything between 6,000 and 10,000 and there is a particular shortage of specialist foster carers to deal with complex needs and with some forms of disability, both physical and mental. 3 pm
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Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)Labour- Quote
- I defer to everybody here—they are much more knowledgeable about this topic than me—but my concern regards potential foster children with physical needs and disabilities and the difficulties that foster carers have in claiming disabled facilities grants. Has the hon. Gentleman taken that into account?
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- Tim LoughtonConservative
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- That is part of the general principle behind the amendment. I am interested to hear the Under-Secretary’s comments on it and to hear how that might be conveyed to those responsible in the unlikely event of her not wanting to accept the amendment. For local authorities coming up with strategies for looked-after children, it is not just a question of “Have we got the right number of foster carers and the appropriate services?” It is also a question of trying to get some flexibility in creating the environments that enable more foster carers to come forward, or that allow more current foster carers to increase their responsibility, such that they could accommodate more children at home if they made some adaptations. That might involve various grants being available, as the hon. Lady has just said. It would certainly involve some leeway on planning policies in some cases. I would go well beyond my brief if I tried to suggest that there should be a change in planning policy guidance of any description. Housing and planning departments must be included within the planning for foster care placements in particular. I can think of one London borough where this has happened informally and, as a result, there is a much higher number of foster carers and the authority is able to make many more foster placements. More leeway could be allowed in terms of adaptations for children with disabilities or in the ability to accommodate more children, within the realms of safety; one is not trying to take risks. I wanted to place it on record in this probing amendment that housing and planning departments have a role in this as well, although one would not normally expect them to. I am aware that I have taken up rather a lot of the House’s time but this is the largest grouping of amendments. There are some important amendments among them but I certainly would wish to pursue new clause 24 in a vote later today.
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- Mr. KidneyLabour
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- There was a time when I thought that “Report stage” was a misnomer for this part of our proceedings, because—except for those who had been on the Committee—what had happened before, and what was to happen next, to the Bill concerned was a complete mystery to Members. I was pleased to suggest a few years ago to the Procedure Committee and to the Modernisation Committee that we should have a report for the Report stage. The Library now does produce a report, and there is one for this Bill. The hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) mentioned advocacy. I can report back from Committee that the Minister of State said to me that the existing entitlement to advocacy to make a complaint or representation remained. In the case of a representation, that word should be read widely to mean as many things as people would like. The existing law gives quite good access to advocacy for youngsters. I know that the hon. Gentleman stressed the word “independent”, and there is still an argument about how independent some advocates might be. As I said earlier, the Government amendments are welcome and deal with a number of points that were made in Committee. Much of the debate in Committee revolved around visits to children in care who had been placed a long way from their homes. To some extent, the amendments give some reassurance. In the Bill there is also a new restriction on how often local authorities will place children in their care beyond the borders of the home local authority. That is very welcome. The Bill requires that local authorities placing both beyond and within their borders must ensure regular visits to the child where he or she is placed. That will help.
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Mrs. Siân C. James (Swansea, East) (Lab)Labour- Quote
- I am sure that my hon. Friend is aware that constituencies such as mine have cases where children have been moved because of the lack of appropriate accommodation—in one case from Swansea to Essex, making visiting almost impossible. Could we try to ensure that such placements do not occur?
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- Mr. KidneyLabour
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- My hon. Friend makes a good point about focusing attention on reducing the need for children to be placed a long way from home and on the importance of keeping contact between children and their relatives. Distance could become a serious obstacle to maintaining that relationship. My hon. Friend is quite right: we should try to ensure that there is an even spread of specialist provision around the country, so that the nearest site is not too far away. The amendments and new clauses in the group are about some special placements in a residential school, a residential health facility or a residential care home. The Govt amendments suggest that perhaps in the past there has not been enough attention on ensuring that the relationship between the child and his or her family is maintained strongly. The Government amendments are welcome in being so bold; they say that there shall be services for families to make sure those relationships are maintained. As I said, the amendments say that there should be help in keeping families in contact, including physical visits. Going further, there may be a case for holidays together, perhaps paid for or arranged by the local authority. Another, technical, point—it is more related to the amendments at the end of the group rather than the new clause—is that quite often, as my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, East (Mrs. James) has just said, the placement is in another part of the country within the area of a completely different local authority. Perhaps another weakness in the care system in the past has been the lack of engagement between two local authorities when one is the child’s home authority and the other is where the child is currently placed. In my area there is a well-known specialist psychiatric hospital with residential care for children and young persons. Children come from all over the country to be treated there. They will have come from homes in many local authorities around the country, and their families will be some considerable distance away. The Government amendment is welcome, because it stresses that the home authority is not able to wash its hands of a child because it has moved the child to a completely different part of the country and placed the child in the care of a specialist provider of treatment. It also stresses that there should be a good relationship between the home authority and the authority within which the child is currently placed. It will be to the benefit of families and children for there to be that acceptance by the two authorities that they must work together. For those reasons, I am a strong supporter of the Government amendments. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) mentioned my new clause 26, and I am pleased to urge the Government to do more to provide assistance to children and their families when a child is on the edge of coming into the care of a local authority. We know that, historically, the outcomes for children in care can be catastrophically bad in many situations. Therefore, if there is a prospect of maintaining a child within loving caring relationships with blood relatives or friends who have known the child for many years, common sense tells us that in most cases that would be of benefit, and better than the alternative of care. In answer to this debate, I want the Government at least to say that it is their intention that the greatest possible effort will be made to ensure that children have the benefit of every possible alternative to care, when it involves family, friends and relatives, being considered, so that they can avoid the possible outcome of a poor experience in care. The Bill, of course, strengthens the requirement of local authorities to consider the importance of family and friends as possible alternative carers before considering a decision to take into care, and that is very welcome. There is a briefing in support of new clause 26 from the Family Rights Group, within which there is a case study about a grandmother who was bereaved and therefore living on her own, and who took responsibility for a young grandson because both parents were incapacitated by drugs and drink problems and unable to be the carers. That grandparent found there was an extraordinary lack of support in terms of finances, practical help, respite care, support groups and therapy for the child in her care, and she was left literally holding the baby. That struck a chord with me in respect of a case in my constituency I have been involved with for most of the last 11 years, involving a grandmother in a very similar situation who often had to contact me because she did not have the money or the breaks for herself, or the support for her grandson, for whom she had accepted responsibility because neither parent could manage. She did not have access to the right mental health services for the benefit of her grandson until her Member of Parliament weighed in on her side. It should not be the case that an acceptable service will be provided for a relative who steps in in such a way only if a Member of Parliament gets involved. By putting my name to new clause 26, I am seeking to underline the fact that it should be routine for local authorities to look for relatives who might be able to save the child from having to go into care at all, and to assess what kind of support will be needed for such relatives to be able to cope and make sure there are happy outcomes for that child, not unhappy ones.
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- The hon. Gentleman speaks with considerable wisdom and authority on these matters, and I hope he agrees that support can take a multiplicity of different forms. Let us take a scenario in which it is judged most fitting and appropriate for a child or young person to be placed in a residential establishment a significant distance from the home of his parent or guardian. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if the parent or guardian wishes to see that child or young person and the feeling is mutual, it is important that poor socio-economic circumstances should not prevent that contact? To put it simply, does the hon. Gentleman agree that as a matter of course, not on the basis of a postcode lottery, transport costs ought to be paid or subsidised so that the good and healthy relationship that should subsist between parent and child is given the chance to be created and nurtured?
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- Mr. KidneyLabour
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- Unreservedly, my answer is yes. By asking that question, the hon. Gentleman highlights a separate point about new clause 26 that I would like to touch upon. So far, I have been discussing the importance of a local authority giving assistance to family members to enable them to keep a child out of care altogether, but if a child ends up having to be in care, most of us would like that period of care to be as short as possible while any family problems are resolved, so that the child can be rehabilitated back into the family. If part of the period in care results in a placement a long way from home, perhaps for the reason of necessary specialist health care provision, it might be extremely important for the possible final outcome of the child being rehabilitated home that contact be kept up between the child and the family members who eventually will take over responsibility again for the care of that child on a day-to-day basis. Therefore, transport costs and other practical obstacles would be an important consideration for a local authority that was doing its job properly, because the alternative to doing its job properly would be to make it a self-fulfilling prediction that once the child was in care it would stay in care until adulthood. The hon. Gentleman has made an important point, with which I agree. If the Minister intends to say at the end of the debate that she does not think there is any need for new clause 26 because the existing law says all that is necessary, in one sense I am inclined to accept her argument, because if every local authority fully implements the law—as the best authorities already do—there probably will not be a problem. However, I think she will agree that practice varies to an unacceptable degree between good and bad local authorities. Therefore, it is important for us to ensure that all authorities perform to an acceptable standard. One of the reasons why many of us try to insist on everything being written into the law is the fact that at least if something is in the law every authority knows it has to do it, rather than authorities simply being encouraged to do it, which might allow some of them to backslide. We would not want them to backslide on such an important subject.
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Mr. Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)Conservative- Quote
- Will the hon. Gentleman skip back to the issue of people in the family looking after children? I think that my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) mentioned the figure of 6 per cent. here, and for Denmark the figure of 40 per cent. What does the hon. Gentleman think is the reason for this difference between Britain and Denmark?
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- Mr. KidneyLabour
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- The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said that in only 4 per cent. of cases will a social worker place the child with family and friends for care. As he said, in some continental countries, the situation is very different. I hesitate to say that I know very much about practices in Sweden or any other country, but I have heard people from Sweden speak about how they do things differently there. I have also heard people from Germany, Denmark and Spain talk about how they do things. Each version has some attractions, but I am mindful of the saying that the grass always looks greener on the other side of the valley. I do not know enough to answer the question that the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) poses, but we do have the recent investigation of our performance and the UN convention on the rights of the child. Perhaps it would be instructive to read some of the criticisms of this country revealed in that investigation, including the hostile attitude to children in some parts of the media, which may make the environment in which we work different from that in Sweden. I support amendment No. 18, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South (Helen Southworth), about independent reviewing officers. I will leave her to explain the amendment’s significance, but it seeks to address the situation of youngsters between 16 and 18, who are in a period of transition. We hope that they are being prepared for a life of independence after care, rather than pushed out of care too soon and with too little support. I hope that my hon. Friend will explain why we think that much more attention should be paid to that group, and much better arrangements should be made to support them. That is true especially with regard to their accommodation, so that they can successfully make the transition into becoming responsible adult citizens when they have eventually left care. New clause 28 was tabled by the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) and I think that it is supported by the Fostering Network. It is about collecting information about youngsters who have been in care beyond the age of 18 and up to the age of 20, and it is designed to ensure that the Government collect the information about the staying put pilots, which regularly featured in the debates in Committee. Those pilots have enabled youngsters who are in foster care when they attain adulthood—and therefore their care ends—to stay in a successful placement with a foster carer beyond 18, and, crucially, for them to continue to receive support from the local authority, perhaps until they are established in a job or make a success of university education. In that way, their accommodation is not destabilised and the efforts that they and their foster carer are making are not undermined.
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Mr. Brian Jenkins (Tamworth) (Lab)Labour- Quote
- Does my hon. Friend agree that we should seek reassurance from the Government that every local authority will ensure that children in care—especially those with educational needs—who attain the age of 18 are not automatically made to start living independently, but are allowed to remain in long-term fostering until they have completed their education or training? Should not that be a child’s right, rather than a local authority option to make that provision?
