Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Baroness Howarth of Breckland

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, perhaps I may say that those of us who also have been corporate parents do not disagree at all that somebody clearly has to be a corporate parent. What we would like to see in the Bill is for other departments—particularly government departments, which are nowhere in other legislation—to have a responsibility to work with that corporate parent in legislation, and to give that support. That is what I think everyone who has spoken means.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

To add to that, the danger is that government policy will undermine what local authorities are trying to do. That is why we need government policies that will work with and support local authorities in their corporate parenting, rather than working against them.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Baroness Howarth of Breckland

Monday 7th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, if I were the Minister, I would grasp with alacrity the olive branch—or is it fig leaf?—that was offered by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope. Personally, I oppose the principle of these clauses, but I will talk about that later. I will speak only very briefly now in support of all the amendments in the group. We have heard some very powerful speeches that show the unintended and undesirable social policy consequences of these clauses, which I cannot believe the Government wish to happen. I hope that the Minister will reflect very carefully on these speeches.

At Second Reading, the Minister gave a little hint that, at least on kinship carers, he might be willing to consider an exemption, although I understand that nothing has been taken forward on that. He also said that the Government,

“will look at the important issues around exemption through secondary legislation and will provide more detail in due course”.—[Official Report, 17/11/15; col. 125.]

As well as adding my support to these amendments, I simply want to ask the Minister what he means by “due course”. We really have to have these details before Report. We should not go to Report until we have these details about exemptions.

I remind the Minister that on the previous Welfare Reform Bill the Joint Committee on Human Rights made very clear how important it is that, even if we cannot have the regulations themselves—I can quite understand why that is not possible—from a human rights perspective we should have full details of what will be in the regulations. I hope that, at the very least, the Minister can give us that assurance today and that he will think hard about the arguments that have been made already.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I want to speak extremely briefly because the speech I might have made has already been made by other noble Lords in terms of detail.

Having listened to the Minister talk in various venues about wanting to ensure that there are no unintended consequences from this legislation, I want him to think carefully on the speeches that have been made and about what basis of philosophy or principle the Government have underlying this legislation. I know the basic tenet is that they want to make sure that parents can work and that all children are able to achieve the best educational outcomes—those are the Government’s own words. But some of these measures will undermine that and take families into greater financial hardship. I am particularly interested in the children, because taking those families into greater financial hardship will reduce the life chances of those children. Those of us who have worked with children down the years have seen the consequences of that, not only the emotional consequences but the financial consequences.

All the arguments around larger families, kinship care, adoption and the very many informal arrangements that families make to ensure that their children are emotionally cared for have been made. Again, I hope that the Minister will reflect on that in the context of his own Government’s policy and objectives.

We are a nation that should care. Indeed, the Minister’s party described itself as a “caring party”. I also admire the Government’s objective of ensuring that children make their own way and are not left in poverty because of parental behaviour. However, we know that you can affect that behaviour, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and others have said, by the kind of care that they receive themselves and are able to reflect with their children. Therefore, will the Minister tell us how he intends to ensure that the Government’s philosophy and principles are reflected in the way that they deal with large families, particularly those from disadvantaged groups?

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Baroness Howarth of Breckland

Monday 11th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the Government on producing their amendment, which is a significant milestone. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, spoke of a long journey. I pay tribute to all those who have been on that journey, including my colleagues at Loughborough University in the Young Carers Research Group who were there at the outset and I think coined the phrase “young carers”. They have done a lot of research which has helped lead to this conclusion. Therefore, it is very gratifying for me to thank them and all the others who have contributed to this outcome.

I pick up a point made by my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch about parents caring for disabled children. Carers UK points out that: it is three times more costly to bring up a disabled child than a non-disabled child; parent carers are more likely to be reliant on income-based state support; 34% of sick or disabled children live in households where there is no adult in paid work, compared with 18% of children who are not sick or disabled; parent carers are more likely to suffer relationship breakdown and divorce, and three or more times more likely to suffer ill health and health breakdown than parents of non-disabled children; and more than half the families who responded to its survey felt that a lack of statutory services was the key factor contributing to their feelings of isolation. A recent study by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner carried out with disabled children found that for many disabled children and their families the impact of low income on basic needs was compounded by inadequate services, personal support and information. In some areas necessary housing adaptations were hard to obtain, long delays were experienced and appropriate provision was achieved only through persistent parental pressure.

Will the Minister explain why this group does not seem to come under the whole family approach that he rightly emphasised? Will he consider having another look at this as it is now a gaping hole? I hope that he might take another look at this hole and be willing to fill it on Report.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, no one can be anything but absolutely delighted at the government amendment. I, too, was at the joint meeting with the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and the noble Earl, Lord Howe, but wish to ask some further questions, following on from the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Tyler. I am concerned that, even if a local authority had a duty in this regard, there would be extreme difficulties in continuing this journey. We are on the first step of the journey. As a long-standing practitioner, I know that the problem arises with the actual implementation of these services.

