Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Hodgson of Abinger and Baroness Walmsley

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

I shall speak to Amendments 23 and 25, and I support the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey.

The noble Earl has raised the issue of siblings. For children separated from their parents, siblings may form their next-closest relationships and therefore, wherever possible, we must also seek to avoid the separation of siblings. This can have devastating effects on those who have already undergone the suffering of being removed from their homes and filtered through the social care system. Many describe knowing they have a sibling that they are separated from as having a piece of themselves missing.

Your Family, Your Voice, which briefed me, states that currently 50% of sibling groups in care are split up. I find that an astonishing statistic. We sometimes read stories in the papers about siblings who were adopted and find their brother or sister later in life. Do we really think it is acceptable to be creating situations like that in this day and age? I accept that from time to time there may be a case for splitting up siblings, where one is very disruptive or has a detrimental effect on other siblings. However, the normal situation should be that priority is given to keeping siblings together—and, if it is considered desirable to split them up, the local authority needs to explain the reason why it is doing so.

It is important that we listen to what children want, and facilitate it. With regard to Amendment 25, where it is clearly unsuitable for a child to remain with their parents, relatives or close friends may be able to step in to prevent them having to be taken into care. For a child, being taken away from their home, whatever their circumstances, must be highly traumatic. However, where they are going to live with a friend or relative who is already known to them, this will lessen the strain and upset, and in many cases will mean that the child is raised within their family.

There are an estimated 200,000 children being raised by kinship carers, 95% of whom are not classified as looked after. The briefing that I received from the Kinship Care Alliance, which I understand is serviced by the charity Family Rights Group, stated that,

“children in kinship care are doing significantly better than children in unrelated care, despite having suffered similar early adverse experiences—in particular they feel more secure and have fewer emotional and behavioural problems and are doing better academically”.

So this approach also has the economic benefit of savings for the state if the child is not taken into care, although I understand that at present kinship carers are not being given any financial help. This aspect needs to be looked at. Having an extra child or children in the house may create financial hardship in terms of both needing bigger accommodation and having more mouths to feed. I understand that a large percentage of kinship carers have to give up work to take on the extra children. It would therefore be helpful to give them some support. I understand that local authorities often seek close relatives and friends to look after the child, but I would like to see in the Bill that this has to be done and considered, because it seems to be a much preferable outcome for the child.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I am afraid that my Amendment 24 in this group would add further corporate parenting principles to Clause 1. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson of Abinger, I want to add the principle that siblings should be kept together as far as possible. If they cannot be fostered or even adopted together, at least they should be located as close as possible to each other and arrangements made for them to have contact if they want it. That last point, made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, is absolutely right: we have to take account of what the child wants in relation to his or her siblings.

Many children who suffer the trauma of the break-up of their family and being taken into care rely very much for their emotional well-being on the support of their siblings. I know that most local authorities do their very best to ensure that they can be together as much as possible, but it is not easy to find foster parents who will take more than one child, or a group of two or three. If we are laying down corporate parenting principles, it is vital that sibling issues are in there. Emotional well-being is important for educational attainment and success in life, and we let children down if we ignore it. Although it is mentioned in Clause 1(1)(a) of the Bill, we need to be more specific about how that well-being should be achieved on a matter as important as siblings.