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- Mr. KidneyLabour
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- I agree with my hon. Friend. The educational achievements of children who are, or have been, in care are historically poor, compared with their peers. Educational achievement is one of the many strong focuses of this Bill, and it includes provisions to strengthen the arrangements in schools to ensure that the special needs of children with a care background are taken into account in their education. His point reinforces the point that I have just made. If a young person, despite all the obstacles put before them, has made every effort to achieve good qualifications and has the ambition and drive to go to university—or to a college of further education to achieve vocational qualifications to improve their employability—we do not want a weakness in the arrangements for their accommodation to undermine their efforts. I chair the associate parliamentary group for looked-after children and care leavers, and when we had a session on this issue, a foster carer told me about the attempts of a girl for whom she was caring to go to university, which were completely undermined because when she turned 18 she received no support from the local authority during the university breaks, when she came home and wanted to continue to live with her foster carer. In the end, the foster carer gave up being the foster carer—and therefore suffered financial loss—because she was so determined to see the girl through university. That was a commendable and brave decision, but not one that we, as responsible legislators, would wish to force on either of them.
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- John BercowSpeaker
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- The hon. Gentleman will be aware, because he is well briefed on all these matters, that the Commission for Social Care Inspection has described transition arrangements from secondary school to post-16 education as “a nightmare”. Pursuant to what the hon. Member for Tamworth (Mr. Jenkins) valuably said a moment ago, does he agree that in seeking to trigger an improvement in the quality of post-16 education services, we should be ready to draw on the expertise and commitment of the voluntary sector? In particular, we should recognise the responsibility to do what is educationally best rather than what is administratively convenient, and not simply dump children with real difficulties in often wholly unsuitable pupil referral units.
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- Mr. KidneyLabour
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- Again, I agree with the hon. Gentleman. There are some fabulous voluntary organisations that are active in that very sector. I make a plea to local authorities that may be doubtful about the added value of voluntary sector partners to recognise that they can make a huge difference to the quality of outcome for the young people concerned. Local authorities should embrace those partners wholeheartedly. On balance, the Government’s approach of setting out the legal requirements plainly and supplementing them with the strong guidance, codes and forward planning in documents such as “Every Child Matters” is right, provided that we maintain evaluation and monitoring and that we chivvy the local authorities that do not perform as well as most others do. Having said that, I support new clause 19.
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Annette Brooke (Mid-Dorset and North Poole) (LD)Liberal Democrat- Quote
- May I belatedly add my congratulations to the Under-Secretary on her new position, to which we warmly welcome her. I wish first to address new clause 19, amendment No. 89 and new clause 6. It is vital to ensure that the welfare of disabled children in long-term residential placements is promoted and protected. I welcome the process by which we have reached these amendments. We talked at great length about the possibility of looked-after status for children placed in long-term residential homes and other settings, both on Second Reading and in Committee, and we had a good response from the Minister in Committee. I may have retained some slight doubts, as I tabled the amendments again immediately after the Committee stage, but I am delighted that new clause 19 and Government amendments Nos. 8 and 9 are before the House today. Clearly, it has been a productive summer for Ministers and officials, as they have continued their positive engagement with the Every Disabled Child Matters campaign on this issue. That organisation has said that new clause 19 and Government amendments 8 and 9, along with their accompanying package of regulations and guidance, are a dramatic step towards ensuring that all disabled children who live away from home are well supported and kept safe and that they maintain good contact with their families. That brings a warm feeling, and I hope that it all works. Also important has been the clarification that local authorities will retain social care responsibility for children whom they place, and that will be especially helpful in ensuring that children’s needs are met. I welcome the Minister’s earlier assurance that the consultation on the regulation will be of the fullest nature, and that it will include a wide range of organisations and, of course, the families themselves.
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Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)Liberal Democrat- Quote
- My hon. Friend will be aware that clause 24 proposes the deletion of a local authority’s discretion under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 to make payments only “in exceptional circumstances”. That is a welcome step, but does she agree that we need further clarity about the sort of support that people—and especially grandparents—can expect from the local authority? Would not a further explanation from the Minister be helpful?
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- Annette BrookeLiberal Democrat
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- My hon. Friend makes a valid point. As he says, clause 24 was a welcome step but I do not feel that it is sufficient and I hope the Minister will be able to give us clarification and general support on that point. New clause 28 is a probing provision, but it backs the strong cross-party support I felt for the desirability of 18 to 21-year-olds being able to stay on with foster carers. As has already been pointed out, because young people in care are particularly vulnerable and may have missed out on education, they may still need support between the ages of 18 to 21 while they complete education that might in other circumstances have been completed earlier. We all know that the average age for leaving home is now 24—I fear from personal circumstances that it is even higher—[Interruption.] Well, the returns get older and older. The average age first time around is 24, but in foster care it is 16 or 17. I could go on and on about this, but we all felt how desirable it would be to offer the proposed support, when a young person wants it.
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Helen Southworth (Warrington, South) (Lab)Labour- Quote
- Does the hon. Lady agree that stable accommodation is absolutely essential for any young person leaving care? Leaving care requires additional support in many ways, so does she believe that Ofsted should have the information she is requesting, to be able to make a satisfactory inspection of the performance of local authorities in supporting care leavers?
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- Annette BrookeLiberal Democrat
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- I thank the hon. Lady for that extremely helpful intervention. It is always useful when somebody takes something a step further than one had thought about oneself. We all accept the desirability of the proposal. We have pilots and I am delighted that there is one Dorset, so I shall have some first-hand information. I understand from the Fostering Network that the statistical returns that local authorities are required to make at present cover supported lodging and ordinary lodging, and there is no definitive category for 19 and 20-year-olds who remain with foster parents. I put it to the Minister that it would be desirable to monitor how many young people are facilitated in staying with foster parents at that older age. It would also be a useful indicator for Ofsted.
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- John BercowSpeaker
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- I agree with what the hon. Lady said, but I notice that rather self-effacingly she suggested that her new clause was of a probing character. Given that the absence of data and of an obligation to collect such data constitutes a cloak behind which bad practice can be hidden from the public gaze, does she not agree that it is rather important that we adopt the principle that transparency—knowing what the situation is—will be the decisive trigger to spur improved performance in the future?
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- Annette BrookeLiberal Democrat
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- I thank the hon. Gentleman. Using the word “probing” does not undermine the importance of the proposal, but I wrote the original amendment myself and did not want to lose my argument because it was technically deficient—it is frequently pointed out to me that there is a technical deficiency. I do not really care about the technical deficiency; I think the point is important and I should like the Minister in her response to concentrate on the issue exactly as the hon. Gentleman suggests. Finally, I sympathise absolutely with the objectives of amendment No. 13, although I am not quite sure about its implementation. Amendment No. 14 is extremely interesting and I shall make a judgment on amendment No. 18 when the hon. Member for Warrington, South (Helen Southworth) has spoken to it.
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- Helen SouthworthLabour
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- I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry) to her new post as Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. She is joining a team that has proved to be extremely effective in working on behalf of young people. I am sure that she will not only enjoy her position but make an effective contribution to meeting the support needs of young people. Government new clause 19 is incredibly welcome on two counts: first, because of how it has been developed, and secondly, because of what it sets out to do. It is extremely important that the people who use services are key in deciding how they are given support. We have seen exemplary practice in the development of the Government’s relationship with disabled young people and their families and carers in drawing up the new clause and in the direction of the Bill as a whole. I strongly recommend the methodology employed, which has brought disabled young people and their carers directly into the decision-making process. I recognise how important the measures introduced by the new clause will be to improving the quality of life of young people and their families. I shall refer to new clauses 24 and 28 in my comments on amendment No. 18, as the amendment would enable many of the measures in the new clauses to take effect by requiring a local authority to offer the services of an IRO to any relevant child for whom it is responsible. The reason why the amendment is structurally so important in the delivery of the Bill’s provisions is that it would make fundamentally clear the right of a looked-after child to remain a looked-after child until an agreement is made that it is in their best interests to move on from looked-after status. It would also ensure that when they make that move, the transition is properly supported by a person who is qualified and experienced and has statutory powers.
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- Angela WatkinsonConservative
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- Judging by the hon. Lady’s comments, I am sure that she agrees with me that putting very young people—perhaps as young as 16—into council tenancies without any support is wholly inappropriate, when they have had a chaotic upbringing and lack the life skills or the self-discipline to live independently. That is precisely the sort of situation we want to avoid. They need real and continuous involvement of a social worker to ensure that they are coping in newly independent circumstances.
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- Helen SouthworthLabour
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- I am sure that the hon. Lady is as aware as I am of the fact that the majority of young people move into fully independent living at approximately 24. That is not to say that they are incapable of making decisions or acting to support themselves before then; it simply means that young people do not wish to be alone and unsupported. We should not leave unsupported young people who have been in local authority care and who are vulnerable because of that. I agree with her on the principle. Although we might sometimes wonder whether young people are capable of taking on those responsibilities, none of us is capable of living alone, in isolation—none of us is an island. Independent reviewing officers are registered social workers who are independent of the management of the looked-after children’s cases that they review. They chair all looked-after children’s statutory review meetings, and from that position they can identify problems in the children’s care and any lack of clarity in the care plan. They therefore have a crucial role in promoting the best interests of the child. The Children and Young Persons Bill strengthens and extends the role of the independent reviewing officer by introducing a duty on them to monitor the local authority’s performance of its function in relation to a child’s case. Amendment No. 18 would place a statutory duty on local authorities to offer the IRO’s services in monitoring the care and pathway plans of all young people up to the age of 18, regardless of where they live. That is incredibly important when one considers the young people whom we have identified. They include those who are moving on to independent living and who have lost looked-after status, and those serving a custodial sentence.
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- Angela WatkinsonConservative
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- I am sure that the hon. Lady is aware that there are occasions when a young person is referred by their local authority into a different area and the receiving local authority is not even aware of their presence. That is an obvious opportunity for things to go wrong and for there to be nobody to put the situation right.
