Children and Families Bill

Baroness Drake Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly on Amendments 58 and 59 and leave Amendment 63 to my noble friend Lady Drake. I thank the Minister and his colleagues and team for all their efforts, letters and meetings on the issue of family and friends carers.

We discussed the benefits of children being raised with family or friends at some length in Committee. All I would say here is that there is clear evidence that children who cannot live with their parents and who live with family or friends do significantly better both socially and academically than those who live in other forms of care.

Local authorities are still not, as far as I know, conforming to the rules that they should. There is little support from local authorities. Sometimes there is misinformation. This issue will not go away. I hope that the Minister will—I know that he will—take on board that family and friends carers deserve and need help and that we should listen to their concerns. I beg to move.

[Baroness Drake (Lab)]

My Lords, I am conscious of the late hour, but I rise to speak to Amendment 63, which addresses the need of kinship carers and their children by seeking to prevent a situation where the carer loses their job. We are addressing a care community of an estimated 300,000 children—not a minor group. Family members step in to avoid them being taken into care. Kinship care, as we know, is by far the most common way of providing permanence and stability for children who can no longer live with their parents.

We have rehearsed these arguments many times. Yet, we know, in spite of the key role that kinship carers play, that they get too little help. As a society we depend on kinship carers to protect so many vulnerable children, but we reciprocate by giving them limited support. Yet the children being raised with kinship carers can have experienced similar adversities to those in the care system; they have been through trauma or tragedy, they have multiple needs and they need time to settle with their carers, who themselves are required to attend a plethora of meetings related to the children’s needs.

However, as we know, those carers have no statutory right to any form of adjustment leave to settle the children. With no give in the employment system, many kinship carers are forced to give up work in order to do what is right for the children. The aim of this amendment is to bring kinship carers into employment protection through a statutory entitlement to a period of unpaid adjustment leave when taking on the care of the child. Not only in this Bill but in other recent Bills we have extended or are extending the rights to statutory leave of other carers and approved adopters, but consistently we give little or no statutory support to kinship carers and the key role that they play.

We see an incongruity in the Government’s position. In the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill, when again the arguments about the key role of kinship carers were rehearsed, the Government, and particularly the noble Lord, Lord Freud, accepted that friends and kinship carers undertook a valuable role in protecting vulnerable children, which often requires them to give up employment, and agreed that kinship carers in receipt of benefits should be exempt from work conditionality for 12 months. However, when it comes to employment protection and continued labour market participation by kinship carers, we see the incongruity. It would not always be necessary for a kinship carer to lose their job if they had a period of adjustment leave, and many would remain in the labour market if they had such leave, which may well improve the life outcomes for them and their children. So we face a situation where the Government recognise the challenges facing kinship carers in the welfare system but are reluctant to do so in the employment system. In effect, the DWP understood the issue and acted, but BIS remains reluctant.

I acknowledge that in Committee on 22 November the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, recognised the extremely valuable contribution made by family and friends carers in caring for children who cannot live with their parents, and I acknowledge that the Government have advised that the department will conduct research into the labour market attachment of kinship carers. The helpful letter of 23 January from the noble Viscount again acknowledges the important role played by these carers, and confirms that he is,

“keen to ensure that their needs are considered as soon as possible”.

However, the problems that I have referred to—albeit briefly, because of time—exist now, and I fear that following the passage of the Bill they may fall into the long grass. I am anxious that “as soon as possible” should not be a long timeline. The noble Viscount also indicated in his letter that the information required for the broader review of the shared parental leave and pay provisions to which he had committed is unlikely to be available until 2018, but that he wishes to work to a much earlier timeline for considering the needs of family and friends carers for adjustment leave.

I have three questions for the Minister. Am I correct in my understanding of the letter of 23 January that the Government wish to work to a much speedier timeline? Could the Minister give an indication of how soon he thinks the issue of labour market attachment and adjustment leave for kinship carers can be addressed? Notwithstanding the urgent need for adjustment leave provision for kinship carers, could he also agree to include family and friends carers in the broader review of parental leave and pay provisions that the Government have committed to? This would allow for a more holistic and comprehensive review of childcare leave provisions. To exclude family and friends carers from that wider review would leave a key and potentially growing area of caring for children—kinship care—untouched and unreviewed. I look forward to a positive reply from the Minister to those three questions.

I shall end by quoting the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, who put it so well in Committee when she said that,

“it is, frankly, almost embarrassing to think about the disadvantage that kinship carers suffer when they take on this responsibility and often—most likely, I would say—produce much better results for those children”.—[Official Report, 20/11/13; col. GC 450.]