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.

Kinship Care

Baroness Drake Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Drake]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Kinship Care Lost in the legal labyrinth, published on 16 May; and in particular, the findings that there is a lack of both advice and legal aid for current and prospective kinship carers of children in crisis.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are grateful to the APPG for its work and its recent report on kinship care and the legal labyrinth. The noble Baroness will be aware that the Ministry of Justice recently laid a statutory instrument widening access to legal aid to private special guardianship order proceedings. We will monitor and assess its impact.

The noble Baroness will also be aware that a series of recommendations was made by the independent review of children’s social care, including on expanding access to legal aid for kinship carers. We are considering each of those in detail.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Drake (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her reply. The extension of legal aid to protect special guardians of children in private law cases is clearly a step in the right direction. However, it is not matched in public law proceedings, where the majority of guardianship orders are pursued. Here, children are in a crisis situation, and it is imperative that those who step forward as kinship carers, who are often left to navigate the justice system alone, get the legal support they need. Without it, the risk is that more children will end up in care, away from friends and families. May I push the Minister: when will the Government ensure that the extension to legal aid in private law provision is mirrored in public law?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I understand and respect the noble Baroness’s point. The Government are committed to making the means and merits testing the same, be it private or public law proceedings. She will also be aware that legal aid funding has been extended so that prospective special guardianship proceedings will also get means and merits-tested legal aid funding.

Vulnerable Children: Kinship Care

Baroness Drake Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Drake (Lab)]

My Lords, in previous debates in this House, the Government have recognised the contribution that kinship carers make to the well-being of some 200,000 children. The reasons are indeed compelling and my noble friend Lady Armstrong and the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, have set them out persuasively. Kinship care is the most common permanency option for children who cannot live with birth parents. The carers provide vital support for vulnerable children when parents are unable to care for them, often in urgent circumstances such as domestic violence, drug abuse and parental illness. The only notice that they may have is when the social worker arrives on the doorstep with the children late at night. The children frequently have emotional difficulties, often because they have been living with parents who are drug-dependent or who have abused them. The kinship carers save the taxpayer considerable expenditure and a number of studies demonstrate that most children in kinship care are doing significantly better than children in the care system.

However, kinship carers who voluntarily embrace vulnerable children continue to face many barriers. I cannot list them all, but they certainly include that, unlike birth parents and adopters, the vast majority of kinship carers raising children are not entitled to even one day of statutory paid leave from employment when they take on the care of the child. They care at their own cost. Some 49% give up work permanently and others reduce their earnings because they need to take that time to settle the child. As my noble friend said, a requirement is often imposed by the social worker that they do that—for good reason, because the children can be traumatised and insecure.

Kinship carers do not receive the financial support that foster parents receive. Many still get little help from their local authority, but face a considerable increase in costs. A recent Family Rights Group survey revealed that only 13% of local authorities have a dedicated worker or team supporting kinship carers. The Family Rights Group has identified areas of improvement in both the assessment of and support for kinship carers, recognising that many kinship care placements will be under huge financial strain due to inadequate support. Some may well now break down as a result of the benefit cuts, to the detriment of both the child and the taxpayer.

The Family Rights Group advice service advises more than 2,000 kinship carers a year. My noble friend Lady Armstrong gave a compelling explanation of the Rolls-Royce service that it gives. But funding constraints mean that it can answer only four in 10 of its callers, so the needs of six in 10 remain unmet. Funding has been cut two years in succession and there is no commitment to fund beyond March 2016. That cannot be right.

I congratulate my noble friend Lady Armstrong on securing this debate, particularly at this time, because we now see, in the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, direct withdrawal of support for kinship carers by the Government, with no coherent reasoning for that withdrawal of support. It is unfair to kinship-caring families, directly undermines the interest of vulnerable children and does not stack up in public expenditure terms. The Bill removes eligibility to the child element of child tax credits for the third and subsequent children born and introduces a two-child limit for receipt of the child element of universal credit for families making a new claim. Kinship care families with three or more children could lose up to £2,780 per year for each additional child, yet some 29,000 kinship carer families have three or more children in their households. The impact of the two-child limit on their family income will be further compounded by the biting of the benefit cap as it is set at an ever-lower level, precisely when these carers are voluntarily taking on vulnerable children and bearing the additional cost. It will be particularly harsh in its impact on kinship carers who already have their own children living with them.

I repeat the figures that I deployed in Committee yesterday because they are worthy of endless repetition. Exempting kinship carers from the two-child limit would cost £30 million. But these carers already save the taxpayer the considerable cost of placing these children in care. The cost of a child in care for a year is £40,000. The cost of care proceedings is £25,000. The savings that these 132,000 kinship families deliver by voluntarily caring for these 200,000 children runs into billions of pounds. The two-child limit needs to deter only 200 kinship carers from caring for three or more children, and that £30 million saving would be wiped out. That is without taking into consideration the human cost to the child or additional pressure on the local authorities when these children need to go into care. No reasoning has been given in any policy document for the withdrawal of support from kinship carers in these reforms.