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- Helen SouthworthLabour
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- The hon. Lady is absolutely right. There are measures in the Bill that will reduce the number of young people being moved out of area; that is an incredibly important and praiseworthy step. However, there will still be young people who are moved out of area. The hon. Lady has touched on an issue that I wanted to raise: that of young people in custody, who are frequently moved away significantly from their areas. The current position is that if a young person moves into custody and is looked-after because of a court order, they will remain in receipt of looked-after status. If they go into custody having been subject to voluntary accommodation they will lose looked-after status at that point. Under the Bill, a young person with looked-after status cannot move into other accommodation and, if we get the commitment from the Minister, cannot lose their looked-after status unless an independent reviewing officer has decided that that is in their best interests—unless they go into custody. The amendment would give a young person in custody access to an independent reviewing officer and would mean that the independent reviewing officer was maintained throughout the process. Most significantly, when the young person left custody the independent reviewing officer would have a role in the decision-making process as regards what was suitable accommodation for them. It is essential that we get an agreement from the Minister that relevant young people will have access to an independent reviewing officer. If a young person is to be able to change their way of life on leaving custody, it is essential that they have secure and stable accommodation. I must press the Minister to ensure that they have access to an independent reviewing officer during that process and that they will not lose the entitlement that they would otherwise have had to that officer reviewing the decision on where their accommodation should be when they come out of custody. It seems contrary in the extreme not to give those young people support in finding proper and stable accommodation. Will the Minister give full consideration to supporting young people in custody in promoting contact between them and their families? It was exceptionally good to see that new clause 19 will give families proper support by working with disabled young people in retaining their relationships and having good, close contact. Young people in custody will frequently be the parent of the family themselves, so it is particularly important that they have contact and are able to maintain a caring relationship with their child which remains effective when they leave custody. I hope that the Minister will clarify the position on visitors for young people in custody. We have seen laudable movements to ensure that disabled young people who are accommodated away from home will have within seven days a visitor who is a qualified social worker. Will the Minister also ensure that young people in custody receive the vital support of a qualified social worker as their visitor and that that visit is made at an early date within a specified time in regulations? In relation to the new clause which deals with collecting information, we all know that independent accommodation and supported accommodation are essential to young people. Can we have an assurance that the general duty of a local authority to secure sufficient accommodation is applied equally to other arrangements along with foster care and residential placements? Will the Minister also ensure that national leaving-care accommodation standards are developed and introduced? The foyer movement has been very successful in doing this, as have most universities. In Lancashire, a project has been developed based around the university process for deciding whether accommodation is suitable. It is not beyond our wit to do this, and will the Minister ensure that it is done in regulations? In support of the general aim of the new clause, I ask that the Ofsted inspection process, where relevant children and former relevant children up to the age of 21 are accommodated, will have the information that was referred to, to ensure that when inspections are carried out it is possible to see whether the local authority is fulfilling its duty—not whether it transferred a young person to something that was suitable in the first instance, but whether that young person is still in suitable accommodation. That is essential if we are to ensure that every local authority achieves the standards of the best.
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Mrs. HumbleLabour- Quote
- I would like to add my words of congratulation to my hon. Friend the Minister. As someone who did not serve on the Public Bill Committee, I would like to explore the meaning of the new clause a little more. It is clearly welcome because it puts the focus on the needs of disabled children who are placed away from home, and on the importance of families continuing to have links with them. Reference was made to a visitor arriving within seven days. I would like to explore further the role of visitors and how they will communicate with the child and the family. Having met people who act as independent visitors in other circumstances, I found that most of them were qualified social workers. I wonder whether in this instance the individual will be a qualified social worker or will have some other form of expertise. I would like the person to have the ability to communicate with young people, who often find communication difficult. In the case of a young person with a severe disability, or other problems with communicating, it is vital that the visitor has the techniques and methods necessary to communicate so that they can listen to what the young person has to say and be a voice for that young person. The thread of independent advocacy will run though my brief contribution. It is important that we remember that the role of the independent advocate is not the same as that of a professional social worker, or a professional in some other realm. I am therefore interested in the way in which the role of the visitor fits into the scenario. Will the visitor take on some of the responsibilities that I would expect of an independent advocate: acting as the voice of the child by communicating with the child; finding out whether young people are happy where they are and whether they want to raise any issues; bringing those matters to the attention of the appropriate bodies; and reporting back to the family? Or will the visitor look at the placement more from the point of view of a professional social worker, and examine whether a care plan—in some cases, a health care plan—is being properly followed? The young person and the family will need a clear idea of who the individual is and how that person fits in with other people with whom they may have been involved before the child is placed away from home. There are too many cases of severely disabled children being placed a substantial distance from home and finding themselves unable to communicate properly with the people who care for them. They are miles away from the family, who often cannot afford to travel to visit, so the children are outside the protection of people who should be there to undertake it. I hope that the new clause can properly reassure me and parents, and, above all, act in the best interests of the child. As framed, it seems to do that, but I would like more detail about the role of the visitor. I have similar comments for my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South (Helen Southworth) about amendment No. 18. She made important points about the role of the independent reviewing officer, who has a clear statutory function, which can be essential in the scenario that she outlined, whereby young people of 16 and over need support in accommodation and to consider their education and their future. However, those young people could also benefit from an independent advocate, who is not part of the statutory system. When the Minister responds to that amendment, I hope that she will also consider the wider network that young people may need at such a difficult time in their lives. Although accommodation may be available for those young people, how much of it is suitable? In Blackpool, we have a lot of private rented accommodation, but not all of it is suitable for vulnerable young people without the support of professionals, who can offer advice and guidance and be at the end of the phone. Again, we could consider independent advocacy alongside the role of the professional to ensure that the voice of the child is properly heard. I want to comment briefly on new clause 26, which my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) tabled. He began his contribution by referring to independent advocacy. I do not doubt that he is right that statutory access to independent advocacy is more than simply a complaints procedure because the Minister’s predecessor and his officials told me the same thing. However, that does not apply in practice. The extent of independent advocacy varies around the country, as does the extent to which local authorities use it. I have had several meetings with appropriate officers in Blackpool council to discuss that very issue. Earlier this year, they tightened their rules for contracting for independent advocacy services, reducing the number of young people who had an entitlement to independent advocacy. Advocacy services of course have to be paid for, and it is important that we as legislators clarify the circumstances in which local authorities contract for such services, in order to ensure that as many young people as possible get the service that they require.
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- Mr. KidneyLabour
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- That is why I thought it important that the Minister of State put on record in Committee the statement that she did and why I have repeated it today. I hope that it will help my hon. Friend to show those words to the officials in Blackpool and that they realise that they have to do better.
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- Mrs. HumbleLabour
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- I knew that my hon. Friend was right, but other people need to know that he is right and to hear the words of my right hon. Friend the Minister of State. I am currently in discussions with Blackpool council about producing a leaflet on the services that should be available for young people in care. I want included an explicit reference to independent advocacy, as well as guidance to young people about what that advocacy service should deliver for them. My hon. Friend raises an important point about family and friends with his new clause 26. There cannot be a Member in the House who has not been approached by family members—especially grandparents, but sometimes also the wider family, such as siblings—who have put themselves forward to look after a brother, sister or other member of the family. We have to remember, thinking back to the Children Act 1989, which was passed by a Conservative Government, that local authorities should be looking for good enough parenting. We are not asking for people to be super-duper marvellous parents; we are looking for parenting that is good enough. More often than not, the grandparent or other member of the family, or a friend, can provide that good enough parenting. There are, of course, examples of where they do not—sometimes the child is in care because of an entirely dysfunctional family, and that can include the wider family. However, local authorities should at least explore whether there is somebody in the immediate family network who can provide that good enough parenting and support for a young person. I look forward to hearing my hon. Friend the Minister’s comments about the amendments. The Bill is excellent as it stands and, in moving new clause 19, she has strengthened it hugely. The comments that we have heard from all parts of the Chamber were from individuals who care passionately about young people who are looked after in the care system. We want to ensure that by the time the Bill leaves this place, it is in its best possible form, to protect those vulnerable young people.
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Joan Ryan (Enfield, North) (Lab)The Independent Group for Change- Quote
- I join others in welcoming my hon. Friend the Minister to her new responsibilities. It is clear from the way in which she moved new clause 19 that she will not be lacking in commitment on these issues. I spoke on Second Reading and want to refer back to that debate and to talk about new clause 28. The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) described it as a probing amendment. I listened to her remarks in response to the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) and thought that they were well made. I am sure that all hon. Members will remember a lobby by many foster carers on the day of that Second Reading debate. A number of foster carers from my constituency came to speak to me. Like me, they welcomed the Bill. I still hold that warm welcome for it and the measures within it, but it is right that we probe some of the issues.
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- Siobhain McDonaghLabour
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- Unlike my right hon. Friend, I am not so much impressed by the contributions from Members on the Committee as fearful about whether they will accept some comments from a complete novice in this regard. I come to the matter after having my ears firmly bashed by Merton Mencap only last week about guidance and legislation from Government that is not fully implemented, or not implemented in the spirit intended, by local authorities. Like many hon. Members, I spent a long time as a councillor—in the London borough of Merton—before becoming an MP. London boroughs are particularly hard-pressed with regard to accommodation. My experience is that there is generally war between social services and housing about who gets access to what. Although new clause 19 rightly argues that every local authority “shall make provision for such services as they consider appropriate to be available”, the devil is in the word “appropriate”. What is appropriate to social services is often not appropriate to housing. My experience as a local MP is that those who wish to be foster carers, who might be friends or family members of the children concerned, are often prevented from doing so because their accommodation is not large enough to take on a number of siblings together, although, as a layperson, one would imagine that that might be the most appropriate option. In my local authority, the criteria for housing register and transfer applications do not take fostering issues into account at all, but are based only on current accommodation with current family and medical needs. A person’s desire to become a foster carer does not therefore raise them up the list, making it less likely that social services will consider that they might provide good foster care. In spite of the pleadings of social services to that end, most housing departments, because of the pressure on them, are unwilling to concede to further demands. I am also struck by the significance of the word “appropriate” in relation to housing for young people who have been in care, and the suggestion that most young people leave their foster homes at 16 or 17 to go into independent accommodation. I would argue that few 16 or 17-year-olds, whether they have been in foster care and had a difficult childhood and adolescence or whether they have had the most fantastic family background, would take well to independent accommodation on their own, especially on some of the large estates in which young people are housed in London. As for the one-bedroomed flats available in my borough where such young people are likely to be housed, one would not want to see them housed there at 30 or 40, let alone at 16 or 17. While I quite understand that most 16 or 17-year-olds would love flats of their own, that is not necessarily the “appropriate” or the right route. It is, however, the answer that local authority housing departments often come up with, because it is easier than providing more spacious accommodation to enable young people to stay with their foster carers. I should like Ministers to establish, in the guidance that will be provided if the new clauses are passed, how we can beef up the word “appropriate” and ensure that young people are not given the least attractive and least wanted accommodation. I should also like to know how we will finance that. All the foster carers I have known have been amazed at the amount of cash that is available to young people and not available to their own children. That too motivates the desire of young people who are being fostered to seek independent or separate accommodation, against their own long-term interests. I think that, when viewing local authorities as a corporate whole, we should appreciate that the departments that make up a local authority often have very different drivers and very different problems.
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Mr. Edward Timpson (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)Conservative- Quote
- Having served on the Committee, I continue to welcome the thrust of the Bill. It is certainly a step in the right direction. I want to comment on two of the new clauses, beginning with new clause 24. There is still an anomaly that is failing vulnerable children. As recently as April 2005, Mr. Justice Munby said in a ruling that local authorities’ plans for looked-after children in prison were “little more than worthless”. We must think about the level at which we start, and what we need to do to achieve what such children deserve. We know from speaking to children in custody—and I know from my experience of dealing with children in the youth justice system in Cheshire—that they value the relationship that they have with a social worker, particularly the individual meetings to discuss private issues that they cannot share with anyone else. Maintaining the stability of such support is essential. At present there are two separate organisations, the Youth Justice Board and the looked-after children’s services, which are not working together in planning the future of children in care and in custody but working in parallel, and the youth justice system dominates the process. Those who speak to social workers will find that many are very confused about their role in relation to children in care and custody. We need to put that right, and to give social workers a key role in children’s lives while they are in custody. They need to fit seamlessly into the process, and to work along with the youth justice system to ensure positive outcomes for children in care and custody, rather than the poor outcomes that we are currently seeing. At present, we see placement breakdowns after custody, high reoffending rates and missed education and employment opportunities, often when children are at the most critical stage of their childhood. I urge the Minister to consider that issue carefully. The new clause gives the Government a chance to put the anomaly right, and to ensure that the children who, in many respects, are perhaps the most vulnerable in the custody system have the support that they require and deserve as looked-after children, which is what they should be. The section 20 voluntary accommodation must be put into the same category for looked-after children in custody as for all other children who are placed under section 31 care orders. The children require that, and we need to deliver.
