Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville and Lord Warner

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Tuesday 18th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I shall speak in support Amendment 12, to which I have added my name, but I should like first to add my support to Amendment 10. Affordable single-person accommodation is one of the areas in shortest supply in many of our cities. This is the pool in which we are often trying to find accommodation for these young people. They do need a lot of support. We are asking them to live independently and to battle their way through what is often a confusing and difficult accommodation market. Even older, more mature adults find it difficult to survive in that market.

We are setting these young people up to fail if we do not do more to help them to get into safe and suitable accommodation. It is no wonder, sadly, that we find so many of these young people having been in care sleeping rough in many of our inner cities, including not far from this place. Anyone who late at night wanders around the South Bank will find some of these characters who have been in care having a difficult time. When you talk to some of them, you hear that they have never had good accommodation.

The Minister should take this seriously. When I was chairman of the Youth Justice Board this area was one of the major contributory factors to many of these young people moving down a path of crime and into the youth justice system. Tackling it is therefore in everyone’s interests, not just those of the young people. I strongly support Amendment 10.

I also support Amendment 12. Too often we pass reforming legislation without saying what would be an acceptable level of response by those responsible for implementing that legislation. There is a long history of the lifetime outcomes for looked-after children being inadequate. We shall come to the issue of outcomes in a later amendment. To address this long-standing problem, the Government would do well to set out some national minimum standards for the services that must be offered under their local offer for care leavers. Far too many young care leavers do not know what they can expect from the authority that has been looking after them when they move into the wider world.

From my experience as the commissioner for children’s services in Birmingham—appointed by the current Secretary of State’s predecessor but one, who has since gone on to further fame—one also finds huge variations in the performance of some of the leaving-care teams within the same authority. This is not an area that has been well served by consistency even within the same authority. Setting some national standards would not just be helpful for consistency between authorities but would help some of the bigger authorities to have consistency within themselves. So I strongly support Amendment 12.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville]

My Lords, I speak briefly to Amendment 10 and to agree with the comments of the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Warner. In the market town in my own area, the number of beds available for young people in the excellent Foyer has been reduced over recent years, and it is now in danger of actually closing. As well as providing excellent accommodation to allow young people, especially care leavers, to move on and gain independence, it has provided training, other support and a coffee bar. It is a great shame, to put it mildly, that such a facility should be closed because of the lack of funding for the number of beds there.

As the noble Lord, Lord Warner, who is much more experienced in this area than me, has said, young people, especially care leavers, are very vulnerable and they require adequate quality accommodation to meet their needs.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville and Lord Warner

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville]

My Lords, I support the amendments in this group tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, and shall speak specifically to my Amendment 92. Grandparents play among the most important roles in a child life. The Children Act 2004 removed the right of grandparents to have access to their grandchildren. While this may be necessary in some cases, I believe that it was a retrograde step. In recent weeks, we saw the tragic case of Ellie Butler who, after five happy years with her grandparents, was returned to the care of her parents, with disastrous results. Her loving grandparents had been in the process of adopting Ellie legally. All was going well with the support of the local council, when the adoption was blocked by a social worker. As we all know, the decision to disregard the grandparents led to Ellie’s early death. We have already debated the need to listen to the views of the child and for communication with the child. It is essential that children’s wishes, including staying with supportive grandparents, while still having some access to their parents, are adhered to wherever possible. I am firmly of the opinion that now is the time to reinstate the importance of grandparents in a child’s life and would like to see this amendment in the Bill. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I support Amendments 91 and 92. I declare my interest as a grandparent several times over. On siblings, we now know a lot more about the importance of siblings to children taken into care than we did when the 1989 Act was passed. It is too often forgotten that siblings have often gone through the bad experiences that the children taken into care have experienced. There is a bond over some of the bad things which have happened to them which is important for their survivability in future. We too often underestimate the importance of siblings, and I therefore very strongly support the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Watson.

I was seriously shocked by the Ellie Butler case. I thought it was the most appalling outcome for that child, and I will return to this issue on a later amendment. We have rather lost the plot on grandparents, who are a major resource for caring. We seem to forget that people can become grandparents very much younger than in previous eras; they can be grandparents in their late 40s and early 50s. In addition, grandparents are living longer and many of them are living fitter lives; they are quite capable of dealing with children. We are missing a trick in not recognising grandparents as a serious care resource. We should try to establish that very firmly in the Bill and recognise that we are in a very different position with grandparents from that which pertained several decades ago.