Independent Review of Children’s Social Care

Baroness Drake Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Drake (Lab)]

My Lords, I say well done to my noble friend Lord Watson for securing this debate because the number of children in the care system in England is, as has been said, at an all-time high and rising. The independent review forecast that without reform it will rise to 100,000 and that the current £10 billion annual cost of the care system will rise to £15 billion. The evidence is now overwhelming that the state is failing children for whom it has taken responsibility and we really are in a crisis situation. We have a deep moral obligation to the number of vulnerable children being failed.

The backlog in children’s cases in the family courts is big. The CMA reported that UK has “sleepwalked” into a dysfunctional market for children’s social care, which fails to provide the right services in the right places, with children frequently placed miles from where they live, often separated from siblings and unable to access the care and therapies they need. Yesterday’s report from the cross-party Children and Families Act 2014 Committee concluded that

“a lack of joined up action at all levels, has contributed to children and their families feeling let down by the system”.

I want to focus in my few minutes on the near 200,000 children raised in kinship care families by grandparents, aunts, uncles, older siblings and friends. The main reasons for a child being in kinship care are parents’ mental health and substance abuse, domestic abuse, parents being unable to cope and parents being in prison. There is a growing concern, even scepticism, I now hear, among that community that while the Government sound supportive, their response to the review will offer little of substance to provide the support they so badly need. I really urge the Government to act now and do three really urgent things.

First, as many have referred to already, they must invest urgently in early help and preventive support for families, to prevent more children facing crisis and becoming looked after in the care system. Kinship carers consistently report that they did not have access to the support and advice they needed at the beginning, and that they felt alone and did not know what their options were or how to navigate the justice system. The independent review called for

“a revolution in family help”,

so that families can access responsive, respectful and effective support. This would include, as has been said, family help teams based in community settings.

Family group conferences have been revolutionary in New Zealand, and some parts of the UK, bringing a child’s wider family together early on, when support for the parents might allow the child to remain at home or find relatives who could become kinship carers. The APPG on Kinship Care inquiry consistently heard about the importance of friends and relatives being able to access free and early advice when there are concerns about a child’s welfare, so that they are informed from the outset about their rights and options as potential kinship carers. More families could come forward as kinship carers and avert more children going into care if support was available earlier. We hear too often about missed opportunities and family options not explored.

The review called for a major injection of funding over the next five years, targeting 500,000 children. Investing in early help and family-led solutions will cost less in the long run and provide better outcomes for children. The social cost of each looked-after child across public services is about £70,900 per year: resources are better targeted earlier to prevent children even going into care or getting into crisis.

Secondly, the Government should extend legal aid to more kinship carers. The compelling evidence is that carers are left to navigate the family justice system without the legal aid and representation they need. Many incur significant debt from paying legal costs or find themselves sidelined in important decisions about the child, directly increasing the risk that more children will end up in care. The extension of legal aid to protect special guardians of children in private law cases is welcome but it is not matched in public law proceedings, where the majority of guardianship orders are pursued. Here, children are in a crisis situation.

There are two key areas in public law cases where legal aid provision urgently needs to be considered. At the formal pre-proceedings stage, prospective kinship carers have access to only limited advice. This is means tested and merits tested, and remunerated at such low rates that few solicitors will offer advice on taking on the care of a child. During care proceedings, prospective kinship carers are still entitled to only very limited advice. Only where the prospective carer is made a party to the court proceedings or where they make a private law application may they be entitled to legal aid. Many carers do not have the early advice even to know that becoming a party to proceedings is an option, or how to make a private law application.

That so many barriers are put in the way of kinship carers—I have heard them articulate this—who have the necessary strength of character it takes to give these children better life outcomes, at great savings to the state, is beyond dysfunctional. The very people who could help and protect these children face barrier after barrier to prevent them doing so.

Thirdly, the Government should give kinship carers a statutory right to a period of employment leave, akin to adoption leave, when they take on kinship children. The law recognises that those who give birth or adopt need a period of protected leave from employment to adjust. If you step up to care for children in crisis to whom you did not give birth, the law covers its eyes and turns away. That has to stop. It is simply wrong to leave these carers in that position. They have stepped up to the plate, often at high personal cost.

I listened to a young woman who gave up her legal training and her job—she gave up everything—to take on her sister’s two children. Her sense of moral duty and love for those children has come at a high price. There has been no support; she has had to use her own wit and wisdom to find a way through to get guardianship of those children. It was quite humbling to see her strength of character and listen to her articulate her story.

Over half of kinship carers have to give up work when the children come to live with them. Many are forced into a benefits system that is not necessarily sympathetic to their needs. We now face the highest fall in household incomes on record. We all know that that will create even more families in crisis and even more vulnerable children. Even more kinship carers will be needed to provide the support to get those children through the crisis. This is time-critical stuff; it is not just an interesting debate. Anybody who walks the streets outside highly affluent areas can see the crisis emerging from falling household incomes.

Rather than our just having a nice debate, can the Minister pledge that the Government will increase urgently the total funding available for early help and preventive support for families so that fewer children enter crisis and the care system? Can they extend legal aid in public law proceedings and give kinship carers, who would prefer to stay in work and are often making big sacrifices, a statutory right to employment leave so that they can have some margin to take on and manage these often traumatised children? Can we have some pledges, not just sympathetic commentary? People are becoming sceptical and anxious about the quality of the Government’s response to this review.