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- Mr. KidneyLabour
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- I do not disagree with anything that the hon. Gentleman has said, but when I went to see the Staffordshire Safeguarding Children Board, I saw a seamless service between the child protection people from the social services of the local authority and the youth offending team members. Is that his experience in Cheshire?
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- Mr. TimpsonConservative
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- There are YOT teams and children's services teams that work well together, and Staffordshire is a good example. In Cheshire, there have been improvements in that regard but they have been achieved by the efforts of those services, rather than as a result of their being required to work together. It is the duty of the Government to ensure that those services work seamlessly in the best interests of the child, rather than the two agencies trying to work together off their own bats. I take what the hon. Gentleman says at face value. That good practice needs to be spread around all local authorities and the best way to do that is through this legislation.
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- Sarah McCarthy-FryLabour
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- We have heard a lot about this large and varied group of amendments. To respond to all the points will be quite a challenge, but I will do my best. As I said earlier, the amendments relate to three different groups of children, including those children placed in accommodation arranged under the health and education legislation. At the outset, I explained the package of measures that the Government are taking, including through amendments, to improve services for that vulnerable group. As I said, that package was developed with the Every Disabled Child Matters campaign, which has welcomed the Government's approach. When we were discussing those amendments, the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) had a question about the notification of placements made by health and education bodies and how we were going to ensure that that happened properly. New guidance relating to that provision will set out the expectations on the authorities when children are placed outside their own responsible authority. The hon. Lady is right that we need to ensure that local authorities are aware of their new duties and that they happen on the ground. I look forward to working on the implementation plan because legislation is just the guidance and the start of improving practice on the ground. Both the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) asked questions about visits by social workers. The hon. Lady asked whether the visits would be conducted by a qualified social worker with experience of working with disabled children. We want to ensure that those visitors have the right skills and experience to provide the support that children need. That is why the Bill lists a requirement that local authorities satisfy themselves that the individual who makes the visit has the necessary skills and experience. It is our policy intention that it should be qualified social workers who carry out those visits, but we accept that there may be circumstances where that is not possible, so we do not want to introduce regulations with which we know that local authorities will be unable to comply. That is an issue for guidance and I commit to consult interested parties before we finalise it. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) also wanted the role of the visitor to be fleshed out, and I hope I can satisfy her that we will be able to do that in the guidance. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham spoke about the availability of professionals and the shortage of social workers and asked what we were going to do about that. We have commissioned the Children’s Workforce Development Council to address a number of measures that we hope will enable us to recruit social workers faster and to hold on to those we have. On looked-after children and those living with family, friends and carers, the proposed amendments try to tackle issues of practice. I understand the concerns but I want to demonstrate that we plan to address them at a more practical level. I should also like to remind hon. Members that much of what is asked for in the amendments is already in the Bill. Amendment No. 13 relates to placement stability, which is essential if looked-after children are to thrive and achieve. It is particularly important that we minimise disruptions through the two years of key stage 4, especially if they also lead to changes of school. Most children who are looked after for more than a year stay in the same placement. However, we want to increase the proportion of children in long-term stable care placements because we know that these lead to the best outcomes. We also want to reduce further the minority of looked-after children who have more than three placements each year. Both of the measures are part of the national indicator set for local authorities. Clause 9 sets out the key considerations in determining the most appropriate placement for the child and includes the specific requirement that the local authority must ensure, so far as is reasonably practical, in all circumstances of the case that the placement does not disrupt the child’s educational training at any stage in the child’s educational career. The provision goes much further than the proposed amendment as it is not limited to disruption in year 11. We are also taking powers to make regulations to require a local authority to take prescribed steps before making any decision concerning a child’s placement if he or she is at key stage 4, which includes years 10 and 11. We will use the power to require a full statutory review of the child’s care plan whenever any unplanned change is proposed that would have the effect of disrupting their education, including consultation with the designated teacher at those schools. We will also make it clear in the new statutory guidance to independent reviewing officers that part of their new role will be to provide a real challenge to social workers’ placement decisions, including changes of placement, to ensure that they are made in the child’s best interests and that the child has been properly involved in the decision. However, we must ensure that the target of no more than three placements in one year does not create perverse incentives. The absence of placement breakdown does not automatically mean that the child is happy and in the best placement. It may be important for some children to be moved into a short-term treatment programme as a means to enabling them to find permanence in the future. For other children, a placement move may be about a trial return home to parents while on a care order. Finally, placement changes are already required to be recorded within the child’s care plan. I do not accept that the requirement for a written explanation of placement moves as proposed in the amendment will add anything to the current requirements. Amendment No. 14 is on a similar theme, as it seeks to increase the availability of foster care placements by ensuring that children’s services are working with their colleagues in housing services to develop a strategy to maximise the availability. Many hon. Members spoke about that link. A potential benefit of an authority having sufficient foster placements would be a reduced risk of needing to disrupt education or training. Local authorities need to think strategically about the need for placements in their area and how best to address any shortages. That is why we have included clause 10, which places a new general duty on local authorities to take steps to secure, so far as reasonably practical, sufficient accommodation within their area that meets the needs of the children they look after. Let me take this opportunity to put on record the fact that the duty to secure sufficient accommodation applies to children’s homes, foster care placements and other arrangements, such as supported lodgings and semi-independent accommodation, an issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDongah). In order to discharge this new duty, local authorities will have to, among other things, conduct assessments of local need, both existing and potential, and establish the extent to which those needs can be met through existing placements. They must then take action to address shortages of any particular type of accommodation in their area. My hon. Friend also raised an issue about disabled facilities grants, and the child health strategy, which we will publish shortly, will recognise the importance of joint working and ensuring disabled facilities grants are seen as part of the overall resources for children, and not just in a housing department silo.
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- Helen SouthworthLabour
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- My hon. Friend made a very welcome statement about accommodation and the duty on local authorities to make other arrangements to ensure they have suitable and sufficient accommodation. Will she confirm that she will work on a national standards set for that accommodation so that local authorities can indeed ensure that other accommodation is suitable and adequate?
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- Sarah McCarthy-FryLabour
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- Our current consultation on guidance and regulations is in part addressing that particular issue about the suitability of accommodation and trying to set down what that means in practice. As I have said, in order to discharge this new duty, local authorities will have to conduct assessments. We will provide statutory guidance on the steps required by local authorities that will in particular emphasise the need for children’s services to work with providers and all relevant partners, especially housing and planning services to maximise available accommodation within the area.
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- Mrs. HumbleLabour
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- For some small local authorities, such as Blackpool which is a unitary authority, it can be difficult to provide the range of accommodation they need for young people. Will my hon. Friend therefore look to ensure that local authorities work with their neighbouring authorities so that if they cannot provide the accommodation directly within their boundary it will at least be provided within the neighbourhood and not 100 miles away?
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- Sarah McCarthy-FryLabour
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- That is something we will have to consider, and that was a problem with the amendment because not all authorities that provide children’s services also have housing services under their jurisdiction. We must take it into account that there are unitary authorities who do both, but in many cases housing is provided by district authorities and children’s services by the larger metropolitans. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham suggested it might be a probing amendment, so I hope I might have said enough for him to feel able to withdraw it. I now want to respond to new clause 26, which proposes a new support service for kinship carers and goes much further than can be justified. It would give a blank cheque to kinship carers, requiring local authorities to provide financial support to arrangements where the local authority may have had no prior involvement with the child or his family, and even if the local authority considered the placement to be unsuitable or had concerns about the carer’s capacity to care for the child. Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 already places a general duty on local authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in need in their area by providing a range and level of services appropriate to those children’s needs. If it is consistent with their duty to safeguard and promote the child’s welfare, the local authority must provide services to promote the upbringing of the child by his family. Family and friends carers must be considered for services under section 17 where the child is a child in need—in other words, their health or development is at risk—in exactly the same way that parents should be considered for services. Clause 9 replaces section 23 of the 1989 Act with proposed new section 22C. It requires the local authority to consider placements in the following order of priority: first, the parent; secondly, the preference must be given to placement with a relative, friend or other person connected with the child who is a local authority foster parent. I can assure the House that our care planning regulations will continue the current emergency provision allowing temporary approvals pending full assessment of the relative’s suitability to foster. We expect more relative carers to receive financial and other support from local authorities under section 17, where that is needed, but we must be very careful not to undermine our policies on early intervention by offering greater support to those caring for a relative’s child than to parents who are struggling to care for their own child. At all costs, we must not introduce perverse incentives for parents to renege on their responsibilities to children, or for families to collude in alternative care arrangements because there is a perceived financial benefit. Family and friends carers are entitled to a range of other financial supports and benefits such as child benefit and child tax credit, both of which are unaffected by any payments made under section 17, on broadly the same terms as parents.
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- Helen SouthworthLabour
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- My hon. Friend referred to a visit to be made to relevant children by their personal adviser. Will that person be a qualified social worker?
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- Sarah McCarthy-FryLabour
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- I mentioned earlier that we would consider suitability in relation to previous visits, and we will look at that issue when we consult on the guidance. I am sure that my hon. Friend will wish to contribute to that discussion. When the personal adviser visits, they will be able to respond to any change in circumstance or need, including whether the accommodation remains appropriate. We will explore, with the help of stakeholders, how we could provide more definition of what constitutes “suitable” accommodation in the revised statutory guidance. I hope that the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole will accept my assurances on this point and withdraw her amendment. New clause 24 specifically focuses on care leavers who have been looked after before they enter custody. These children are a very vulnerable group and we know that they can face many serious practical difficulties re-establishing themselves in their local communities when they are released from custody. In previous debates in this House and in the other place, we have set out how we intend to ensure that those children will get the support that they need, in exactly the same way as we will ensure that those in custody who are the subject of a care order and those in custody who are “relevant children” get the support they too need. I am aware that, notwithstanding our assurances, doubts remain about the entitlements of children who were voluntarily accommodated and who ceased to be looked-after children once they were admitted to custody. I hope that what I will say on this subject today will allay those concerns once and for all. It is important to understand that the scheme of part 3 of the Children Act 1989 is that the duties of local authorities depend largely on the nature of the services provided. So the duties to children whose needs can be met while living with their families are different to the duties that the local authority owes to children for whom it provides accommodation, thereby to a greater or lesser extent assuming the role of the parent. The particular duties around care planning, including arrangements for contact and to address the child’s health and educational needs, are all intimately related to the placement decision, and the Secretary of State’s powers to regulate the local authority's decisions in these respects are all part of those placement arrangements. This reflects the practical reality that once the local authority does not have the function of deciding where the child is to live, it has limited powers to make other arrangements for the child. Thus, in the case of a voluntarily accommodated child, the child ceases to be looked after as soon as the parents take the child home, a practical recognition of the fact that the local authority does not share parental responsibility for this group of children and that the local authority’s powers to be further involved in the child’s life are necessarily limited. Once a voluntarily accommodated child goes into custody, it is the youth justice services that have statutory responsibilities to promote and safeguard the child’s welfare and to make appropriate provision to meet the child’s educational and health care needs while he is serving his sentence. However, we recognise that children’s social care needs do not cease when they enter custody. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South (Helen Southworth) mentioned family contact. I shall get back to my hon. Friend, as I seem to have lost my notes on that point, but it is our intention to try to ensure that we have the maximum family contact. Many of the points she made were extremely valid. Our youth crime action plan sets out our commitments to promote the positive development of young people in custody, to tackle underachievement in education, to promote family links and make sure that young people are prepared for their return to the community from the very start of their sentence. To improve the education and training of children in custody we have made it clear that we intend to legislate at the earliest opportunity to make local authorities responsible for securing the provision of education for all young people in custody, regardless of their background. That will help to ensure that young people’s education, so far as is practical, meets their needs and matches that of children and young people in mainstream education.