The noble Lord, Lord Freud, for whom I have the greatest respect and who has previously shown a sensitive and considered understanding of the contribution of kinship carers, had considerable difficulty yesterday in persuading the House that there was a coherent line of reasoning in this withdrawal of support. The impact assessments gave no assessment of the disincentive effect, no assessment of the cost to the other areas of public expenditure from this effect and no assessment of the outcomes for the children. The withdrawal of this support will impact on some of the most vulnerable children. It is not explained, it is not defended and it is not assessed.

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.]

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Drake Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Drake]

My Lords, I wish to focus my comments on friends and kinship care. As my noble friend Lady Massey noted, up to 300,000 children are growing up in friendship and kinship care. For most of these children, family members step in to avoid children having to be taken into care, while in other instances children are placed with wider family members following care proceedings. Kinship care is by far the most common way of providing permanence and stability for children who can no longer live with their parents.

I fear, however, as do some other noble Lords, that there is a danger that the Bill overlooks the vital role that kinship carers play. While recognising the laudable desire to reduce delays in placing children for adoption, the current drafting of the Bill risks making it harder in future for the wider family to step in, particularly as it removes the duty on local authorities to give preference to keeping children with their families. It is important that the right balance is struck between accelerating the process of approving adoptive placements and ensuring that alternative permanent placements for children with grandparents and other relatives are not overlooked.

On Report in the other place, the Minister, Edward Timpson, showed sympathy for these concerns and said that he was thinking of amending the Bill to make it clear that local authorities must first consider placements with family or friends before they consider fostering for adoption placements. However, we do not yet have visibility of such an amendment. I hope that we see it soon. I know that there are many who will wish to stay with that issue and see that amendment coming forward.

Friendship and kinship carers can be caught between two different public policy priorities—getting and keeping people in work, especially women and older workers, and local authorities protecting the interests of vulnerable and traumatised children by requiring carers to give up work to look after them. This tension was raised during the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Freud, gave the matter his detailed consideration and subsequently provided for the Universal Credit Regulations to exempt kinship carers from work conditionality, looking for work for the first 12 months after taking on the care of the child. An issue flagged up at the time was the increased likelihood of friends and kinship carers losing their jobs because the taking on of such children often occurs at short notice when they have no employment leave entitlements.

The Bill presents the opportunity to extend parental leave entitlements to kinship carers to give them parity with adoptive parents. Kinship care is the most common permanency option for children who cannot live with their birth parents, yet there is a stark imbalance in employment leave entitlements for kinship carers compared with entitlements for adoptive parents. The same arguments apply to the extension of parental leave to kinship carers as were advanced for the introduction of adoption leave: the need for time for children to settle and bond with carers and the advantage of enabling carers to remain in the labour market. There should be access to an entitlement to both paid leave and a period of unpaid leave, the latter to deal with the initial uncertainties when the children first arrive and long-term arrangements may not yet be settled.

Grandparents Plus research shows that almost half of kinship carers who were previously in work leave their jobs when children move in. A Family Rights Group survey revealed that nearly 40% of family and friend carers have left their job, lost their job or taken early retirement when they have taken on the care of children. It is often more difficult for both young and older kinship carers subsequently to get back into the labour market. There are many reasons for this, including the high needs of the children, but a lack of legal entitlement to any time off undoubtedly contributes.

Extending the right to request flexible working to all is welcome. A later retirement age means that an increasing proportion of grandparents of younger children are likely to be in employment. The option of working flexibly will become increasingly important to enabling grandparents to combine work with care.

Emergency leave provisions to deal with family emergencies are available to parents, and an employer must enable them to take a few days’ unpaid leave. In Committee in the other place, the Minister, Jo Swinson, said that this entitlement was available for grandparents relied upon for childcare. The regulations are unclear, though, and there is evidence to show that most employers and grandparents believe that they are not entitled to take such leave in these circumstances. The Bill should remove this ambiguity and enable a grandparent to take a reasonable amount of time off to provide help to deal with an unexpected event. Currently one in four working families depends on grandparents to provide childcare. With increased longevity, and with people remaining longer in employment, it will become increasingly important that grandparents are able to combine work and caring responsibilities in order to maintain not only their own but mothers’ employment.

The Government should also consider the possibility for unused periods of parental leave to be transferred to a grandparent if neither parent is able to use it. The principle of transferability of leave from mothers to fathers has been agreed. Would it be such a radical step to extend it to grandparents? I know that one of the drivers for transferable parental leave between mother and father was to break the stereotype that childcare is a female responsibility. Weighed against that, though, it is important to recognise who is providing the care, and in many instances it is the grandparents.

I conclude with a quote from the noble Lord, Lord Freud, in his DWP press release of 22 June 2012:

“Kinship carers make major sacrifices for their family and friends and help children in difficult situations to remain in a family environment instead of in the care system. I am determined that the benefits system recognises this important contribution”.

I hope that this Bill will also recognise that contribution.