Children and Families Bill

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I support this amendment because as a child I was separated from my siblings for a while, which was quite customary. It happened in the Caribbean, but it is the same experience no matter in which part of the world we are. I know how important it is to feel that we can speak to our siblings if we are going through some trauma in our lives. Children from diverse backgrounds who live here in Britain go through hell almost every day. I always say that their life is like a marathon. To have siblings there to help with bonding and to give confidence to face the world is terribly important. I am here to passionately support this amendment because of personal experience.

[Lord May of Oxford (CB)]

I turned up explicitly to support the amendment and am reassured that I need not have done. I hope that people will take heed of those remarks and recognise that, in addition to the amendment, somebody should be looking at the idiots who are doing what they are doing.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I omitted to comment on the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott. I support her welcome amendments. Of course, children in residential care are among the most vulnerable. Unfortunately, the way it works is that there tends to be a placement in foster care and, if that does not work out, then it is in residential care several broken placements down the line. So the ones with the most complex needs are often in residential care and they need the most support.

I welcome what the noble Baroness has said. There is an issue about price and other issues around it. One solution offered by Jonathan Stanley, a former chief executive of the National Centre for Excellence in Residential Child Care, is to pair up young people in residential care with foster carers so that—one can do a staying-put—one can ensure that there is a seamless move from a residential setting to a foster setting for at least some of these young people to the age of 21.

Norfolk is a very good exemplar of break-home practice. There they have supported housing right by the children’s home so that there is little movement for the children and they can feel in touch with the staff in their old setting. The noble Baroness has made some extremely important points and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply to her concerns.

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Young. I would like to draw the Committee’s attention to the case of a young man I know who was brought up in care for many years. For the first 49 years of his life he kept wondering who he was and where he came from. This affected his relationship with his children—when he eventually had children—and with his wife, who had to deal with his depression. He had a loss of confidence, did not believe in himself and did not feel worthy. After much searching he eventually found out who he was and it completely changed his outlook on life. It changed his mental well-being. He got a better understanding of who he was and started to accept his situation in life. That is why I believe that it is an abuse if we deny any young person information which can help them come to terms with their identity, culture and background if they wish to do so.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, we have had a good debate and I do not intend to talk at any length. However, I wish to make a few quick points.

First, obviously, I welcome and endorse the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. She made an eloquent speech last week about the importance of identity and she has raised the issue in a helpful way today in a different but complementary context. It is no doubt important for children as they are growing up and becoming fully rounded adults to know about their history. It is their history and it is their right to have access to it. We all accept that point.

The second point to make is that we have talked about children and young people leaving care but very often adults can be well into middle age before they really begin to question their identity and want to search for that information. That provides a particular challenge for the people who keep the data because we are talking about keeping it for a very long time. Nevertheless, it is still people’s right to have access to it.

To pick up on a point made last week by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, about people in care who had been bereaved, having lost their parents, one would have hoped that somehow or other we could have lined up all these rights to information and brought them together. We are talking here about the same sorts of issues coming up in a number of different contexts. I would have hoped that somewhere in the midst of all that would be a universal right to that information and that we could address it in that way rather than in a piecemeal way.

Thirdly, I was alarmed to hear noble Lords today talking about data being lost, or indeed being dumped on a doorstep. There is a real issue here concerning the security of the information. It is rather alarming, and I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth. What has happened to all those accurate expectations of privacy and security and of records being kept properly? You cannot help but wonder whether there is going to be a scandal at some point with all this stuff coming to light, having been left on a rubbish dump somewhere. I do not think that anybody here has a sense of reassurance that this information is being kept securely in a proper place. Perhaps the noble Lord could address that and say what the requirements are for keeping the information secure.

I should just like to add my support for the amendment. The noble Baroness has raised a very important point, as have the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott. In particular, I hope that we will get a chance to debate the whole question of staying in foster care until the age of 21. I know that my noble friend Lady Hughes will respond in more detail on that but I want to pick up one point which the noble Baroness touched on concerning the distinction between foster care and residential care. Clearly, there is a distinction and we have to be careful not just to lump the two issues together. There is a difference for young people leaving residential care, which is, after all, still formally an institutional provision. What those young people really need is a phased transition to independence, rather than just the requirement to stay on until they are 21. They need help over a period of time to find their feet and to find independence. Therefore, while the noble Baroness raised absolutely valid points, I think that we need to separate them out and make slightly separate provision for them. I know that we will debate this in more detail when we come to Amendment 38. Apart from that, we have had a very good debate and I thank noble Lords.