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- Tim LoughtonConservative
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- I am listening to what the hon. Lady says, but I should like more assurances to acknowledge that there are particular conditions when more intensive support provided by visiting social workers and other professionals is necessary, above and beyond what a prison or youth offender institute may be able to offer. That may involve judging the appropriateness of the youth offender institute or prison, which may not be the best place to cater for the special needs of a person coming out of care. They may have special educational needs or require various rehabilitation services. I understand what the hon. Lady is saying, but there is a specific role that the social worker and other people from the local authority could play if the status of looked-after child in care was kept while they were in custody.
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- Sarah McCarthy-FryLabour
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- The hon. Gentleman’s point is similar to the one raised by the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr. Timpson), who is no longer in the Chamber. His perception was that there was not a joined-up service and that there was a breakdown between the youth justice system and children’s services. We are determined to have effective co-ordination of services, with shared support, and we want to make sure that really happens. I shall come to how we shall do it a little later on. The question we are addressing at the moment is the extent to which the local authority can contribute meaningfully while the child is serving their sentence and, more important, the best means of engaging children’s social services in effective planning with the youth offending team to ensure that the child’s needs are met on release, particularly where there are doubts about whether it will be possible or appropriate for the child to return to their family. I have already referred to the visiting duty in clause 16. We shall use the powers to prescribe the functions of the person making the visit, which will include assessing the child’s needs and liaising with the responsible youth offending team and youth custody services. The process will ensure that the local authority is aware of the resettlement services that the child will need, and of plans to ensure that the services are in place when the child is released from custody. We will make it clear through statutory guidance that the local authority must consider in particular the child’s needs for appropriate and suitable accommodation, and whether the child will need to be looked after again when they leave custody. The approach we propose to the issues raised by the provision is proportionate and flexible. The local authority’s role in visiting former looked-after children in custody will be in addition to the role of the separate YOT worker responsible for planning how the child will serve the rest of their sentence in the community. The introduction of the visiting requirement puts in place an essential safeguard, so that former looked-after children in custody are not forgotten by the authority previously responsible for their care. During the period when they are in custody, even though they are not formally looked after, the authority will have to keep them in mind, maintain a relationship with them and contribute to planning for their future. We are firmly determined to offer former looked-after children in custody the right kind of support to remove the cliff-edge approach to planning for their accommodation and support faced by some young people on release. I give the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham that assurance. I know he has already signalled his intention to push the provision to a vote, but I hope I may have—
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- Tim LoughtonConservative
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- indicated dissent.
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- Sarah McCarthy-FryLabour
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- I tried. The final amendment I shall speak to is new clause 28—I am sure Members will be relieved to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Many Members expressed concern about the age at which young people leave foster care. Our staying put pilots are designed to identify all the practical and financial barriers that inhibit care leavers from remaining with former foster carers, so that as far as possible care leavers have the opportunity to remain with their foster family. If, as we hope and expect, the pilots demonstrate improved outcomes for care leavers, we hope to take action in the next comprehensive spending review period, so that any care leavers who choose may have a reasonable expectation that they can remain in a family placement.
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- Tim LoughtonConservative
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- I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal)Labour- Quote
- With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: New clause 13—Registration of foster carers with the General Social Care Council— ‘In section 55(2) of the Care Standards Act 2000 (c. 14) after subsection (2)(d) insert “or (e) is a foster parent”’. New clause 23—Foster charters— ‘Local authorities must publish a charter for foster carers— (1) to establish the authority’s responsibilities with regard to the foster carers within its authority; (2) to have special regard to the needs of kinship carers.’.
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- Tim LoughtonConservative
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- The last group took only just over three hours; let us see whether we can do a bit better on this group. We have also been through three Deputy Speakers. I am sure that you will be more resilient, Madam Deputy Speaker. New clause 7 brings a severe sense of déjà vu. I am sure that all hon. Members who have been involved in the Committee on the Bill, and in previous Committees dealing with children’s affairs, will agree. We debated in Committee the measure to promote a scheme for the registration of private foster carers. We tabled amendments that would have struck out what was then clause 15, which extended the time limit in section 47 of the Children Act 2004, which would have brought in a private fostering registration scheme four years after that Act came into force—in November this year, I believe. Through the Bill, the Government are extending by a further three years the sunset clause that accompanied the enabling provision. As a result, we may not see a scheme for the registration of private foster carers introduced until 2011—seven years after the coming into force of the 2004 Act. New clause 7 would amend sections 45 to 47 of the Children Act 2004 to allow a scheme for the registration of private foster carers to be brought in forthwith, so that we do not have to wait yet more years for the Government to enable it to be introduced. Many Members from Opposition parties, including me—and indeed some Government Members—are genuinely confused by the Government’s continued dithering over bringing in a scheme that has been called for by many organisations and professionals involved with child protection issues. I should like to echo comments that I made in Committee, and the countless speeches that various hon. Members, some present today, have made over the past few years on the need for a private fostering registration scheme. I refer the House to the 1997 Utting report “People Like Us”, which recommended a private fostering registration scheme. I refer hon. Members to the work of the UK Joint Working Party on Foster Care in 1999, which revealed the high potential for abuse and neglect and urged regulation of private fostering in a public awareness campaign. I refer hon. Members to the Laming report that was produced in the wake of the Victoria Climbié tragedy; it recommended a review of the private fostering system. I refer hon. Members to my own modest ten-minute Bill, introduced on 19 March 2003, which contained three provisions, one of which would have instituted a private fostering registration scheme. There were also cross-party attempts to bring in the scheme straight away under what was then the Children Bill in 2004. The proposal was supported—and voted for, no less—by the then Labour Member for Lancaster and Wyre, Hilton Dawson, who was well versed in the issues. It is therefore inexplicable to many of us why the Government have avoided supporting a measure on which there is broad consensus; people involved in children’s issues, adoption and fostering have for some time said that it is highly necessary. We are confounded as to why the Government have still not gone through with it. In the years during which we have called for such a scheme, there has been extensive regulation of child minding—that registration scheme has enjoyed a degree of success—and all sorts of standards for the inspection of care homes and fostering agencies have been introduced. There are numerous new adoption rights and requirements, and hundreds of thousands of people who deal with young people have become subject to Criminal Records Bureau checks, including me. We have even considered legislation to clamp down on puppy farming, but still we have not introduced a registration scheme for private fostering. We are talking about potentially vulnerable children, and people who are unknown to local social services departments. There can be no guarantee of equality of care, and no guarantee that people are accessing appropriate training, support and benefits. There is no control over the number of placements that a child will experience. That all has ramifications for the safety, welfare and well-being of children in private fostering arrangements. We have no accurate measure of the extent of such arrangements, although some years ago it was estimated that there are in excess of 10,000 private foster care arrangements in this country. They disproportionately involve children coming from west Africa, particularly Nigeria, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast, which is where Victoria Climbié came from, although she came via France. I am sure that a large majority of private foster carers do a good job and pose no threat to their charges, but we simply do not know. We have no idea of the extent of the problem, because the Department of Heath stopped collecting data back in 1991, as the figures were so inaccurate. Since 1991, regulations have brought in local registers of foster carers, but there is no real legal penalty for not registering, and many people are ignorant of the requirements. As I say, the Government introduced legislation that would enable a private fostering registration scheme to be set up. It was to come into force after a certain period unless a good reason why it should not be introduced was found; hence the sunset clause. The Government intend to extend the sunset clause by means of the Bill, but what has changed since the Children Act 2004 that requires the terms of the sunset clause to be extended yet further? What have the Government found out since then that has convinced them to extend the sunset clause, which prevents the coming into force of a private fostering registration scheme, and what do we need to know to clear that hurdle and trigger the coming into force of the scheme? In one of his weaker moments, the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan), formerly the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Children, Schools and Families, came up with some very unconvincing reasons why the Government needed to do yet more research. I do not think that his heart was in it when he opposed the measure. There are still no specifics about what research would be required before the Government could make a definitive decision to go ahead with such a scheme. We believe that the sunset clause was a sop; the fact that the Government now seek to extend it without good reason goes to prove that. It is a sop to mention the issue without having any real inclination to do anything about it. That is what I charged the Minister who had responsibility for children in 2004 with, and nothing has happened to negate that charge. In 2004, in saying that she wanted to beef up the notification scheme, the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), who was then the Minister with responsibility for children, admitted: “I think that the notification scheme is not working well.” We all agreed with that. But she went on to say, in support of the sunset clause: “The clause is in the Bill because we want to strengthen the scheme and give it one last chance to work.”—[Official Report, Standing Committee B, 21 October 2004; c. 285-88.] That was the “last chance”—in 2004. Now, apparently, there is to be another last chance. The Government must make their case properly and justify why the sunset is proving to be very long indeed. Will we ever see the dawn of a private fostering registration scheme, which so many of us have wanted for so many years? I am at a loss to see how the notification scheme can have been deemed a success. At the end of March last year, the last year for which we have figures, roughly 1,250 children were reported as having been cared for and accommodated in private fostering arrangements in England, and 1,010 such arrangements ended during the previous year. That is well short of the 10,000 or so private fostering arrangements that are estimated to exist, and we still do not know who is involved in the arrangements. Another reason for beefing up the provision in 2004 was to publicise the existence of notification schemes and the legal requirement to register with them. Back in 2005, The Voice carried out a survey that particularly focused on black private fostering arrangements in London, in respect of which there have been problems, of which the Victoria Climbié case was just one example. That survey found that 35 per cent. of the respondents—only a third—knew about private fostering. Some 21 per cent. of the respondents were from Africa, and although 31 per cent. of those said that they knew about private fostering, only half knew what it actually meant. Some 35 per cent. of respondents said that they knew about private fostering, but when they were probed further it was found that only 15 per cent. knew what it was about. There was a pretty low recognition level, particularly among that key target client group. Part of the raison d’être behind the changes made by the Minister in charge of the Children Bill in 2004 was to promote better awareness. Local authorities were charged with making potential or existing private fosterers in their areas aware of the requirements to register under the scheme. However, in January this year—four years on—the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, or BAAF, carried out a further survey of Londoners and came up with an even worse result, which showed that few professionals working with children understand what private fostering is. In a YouGov survey that used an even bigger sample than the original one, adults living in London were asked what they thought a child being privately fostered meant. They were offered a series of possible answers. Only 18 per cent. picked the correct definition. Furthermore, only 16 per cent. knew that when making private fostering arrangements, the parent and carer must notify the local authority of the area where the child will live, and that failure to do so is an offence. Two hundred professionals—professionals, not just parents—who come into regular contact with children were surveyed, including teachers, teaching assistants, doctors and nurses. What is really worrying is that only 18 per cent. of those professionals knew the correct definition of private fostering, despite the fact that such professionals obviously play a vital role in identifying privately fostered children.