When I asked a supplementary question about the parents of disabled children, I was told that it could be dealt with in this Committee. We do not get those services for disabled children, or a proper co-ordinated family approach in local authorities, because of the difficulties they have in meeting their commitments currently. I have said this before, but I sometimes think I am living in a parallel universe where our aspirations and our joy at achieving excellent legislation cannot be matched by reality. My own local authority is about to face further cuts of £145 million on top of previous ones. Every noble Lord in this Room should know what their own local authority faces and what the implications will be for services on the ground. I want to hear from the Minister how we can meet the young carers approach and about what we might do for disabled families, because they need the services, not more legislation.

There is an answer. If we had good, co-ordinated family assessment and family workers with no duplication—I speak as a trained family case-worker in the past—where one worker undertakes the assessment and knows which experts to call on when other expertise is needed, and much more focus in terms of the work, we might actually save resources. However, I do not know how that gets into regulations. I would be very interested to see whether or not we can do that because we could revolutionise some of these services by the approach we take in implementation. We have legislation that says that disabled children should receive X, Y and Z for particular conditions, but I fear that the services are simply not there to meet the need. I am sorry if that sounds a slightly sour note—it is not meant to, as I am utterly delighted that we have this in the Bill. What I hope we can do now is to start to revolutionise services so that it actually happens, day to day, in people’s lives.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I wish to speak briefly in support of the amendment, and I am very pleased that it has been tabled. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, have both talked about destitution. I was a member of the Parliamentary Inquiry into Asylum Support for Children and Young People. That was a slightly wider group than that on which this amendment is focused, but the point is the same. We said that:

“Although the inquiry’s focus was on those in receipt of asylum support, the panel was shocked to hear of instances where children were left destitute and homeless, entirely without institutional support and forced to rely on food parcels or charitable donations. Evidence received by the inquiry cited counts where children made up between 13-20% of the local destitute population”.

I find it shameful that we have anyone in the population who is destitute in a society as rich as ours. It is particularly shaming that people who have come to this country to seek refuge should be destitute, and that children should be destitute.

Perhaps I may reinforce what the noble Earl said by referring to a case study which has been provided by the Refugee Children’s Consortium. It states:

“Case study: Matthew—a young person from Iran. Matthew is a torture survivor who came to the UK from Iran when he was aged 17. He was refused asylum and wanted to appeal but his solicitor did not want to support his appeal so he went to court unrepresented. His appeal was rejected and children’s services stopped his support. He was made homeless for one year. He was seeing a psychologist while being supported by children’s services but once the support was cut off, the counselling stopped as well. While homeless Matthew’s health deteriorated”—

is that surprising?

“He couldn’t sleep at night. His hair was falling out. He experienced a lot of violence when he was sleeping on the streets. Sometimes he was able to work for his friend in exchange for accommodation. He was desperate to stay in the UK because he feared for his life if he were to return to Iran. With help from The Children’s Society he was able to get a new solicitor and put in a fresh claim”.

This really should not happen.

I was also involved in the launch of a report from Freedom From Torture about the poverty experienced by torture survivors. One of the strong messages in that report was how poverty undermines the rehabilitation of torture survivors. This is dreadful. Torture survivors, who are psychologically scarred, then have to go through further ordeals when they get to this country. I hope very much that the Minister will be able to say something rather more positive in response to this amendment than perhaps was the response to the previous amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Nash.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I support this amendment. Noble Lords will recall that I talked about a similar group of young people who were privately fostered. It was then subsequently discovered that those with whom they had been privately fostered were not in fact family, or if they were, they had not sorted out the children’s immigration status. When they reached the age of 18, or sometimes 16, and went to college, they found that they did not have the appropriate paperwork and they then became illegal immigrants.

As a country, we have totally failed to grasp a very straightforward issue, which is that if these children are in our country and are at school, they can be checked by the school, by the local social services or by the health services wherever they find themselves. Surely we have a responsibility to sort out their status before they reach the age of 18. Some of these young people clearly could go back to their country of origin, and there are voluntary organisations which work in that area. Others, however, clearly cannot do so. Recently I met a young man at a reception provided by the Children’s Society for the work it is doing on its Here to Listen? campaign. That young man was bright and intelligent, and wanted to get on with his life. I asked him about his immigration status, and the answer was, “I have not yet got a passport”. My heart sank because I knew that what might well happen, if this could not be sorted out, would be that he would possibly find himself being sent back to whatever he had escaped from.

We pride ourselves in this country on the work we do with children and child protection. Look at the lengths we go to in order to develop child protection procedures. We go to huge lengths to ensure that young people, including these young people, have a proper education. How can we be so neglectful as to not notice that when they reach later adolescence they will become destitute, be sent back to appalling circumstances or have a hugely strenuous set of interactions with the law to try to gain proper status so that their lives do not fall apart? I have been an advocate for some young people who have found themselves in this position at 18, trying to go through our complex system in order to get this sorted.

I do not think it is beyond our departments to find a system that looks at all of these groups of young people. I agree with the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, that young people who are trafficked are particularly vulnerable. All these young people could easily have their status sorted out earlier in the process. We would not then be faced with these kinds of difficulties.