Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Baroness Butler-Sloss and Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard

Monday 9th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard (UUP)]

My Lords, I will make a brief intervention in and around Amendments 68 and 167, which are both about early intervention. I know that situations are often different in Northern Ireland, where the local health trusts look after young people and young people’s services, whereas in England it is the local authorities. However, the principle of the issues is the same, and dealing with the young people and early intervention is hugely important. My issue is that it should not be just about early intervention; it should be an ongoing process.

The one aspect that is not looked at in the Bill—I wonder whether it could be included at some stage—is around the rights of parents. I have worked with looked-after children for many years and am an adoptive parent. Really significant issues with young people can sometimes manifest into wider family difficulties, particularly when a young person is a refuser. Maybe they refuse to take on counselling or refuse to go to school. Then, because that child or young person will not attend either counselling or school, the pressure of maybe facing a court hearing or legal proceedings returns to the parents. Quite often there is then huge pressure on the family, because the law is on the side of taking the family and the parents to court; that is not often a good prospect for family proceedings and family support.

All I am trying to say in this brief moment—I know there are other amendments on the same issue coming up at a much later stage that I will also hopefully speak to—is that, while early intervention is very important, there needs to be ongoing intervention as well.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I very much support not only early intervention but intervention at various levels when the family absolutely needs it. As the noble Lord, Lord Meston, said, there is a financial advantage to local authorities—not, of course, short term, but long term, because the more a local authority intervenes in a troubled family, the less the chance, with any luck, that the children will go into care.

As has already been said, when one child has gone into care, it is particularly important to make sure that the next child—there nearly always is a next child—will not also have to go into care. As the noble Lord, Lord Meston, has said, it is a very sad situation for judges when you really cannot help the mother and her second, third or fourth child—sometimes more—because she has never had any help each time she has lost a child. So there is a genuine financial advantage to stopping children going into care, which is obviously far more expensive in the long term.

I will add a short word following on from the sad story of the right reverend Prelate. My son, aged 50, died of cancer, five years ago, with teenage children. Their mother, my daughter-in-law, was brilliant, but the children’s loss of their father at early teenage was absolutely devastating. I am glad to say that they have succeeded extremely well and have coped, but it is a moment when I have no doubt at all that my daughter-in-law—she lives in Los Angeles, so the wider family were unable to help—would have gained enormously, as indeed would the children, if there had been somebody there in a similar situation in this country. This bereavement amendment is particularly important.