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- Miss KirkbrideConservative
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- My hon. Friend has given the most astonishing figures; the mind boggles about what the other 82 per cent. of the professionals or public thought private fostering was. Does he have the questions that were asked, so that the House can understand what people might have thought?
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- Tim LoughtonConservative
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- I do not have them to hand, although I have the report, which I shall be happy to pass on to my hon. Friend. But the figures speak for themselves. The fact is that professionals gave that response, and it is terribly alarming to think about what on earth they thought private fostering was. It would appear from that evidence that the publicity information on the existing notification process has been an abysmal failure. How much money was spent on it, and what results do the Government think have been gained? The surveying of key target audiences has shown that if it has had any impact, it has been a negative impact.
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- Angela WatkinsonConservative
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- Does my hon. Friend agree that prospective foster carers should also be provided with full information about a prospective foster child—their history, their health and any other problems that they have—particularly if they have profound behavioural problems, so that the foster parents can make a judgment as to whether they can cope with that situation?
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- Tim LoughtonConservative
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- My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In Committee we discussed the appropriateness of certain placements, particularly in the case of children with complex needs, where it is absolutely essential to maintain the stability of a placement so that it has a good chance of succeeding. For the placement to stand any chance of getting off the ground, there should be a full transparent declaration of a child’s needs. That is what the charter is all about: ensuring that foster carers can expect to receive all the relevant information that they need. It would ensure that local authorities provided that information. It would also include references to items such as a living wage, respect for foster carer opinions and support from education, social care and mental health professionals. In return, foster carers would be clearly shown what was expected of them, such as their training obligations. I believe that our proposal would help to reverse the postcode lottery in the treatment of foster carers, and it would encourage a better quality of relationship between foster carers and local councils, thus improving recruitment and retention. This is not something we are trying to impose nationally, from the centre—it will be up to local authorities to decide on what their charters would contain for their local foster carers’ needs. It is a fair deal for foster carers, who do an excellent and very important job in this country. We need to make their job easier and give them far more support. They need to know what support they can expect, and we hope that by doing that, we might attract more foster carers.
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- Mr. TimpsonConservative
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- Does my hon. Friend agree that the provision of this charter to each local authority will help to improve the accountability of social workers to foster carers at a time when many such carers are caring for foster children while social workers are not meeting their duty to make statutory visits on a regular basis? The charter will help shore up the response to that problem.
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- Tim LoughtonConservative
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- My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I defer to his much greater personal and professional knowledge of how the system is working—or not working—throughout the country. He is right that too often, because of pressures of work and systemic problems, particularly relating to the social workers’ work load, too many excuses are made about why social workers are not fulfilling their expected duties. If what is expected of them is set down, there is a better chance of holding an authority to account to ensure that it has the number, variety and diversity of social workers to do the job that it has to do properly. That is all part of the process. We are proposing two important new clauses. Not for the first time, new clause 7 has proved its worth, and there is no excuse for further prevarication and delay on the subject of why such a scheme should not come into force now. New clause 23 represents an important way of sending a signal to foster carers that they are valued, and that they should know what to expect as part of the deal for taking on an enormous duty of care for which we owe them enormous gratitude.
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- Annette BrookeLiberal Democrat
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- I would like to address new clause 7, to which I have signed up. Like the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), I feel very strongly about it. Privately fostered children who are unknown to the authorities must be a cause for concern, given that so many reports confirm that the total will include some very vulnerable children. Authorities have no knowledge of the physical and emotional support systems available to those children—or, indeed, whether such systems are available to them. The report that the then Prime Minister commissioned in 1997, which Sir William Utting undertook, referred to private fostering as a potential honey pot for abusers. I proposed a compulsory registration scheme for private fosterers in the Committee that considered the Children Act 2004. As the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said, the then children’s Minister, the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), stated: “The clause is in the Bill because we want to strengthen the scheme and give it one last chance to work… Secondly, we will require local authorities to monitor the operation of the scheme far more closely, and to provide information for us on how many registrations they achieve each year.”—[Official Report, Standing Committee B, 21 October 2004; c. 288-89.] Obviously, we have no idea how many children are privately fostered. For many years, the figure of 10,000 children has been suggested. However, the latest figures show that, at 31 March 2008, 1,330 children were known to live under private fostering arrangements. In previous years, the figures were: 1,250 in 2007, 980 in 2006 and 730 in 2005. Clearly, there is a staggering gap between the number of children estimated to be living under private fostering arrangements and those accounted for. That demonstrates that foster parents are simply not coming forward and alerting authorities to their presence. The Children Act 2004 gave the notification scheme three years to work and clearly stated that compulsory registration would be introduced if it did not. The figures plainly demonstrate that the notification scheme is not working. Closer examination of the figures shows great regional variations. Although we are considering relatively low numbers, Yorkshire and Humberside recorded a 50 per cent. increase in new notifications per year between 2005 and 2008, whereas London recorded a 327 per cent. increase. I feel that it is worth mentioning again the tragic case of Victoria Climbié. Although some would argue that a private fostering arrangement did not exist in her case, her situation could well have been such an arrangement. Parts of the inquiry following her death serve as a very real warning of the dangers of children being missed by the authorities. Paragraph 1.27 is especially pertinent. It states: “the single most important change in the future must be the drawing of a clear line of accountability, from top to bottom, without doubt or ambiguity about who is responsible at every level for the well-being of vulnerable children.” How can we have accountability if we do not know which children are privately fostered? It is also worth considering that, in addition to the huge benefits to the child, compulsory registration would be incredibly helpful to foster parents. The security to parents of gaining confirmation of their role and status and being part of a network would be extremely beneficial. To revert to the statistics that I cited earlier, there are clearly variations in practice across the country. Should the Minister decide to resist the new clause—I sincerely hope that she will not—will she give details of the robust plan and actions that she will take to ensure that best practice is shared and that all local authorities have the matter high on their agenda? How will she ensure that notification works? Delay in the matter is a sign of failure and perhaps even negligence. New clause 13 relates to the registration of foster carers. Registration would ensure that foster carers were accorded the status and standing that their role demands, and improve the respect and treatment that they receive from other professionals with whom they work. It would also allow for the introduction of a national code of conduct, for expectations about continuing professional development to be raised, for ensuring that safeguarding children remains paramount, and for increased portability of approval for foster carers who move to a new part of the country. Currently, foster carers must be approved by a fostering service provider before a child is placed with them. Foster carers can be approved by only one fostering service provider and only that provider can place a child with them post-approval. With the proposed registration of residential social care workers, it is becoming increasingly anomalous that foster carers, who have far greater unsupervised contact with vulnerable children, should remain unregistered.
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Barry Gardiner (Brent, North) (Lab)Labour- Quote
- No vice can be worse than the sustained and deliberate abuse of a child by an adult who has promised to protect and care for them. Therefore, no Member of Parliament who represents the people of Brent could rise in the House to speak about fostering without the heavy memory of the case of Victoria Climbié, who was once resident in Brent and was murdered by her foster parents. Clear leadership and guidance was given by Lord Laming in his 2003 report on that murder. The Government have introduced measures to amend the arrangements under the 1989 Act for local authorities to safeguard and protect the welfare of privately fostered children. I listened with great care to the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who explained that section 45 of the 2004 Act, while allowing the Secretary of State to make regulations to establish a registration scheme for all private foster carers, is in jeopardy of going into the sunset, as he put it, and not being implemented. That is what I take to be the import of new clause 7, which he has moved. It is on those issues that I wish to speak and probe. Victoria Climbié came to this country as a young girl, as do many children who come to my constituency. In Wembley, we have a clear pattern of immigration of young children, who come to stay with aunties, uncles or members of their extended family. Often they come on a six-month visitor visa to live with relatives. Those young children will often start school over that six-month period, yet without any assessment being made of their legality or status. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Children, Young People and Families knows only too well from her experience at the Home Office how many of those children end up becoming overstayers and, as such, children of no status within the community. They are extremely vulnerable children who, if they had ever had a passport holding the visa that expired, would have had it taken away by the foster parent—the carer, supposedly. I have dealt with many cases involving people who overstayed for many years, but who first came to my surgery as children and who had on many occasions been subjected to abuse. For that reason, I welcome the provision in clause 7 that puts a duty on the Border and Immigration Agency to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. To some extent, that will go a long way to addressing the problems that I have outlined and which the hon. Members for East Worthing and Shoreham and for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) talked about. I want simply to ask questions. I listened with great care and with some sympathy to those two hon. Members speak of the need for clear lines of accountability and clarity on the issue. I ask my right hon. Friend the Minister whether agreeing to the new clause would mean having to engage in a process of drafting and consultation on regulations that itself might exceed the time limit specified in that new clause. How long is necessary to gather and analyse the evidence and to make a sound decision about the future? Will she outline what proposals the Government have to do that and to take on board the clear concern that there should be clarity for children who find themselves in such a situation? I want briefly to discuss new clause 23. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham talked about a fair deal for foster carers. I hope he will acknowledge the considerable progress that the Government have made in establishing precisely such a fair deal. Virtually every hon. Member who has spoken in the House today referred to the enormous debt of gratitude that we as a society owe to people who open their lives to children—often very vulnerable children—and care for them. I wish to add my thanks to all those carers and foster carers in my constituency who perform that incredible service and work. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that in the legislation that they have passed and the proposals that they have made the Government have taken extraordinarily seriously the issue of foster carers and the sense of responsibility that we owe to them for the work that they do. The White Paper “Care Matters” emphasised the importance of providing carers with the necessary development, support and training to equip them with the skills that they require to deal with children who often have extremely complex needs. “Care Matters” sets out a number of proposals to improve the recruitment and retention of foster carers and the quality and stability of placements. To support carers to develop effective relationships with the children in their care, the Government have committed themselves to funding a national roll-out of Fostering Changes, a positive parenting programme that aims to develop carers’ capacity to manage and cope with the often extremely challenging behaviour of children under their care. At least one London local authority has already adopted the Fostering Changes programme. More generally, a number of significant improvements for foster carers have already been made. In April last year, the Government introduced a national minimum allowance intended to set a benchmark for minimum payment rates for all foster carers, so that no one should be out of pocket as a result of that caring role. That was accompanied by good practice guidance to help providers to improve the way that they organise their payment systems for foster carers. In May last year, the Government funded the Children’s Workforce Development Council to launch the foster care training, support and development standards, giving fostering providers a framework for their carers’ training and professional development. In all those areas, I hope that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham will accept that the Government have gone very far and quite fast in achieving the support and clarity for carers that he calls for in new clause 23.
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- Having been elected for about three and a half years, I have realised how important it is to have a constituency, and how much a constituency educates us. I have spent the past three and a half years trying to get to grips with and understand my constituency, and have learned a huge amount. It has been an important part of my political education—it is a little like taking off the layers of an onion. One of the important things is to apply social policy to the practical experiences of constituents. Speaking to foster carers and those in our constituencies who support and train them enables us to appreciate the difference between real help and initiatives that look good on paper but are, in fact, so much red tape. I commend a new initiative called Fostering Changes, which has been promoted by the Government. It began at Southwark and has been developed in Islington in my constituency. It is about giving real support to foster parents, as opposed to being a charter for foster carers simply to put on their wall. Fostering Changes gives a great deal of assistance to foster parents. My constituency is an inner-city one with high levels of deprivation. If there were a top 10 in terms of the number of people who are drug addicts, have mental health problems and are struggling to bring up children on their own, unfortunately we would be in it. My borough is also No. 3 in the country in terms of the highest number of children in care per head. However, before Conservative Members get excited and start bouncing up and down talking about a broken society, let me say that we are not a broken society. Many people in my constituency will open up their hearts and homes and give such young people somewhere to live where they can be loved. Such kids are often difficult, angry and mixed up, but 75 per cent. of Islington’s children who live in care are in families where they are supported. There has been a training course available to help fosterers deal with allegations, to assist them in giving first aid, to train them in drug and alcohol issues, and to promote children’s ID. Fostering Changes, however, was developed by the borough of Southwark and the Maudsley, on the Webster-Stratton model. People from the Maudsley have come to Islington to train up our trainers, and they are now able to do the courses. We are about to start the fifth course. We hope that by the end of this year all our carers will have been trained. The course lasts 10 weeks, and one day a week is spent talking about how to deal with the difficult behaviour of the children being looked after.
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- Mr. TimpsonConservative
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- The Minister will recall that in Committee the former Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families said during the debate on that issue that the principle of the scheme had not been abandoned by the Government. May I ask the Minister to go further today and to say that in principle the scheme is one that the Government believe in and that it is simply the logistics, the mechanisms and the gathering of evidence that are holding us back?
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- 17:45
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Beverley HughesLabour- Quote
- I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman, when he mentions the scheme, is talking about a notification scheme or a registration scheme. We have not abandoned the possibility of the necessity for a registration scheme, but because a year is not enough to test the notification scheme or to put a registration scheme in place, we have made provision in the Bill to extend the period for evaluation and assessment further before we make a decision on a registration scheme and abandon notification completely. The registration scheme itself is not a panacea.
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- Tim LoughtonConservative
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- I said that.
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- Beverley HughesLabour
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- The hon. Gentleman says that he knows that, but I will explain why. Exactly the same challenges that are facing us now in making a notification scheme work will apply in relation to a registration scheme. Those children who we are most worried about who are not currently being notified to the local authority and who are in a privately fostered arrangement will not necessarily be registered with the local authority. The local authority would be faced with the same challenges of raising levels of awareness, building relationships with minority communities and making sure that everyone registers who should. It is not a panacea for that precise reason. The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) challenged us to say what we are going to do in the meantime. There are three things that we need to do. First, we need sufficient evidence before we make a decision and proceed. That is simply not available in the time scale, not because we have been tardy, but because it was never going to be available in the time scale. We have two full years of data on the notification scheme for 2006-07 and 2007-08. We have yet to get the third year that we always said we needed. Inspection data are also important. We set in place a three-year inspection programme started by the Commission for Social Care Inspection and continued by the Office for Standards in Education. The third report will not be completed until November 2009. The Welsh care and social services inspectorate is also undertaking a national review that will not be published until 2009. Secondly, while we get that evidence, we need to ensure that we can push to the wire to see whether we can make the existing notification scheme as effective as possible. In that regard, we have already done a number of things. When my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan) was the Under-Secretary of State, he wrote to all directors of children’s services asking them to do all they could to raise awareness of the scheme and to maximise notifications. Similar efforts have been made in Wales. [Interruption.] He wrote last month to all directors. Government offices will be working closely with local authorities in those areas where notifications are low, identifying them and targeting them. We are developing a national communications strategy to raise awareness of the current requirements within the children’s work force and we have provided £50,000 to the British Association for Adoption and Fostering to sponsor a national private fostering awareness week in January. The Welsh Assembly Government are also providing support to BAAF in Wales to do a similar thing. Those measures together will help us to test the current system and give it its best chance of success. Thirdly, and most importantly, we are giving very careful consideration to the best long-term solution during this period. This is not a clear-cut issue. We need to understand much better what added value, if any, a registration scheme would bring and how it would work, recognising not only the potential impact on local authorities, but—the hon. Gentleman touched on this but did not elaborate—the potential disadvantages for many ordinary families making normal and straightforward arrangements that we would not want to bring into the purview of a registration scheme, and the penalties that would flow from not registering such an arrangement. It is not clear that registration would be any more successful in encouraging registration from those who do not currently notify and it might even deter some people from registering their private arrangements. We want to work with an independent expert group that will advise me over the next couple of years on these important matters. The first meeting of the group was held on 29 September and I am looking forward to announcing shortly, I hope, the appointment of a very senior, independent chair of the group, who I know will have the confidence of all Members. The group’s role will be to advise the Department on raising awareness of the strengthened notification scheme, on assessing the evidence of impact, on options for further strengthening the notification scheme and on developing models for a registration scheme in advance, if that is the decision made. The group consists of representatives of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, Ofsted, the British Association of Adoption and Fostering, the NSPCC and the Home Office. We will invite others from Wales to join us. The group will be meeting regularly and will present its final report to Ministers in March 2010 when we will make a decision. I will publish the conclusions of the group and will make a statement to the House. I have not abandoned the idea of a registration scheme, but I make no apologies for wanting to get this right. It is therefore important to retain the option of introducing a registration scheme for a further three years, so if the case is compelling, it can be introduced at the right time. Significantly, the British Association for Adoption and Fostering agrees that we should seek first to improve the current arrangements and evaluate them more fully before deciding whether to introduce a registration regime. BAAF shares our reservations about the introduction of a registration scheme at this point. That has weighed heavily with me in deciding whether to include the provision in the Bill for extending the period to three years. I will not accept the amendment, which would not give us a well worked out registration scheme. That would be very dangerous. New clause 23 would require local authorities to publish a charter setting out the authorities’ responsibilities with regard to foster carers within their area. There are some technical reasons why this would be both difficult and confusing. One is that foster carers enter into a foster care agreement with their provider, but in addition they enter into a foster placement agreement with the local authority placing the child. For instance, where a provider is not a local authority, the proposal would be extremely confusing. The kind of measures that we have introduced are much more important in assisting foster carers. Similarly for a registration process, foster carers are selected, recruited and trained locally and, of course, a national registration scheme would impose on them all of the conditions that a registration scheme now imposes on social workers. I am afraid that I cannot accept those amendments, either.
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- 17:45
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- Tim LoughtonConservative
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- Well, we have had 13 minutes of a complete and utter cop-out, and I now have less than one minute to say why it was a cop-out. Four years is apparently not enough. It has been 19 years since the Children Act was mooted in 1989. It has been 11 years since the Utting report in— It being Six o’clock, Madam Deputy Speaker put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair, pursuant to Order [16 June]. Question put, That the clause be read a Second time:—
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- Sarah McCarthy-FryLabour
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- I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time. I thank all the hon. Members who have contributed to the debates on the Bill. We have benefited from an exceptionally high quality of debate, both on Report this afternoon and at the earlier stages. I thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for Children, Young People and Families, who, during my short time at the Department for Children, Schools and Families, has demonstrated her absolute commitment to children and young people; that has also been shown in her work on the Bill. Once again, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan), who did virtually all the work on the Bill—yet I am the one presenting it on Third Reading. I wish him really well in his new post and thank him for his work. I also thank everybody who served on the Committee and the two Chairmen. As will be imagined, my bedtime reading has been the Hansard reports of the Committee deliberations. I have seen that the Committee showed great dedication, expertise and diligence in its output. Members on both sides have been generous with their time and wisdom and I am happy to say that that has improved the Bill and sharpened the Government’s thinking on a wide range of issues. Looked-after children will benefit from the improvements, and that is a goal that we all share. The Bill strengthens the framework for the support given to looked-after children, reflecting our high ambitions for such children and young people to enable them to achieve the potential that we all know they have. As a result of the Bill, children in care will benefit from greater stability in their lives and experiences of care. Their voices will be heard more clearly by their corporate parents, and, crucially, their views and wishes will be more systematically taken into account in decisions that affect them. However, let me be absolutely clear that the passage of the Bill does not signal the end of our efforts to improve the lives of those children; it is the beginning of the journey. Legislation, on its own, will not change practice. We must continue to drive change and improvements at every level in the care system because we know that doing better for vulnerable children is difficult. It requires dedication, patience, persistence and a commitment to make the difference. To improve practice at every level requires effort and better parenting from everyone in the system: those working with children and young people directly; social workers and carers, who clearly have a crucial role; independent reviewing officers; visitors; teachers; GPs; nurses; dentists; and all those who affect children’s lives. There are also those who lead and manage the system: lead members in local authorities, chief executives and managers in all the organisations that play a role in supporting these most vulnerable children and young people as they go through the care system and when they leave care. We all need to become advocates for children in care. We do not have to be designated teachers to care about the performance of looked-after children. We do not have to be looked-after children’s nurses to care about their health. It is the job of all of us to do better. In the next year we will be implementing this Bill—putting it into practice through regulations, statutory guidance and the inspection and performance frameworks for local authorities and others providing care. We will also continue to innovate and improve practice through our pilots and through work with the sector to support improvement right across the country. The Bill provides the right framework to drive improvement, but we will be working closely with our partners locally to ensure that everyone can make the most of opportunities that it provides to do better for children in care.
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- Helen SouthworthLabour
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- The Bill that my hon. Friend describes is radical and revolutionary for children in care, and we all truly appreciate what has been done to achieve it. Will she assure us that young people who are leaving care and in transition will get the same consideration in regulations and in practice improvements over the next months and years?
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- Sarah McCarthy-FryLabour
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- I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. In the short time that I have been at the Department, she has demonstrated her commitment to that particular group of people, who she has been diligent in bringing to my attention. I can assure her that we will continue to keep them in mind, along with all the other looked-after children. This is not a single-year initiative or a quick fix. We need to keep working together to do better, and this Government will review progress every year in an annual ministerial stock-take. I am sure that all Members of this House will continue to work together constructively for the benefit of all children, but particularly for children in care. We will celebrate the successes of those already working so hard for children in care, and the successes and achievements of children and young people themselves, but we will be clear about where we need to push harder to improve and do better, and we will report progress to Parliament each year.
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- Tim LoughtonConservative
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- I am happy, on behalf of the Opposition, to add my support to the Bill, as we have done all along. I congratulate the Minister on carrying it off as if she had been part of the Bill’s passage right from the beginning rather than for a matter of hours. She acquitted herself exceedingly well having been thrown in at the deep end with very little notice. I want to say one negative thing and then a few positive things. The negative comment carries on from our interrupted debate on the private fostering registration scheme. Given that the measures in the Bill have had widespread support and that other amendments have been taken on board constructively by the Government, in principle if not in word, it is unfortunate that that scheme, for which many of us, in all earnestness and genuineness, have called over many years, was turfed out with no credible idea of when the Government might at long last invoke it, having given it one more chance to work back in 2004. It is a cop-out to say that the data are not available. It was not clear by the end of the Minister’s comments, which took us almost up to 6 o’clock, whether it is purely a shortage of data that is preventing the scheme from going ahead or, as I fear, the Minister’s failure to come to terms with its principle. As Utting knew, Laming knew, and most children’s organisations knew, this scheme is well overdue, but for some reason the Government, having blamed local authorities and the last Conservative Government, simply will not bring it in. I am afraid that we have no confidence that after another four years—not that they will be in a position to do it then—they would say, “Now the data are in and at last we will let children have the protection of this scheme.” Let me turn to the positives. This is an important Bill. It has been long in coming and it contains many measures that many Members on both sides of the House have called for over many years to protect this most vulnerable group of children for whom outcomes have been absolutely scandalous for far too many years under successive Governments. On every outcome applicable to children in the care system—be it on educational outcomes, health outcomes, homelessness outcomes, or ending up in the justice system—those children get a very raw deal, and it shames us all still to have to debate some of the statistics. I hope that, as the Minister rightly said, although the Bill is not a panacea that will solve all the problems, it is the start of a journey towards changing attitudes and priorities. We very much welcome the serious measures taken in the Bill to give greater stability to children in the care system by trying, where possible, to keep them closer to home, in familiar environments, with familiar people and in association with their siblings, and to provide consistency with regard to the people looking after them and the places where they go to school. It places greater responsibilities on authorities to assure the well-being of people in the care system. I welcomed the much more constructive tone in Committee, where the welfare checklist we introduced was taken positively on board by the then Minister of State, who said that she would consider incorporating a version of it in the regulations that will follow the Bill. We welcome the greater recognition—not quite as categorical in the Bill as we might have liked—of the importance of kinship care and sibling contact. We welcome the care breaks for disabled children, which the Secretary of State was largely responsible for initiating in the Every Disabled Child Matters campaign some time ago. We welcome the innovation of social worker practices, which did not feature in discussions on Report, but which are a radical, bold move. The findings from the initial pilots will be eagerly awaited. We need innovation in this aspect of public service because, at the end of the day, it is not the ownership of the provision of service that matters, but the welfare of the children and the advancement and results we are achieving for the most vulnerable. I know that we all agree that that must be our most important objective. It is a shame that there is not to be an immediate private foster carers registration scheme. It is a shame that our idea of a chief social worker, which we proposed in Committee, will have to wait a few more months. It is a shame that a foster carers charter is not to be included, and that the extra protection for children in the custody system, which we recommended, is not to be incorporated. However, Ministers made positive responses, which demonstrated an appreciation of the principles and intention behind some of those proposals. In closing, I thank my colleagues on the Committee. The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr. Timpson) is no longer a Committee virgin: he was plunged in at the deep end and proved his expertise and knowledge on the subject of the family legal system and children in the care system. As a very new and fresh Member, he acquitted himself exceedingly well. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) again brought to bear his expertise in this area, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Miss Kirkbride), who has been involved in many debates on children’s legislation before. We were ably whipped by a loquacious Whip, in the form of my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson). We have had a good team. In fact, I think it is the first Public Bill Committee on which I have served where just about every Labour Back Bencher made good contributions—they were not there just to be Lobby fodder. I pass on my thanks to the Clerks, who helped us considerably in getting the terminology of our amendments right so that not many were turfed out because they failed to pass muster. We wish the Bill well. We have wished for many of the intentions and proposals in it for many years, and at last they have become a reality. At last, we can say with some confidence that a serious attempt has been made to address and attack the scandal that is the outcome for the most vulnerable young people—those who find themselves in the care system through no fault of their own.
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- 18:36
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- Helen SouthworthLabour
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- I would like to say once again how effective the Bill is, how effective the process has been and how positive future outcomes should be for young people in care and those leaving care. I would not be speaking in this debate if I were not prepared to say that I want to make sure we get those outcomes. We have been around for a little while now, and we know that sometimes, despite our best intentions, delivery for young people is not what we would always want it to be. I therefore ask Ministers again, in the next few months when regulations are being prepared to support the measure, to give particular consideration to the young people whom we have identified as especially vulnerable—those who leave care too early. The Bill will reduce the number of those young people, but we must monitor the situation to ensure that that happens, and that effective support is provided in the transitional stages for those who leave care before the age of 18. I hope that Ministers will do significant work on the outcomes for young people in custody. As hon. Members know, there is a young offenders institution in my constituency. For 11 years I have worked closely with the officers and support staff there, and have been incredibly impressed by some of the measures that they have put in place to help vulnerable young people change their lives. They have been ably assisted by social work support at the institution. It is important that the Bill and the provision for visitors do not undermine but support and add to the concept of having an embedded social worker in a young offenders institution. I hope that the regulations will show that that will take place. In our earlier debates it was said that, when a young person is preparing to leave a young offenders institution, it is important for an effective and experienced social worker, if not an independent reviewing officer—that remains my preference—to be involved. Someone who has the skills, experience and abilities commensurate with being an independent reviewing officer should determine whether the young person needs to return to looked-after status, and what accommodation is suitable, and ensure that the pathways are effective and established to support those young people once they have completed a custodial sentence. Again, I press for support up to the age of 21 for young people who leave care. Supported accommodation is essential for young people. It is essential for everybody to have access to help, support and information when they first try to live independently, pay bills and manage a tenancy. We need to ensure in the regulations that young people who leave care are properly supported, and make it clear that there are statutory requirements, which will be monitored to ensure that the changes are put in place. Those things sound prescriptive—they are—but I know that Ministers and other hon. Members want them to happen. We are at the stage of moving on to expect local authorities to deliver for us. We need to be clear about our expectations of the monitoring process and of the way in which inspections are carried out, to ensure that the objectives are delivered for young people.
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- 18:43
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- Annette BrookeLiberal Democrat
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- The Bill is important, and I hope that it will deliver exactly what we want. The process seems to have been long, starting from the Green Paper and then the White Paper. Throughout the process, listening to children and young people in care has been important and has informed parts of the measure. I look forward to young people continuing to be consulted as it is implemented, and to their wishes and feelings continuing to be respected. Perhaps more than on other measures, I have been aware of the dialogue with young people about the Bill. It is incredibly important. It is a sad irony that many young people come into care because of problems not of their making, and end up with their own problems because of the care system. The problems are well documented—we could go through the statistics for the poor outcomes. However, we must ask ourselves whether we have found the solutions. Throughout the process, we have tried exceedingly hard and discussed all the main issues. We have spent a lot of time talking about the importance of kinship care, early intervention and family support for both the family and the individual child. We have also been talking a lot about supporting education and ensuring continuity if there is a relationship with a social worker. I share the concerns expressed about the importance of maintaining support up to the age of 21. Perhaps that is mainly an aspiration, but we must not lose sight of it. Let me also express my regret that time constraints today have prevented us from commenting on some of the important recommendations in the United Nations report published on Friday. Finally, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mark Williams), who brought his teaching experience to bear in Committee. I would also like to thank everyone who served on the Committee. It was a good Committee, with good responses from the Ministers. As usual, I hope that the words will be translated into regulations that will make a real difference. I welcome the idea of having a progress report each year, and thank all the Ministers and the Chairmen of the Committee.
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- 18:48
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- Mr. KidneyLabour
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- It is inevitable that on Report we focus on the areas of contention, but at least on Third Reading we can remind ourselves of the good things that got much less of a mention earlier in the day. A good starting point is to remind ourselves that although our noble Friend Lord Adonis has moved on to another Department, he can look back with pride on the improvements in the Bill that he personally steered through the other place. I am thinking particularly of the new statutory duty for all Ministers to promote the well-being of children and young persons, and of the welcome new duty for local authorities to secure a sufficient and diverse range of accommodation for looked-after children. My noble Friend will be able to look back with pride on his contribution towards those two improvements on the current situation. All of us in the House and in government can be proud of the achievements that we hope to see as a result of the Bill: the new duty on local authorities to ensure visits to looked-after children; the designated member of staff at schools to ensure that pupils do better in school; the new encouragement of young people from a care background to go to university, with financial and other support; and the assistance for those who want to seek a career in a vocational setting. The changes to the power of local authorities to give cash to family members who look after children are welcome. I know, too, that the Every Disabled Child Matters coalition was pleased with the introduction of breaks for carers who look after disabled children. Finally, a small but noticeable improvement appears later in the Bill for grandparents and other family members who want a greater involvement in the upbringing of their child family members, namely the possibility of applying to court for an order, including a residence order. There are therefore some important changes to the law that we can all be pleased about. However, as several hon. Members have said, it is one thing to pass the law, but another to see the practice that follows. We all have a responsibility to continue our scrutiny after today, to ensure that the implementation is just as good as the passing of the Bill. Perhaps a starting point is not only to say thank you to those who have achieved so much so far for that vulnerable group of young people, but to offer them words of encouragement to keep going. So, to the ministerial team and the officers in the Department: thank you, but keep going. To those in local government, including the elected representatives, the officers and the employers, such as the social workers and the residential care staff: thank you, but keep going. To the private sector contributors, especially in the foster care sector, and the great network of foster carers who look after children: thank you, and keep going. I want to encourage parents and children’s family members, as well as the children themselves, to think that there is support for them. They must not give up. To them I say, “Thank you for what you do. Keep going.” If any hon. Member asks why we pass such legislation or why we take an interest in how it is implemented afterwards, the answer in this case is surely that we are talking about a group that is clearly identified. It is reasonably small in number, comparatively speaking, yet the vulnerability and the suffering of those young people are immense. We all feel a passionate desire to improve their situation for the future. Lastly, I extend an invitation to hon. Members who are not already members to join the associate parliamentary group on looked-after children and care leavers, if they want to continue to take an interest in the subject, meet young people who are in care or who have left care, and listen to them discuss directly their experiences and ideas. They are amazing people with great ideas and talent. They should have a wider audience.
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- 18:51
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- Mr. TimpsonConservative
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- Briefly, I join other hon. Members in welcoming the main body and thrust of the Bill, although some opportunities have been missed, which have been highlighted and which were gone through with a fine-toothed comb in Committee by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). I bring two such issues to the attention of the House and urge the Government to continue to look at them closely in the near future: the registration scheme, and the treatment and support of children in custody who have lost their looked-after status having come from voluntary accommodation. That is a serious issue that needs urgent attention, and I put the Government on notice that we want some action on it sooner rather than later. However, the message from the Committee was one of moving forward for the children who are the most vulnerable in our society. There is no doubt that we have managed to achieve steps in the right direction. I am also delighted to hear that the Government acknowledge that these measures are the first step, and that there is still a lot of work to do to try to ensure that we provide the support and the service for the most vulnerable children in our society. On that note, there are two particular aspects of children in care into which the Government need to channel their energies: first, those who are on the cusp of care and are in danger of falling into the care system—we need to try to support them and their families to prevent that from happening, because to this day we still have more than 60,000 children in the care system—and, secondly, children who want to move out of the care system and are on the cusp of a new life. We need to support their long-term future. If we can achieve that, we will have gone a long way to fulfilling our responsibilities—as Members of Parliament, as parents and as responsible members of society. I welcome the Bill and I am glad that it is a step in the right direction. I look forward to the progress being put into action. Question put and agreed to. Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed, with amendments.
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