Children and Families Bill

Debate between Baroness Massey of Darwen and Baroness Drake

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

Debate between Baroness Massey of Darwen and Baroness Drake

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, Amendment 267, in the names of myself and my noble friend Lady Drake, suggests changes to the statutory leave and pay of prospective adopters with whom looked-after children are placed, special guardians and family and friends carers. Insertions are suggested to sections of the Employment Rights Act 1996 and sections of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992.

We had a lengthy discussion on support for family and friends carers in Committee on 26 October. I shall summarise a few points from that debate as a background to today’s considerations. An estimated 300,000 children are being raised by relatives and friends. Only an estimated 6% of children who are raised in family and friends care are looked after by the local authority and placed with approved foster carers. Children in kinship care do better in terms of attachment and achievement, but their carers are under severe strain—95% of family and friends carers say so. In the previous debate I called them heroes, and so they are. We are not really addressing the inequalities and unfairness that they face at the moment.

The Kinship Care Alliance attributes this strain to three major factors: kinship carers are not entitled to local authority financial or other support—financial support is discretionary; many kinship carers have to give up jobs to support the children and they have no right to specific services and benefits. Despite guidance to local authorities in 2011 which stated what support they should provide by September 2011, 30% of local authorities do not have a family and friends care policy. Financial costs include the immediate cost of a child coming to live with a carer, the costs of applying for a legal order to provide the child with security and permanence, loss of income and pension rights and, finally, the considerable costs of raising a child.

Children who live with family and friends care have experienced similar adversities to those in the care system or who are adopted, yet foster carers get a national minimum financial allowance and the Government are rightly improving adopters’ rights to a period of paid leave on a par with maternity leave. However, the 95% of family and friends carers who are raising children outside the care system are not entitled to anything in paid leave when they take on the care of children.

The Family Rights Group’s publication Understanding Family and Friends Care, reflecting the latest survey of family and friends carers in 2012, reported that only one in eight of the 327 respondents who answered the question about the effect that becoming a family and friends carer had had, said that they had continued to work as before, and one in nine that their partner had continued to work as before. Indeed, 38% had to give up their job to take on the care of the children—in London the figure was 46%. Overall, the picture which emerged was that carers were likely to have made sacrifices in the workplace in order to care for the kinship children. Very few just carried on working as before. Many decreased their working responsibilities and their income by reducing their hours or stopping work altogether—sometimes, I have to say, at the insistence of social workers.

Children who have been through trauma or tragedy, and who may have multiple needs, require time to settle in with their carers. The carers are often required to attend a number of meetings relating to the care and needs of the children, but the absence of any right to paid leave means that we are forcing many family and friends carers to give up work in order to do right by these children. We are pushing them into a life of dependency on benefits and into severe poverty. Some are grandparent carers who are unable to get back into employment when their grandchildren are older. Some are younger sibling carers who have few qualifications and only a few years in employment when they take on their younger brothers and sisters, but later find it difficult to re-enter the labour market. Research has shown that three-quarters of family and friends carer households face severe financial hardship. I hope that the Government will be able to address these urgent issues, and I beg to move.

[Baroness Drake (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 267, which would bring family and friends carers and special guardians in employment within scope for statutory entitlement to pay and leave when taking on the care of a child. The Bill extends the right that adoptive parents have to take ordinary and additional adoptive leave to approved adopters who have looked-after children placed with them. By contrast, the vast majority of family and friends carers who are raising children outside the looked-after system are not currently entitled to even a day of statutory paid leave when they take on the indefinite care of a child. Many have no entitlement beyond a few days’ unpaid emergency leave. That is a public policy that conveys that kinship carers have less value or make a lesser contribution than other carers of children, even though the children they care for often have complex needs. That cannot be right.

The amendment would extend the same employment rights to family and friends carers who have special guardianship orders, and to family and friends carers who take on the care of a child in certain defined circumstances. It would give the Secretary of State the authority to define those circumstances, and would extend the right to additional adoptive leave to family and friends carers and those with guardianship orders, again giving the Secretary of State the authority to define the prescribed circumstances.

There is a stark imbalance in the proposed employment leave entitlements for adoptive and prospective adoptive parents when compared to the lack of entitlements for kinship carers. That is unfair, irrational and inconsistent with the Government’s policy on the welfare and protection of children. It is unfair in that kinship carers voluntarily take on the responsibility, often in very difficult circumstances and at considerable cost to themselves, saving the taxpayer considerable amounts of money and achieving better outcomes for the child than if they had entered the care system. It is irrational in so far as the statutory rights to leave for parents, adopters or prospective adopters have been or are being improved, but no statutory rights are extended to the kinship carers of thousands of our most vulnerable children. It is inconsistent with current welfare policy in that the absence of a statutory right to leave, on taking care of the child, raises the barriers to carers’ continued workforce participation and increases the likelihood that they will become long-term unemployed and dependent on benefits. That undermines participation in the workforce as a route out of poverty for the children and the carer.

During the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill, the Government recognised that family and friends carers make a valuable contribution by caring for vulnerable children, and exempted those carers from work conditionality under the universal credit during the first 12 months of caring for a child. The Government have time-limited that exemption in the expectation that many carers should return to the labour market after a period of adjustment, so why not make provision for a statutory entitlement to leave and reduce the incidence of kinship carers leaving the labour force in the first place?

However, the problems that kinship carers face do not lie only in the requirements of the welfare system, they also suffer from the complete lack of recognition in employment law. The imbalance in their right is inconsistent with the protection of child welfare, in that kinship carers need to take leave to settle the children, who have often been through so much. This often comes after a long period of family crisis; the children can be traumatised and insecure, and they need to know that someone is there for them. That is precisely why social workers often want or require carers to take time out of work. There are also the practical requirements of making appointments with schools, solicitors and social workers, arranging legal orders and so on. Often, the children arrive unexpectedly in just the clothes they are wearing, but there is not even the most modest statutory provision allowing employed carers leave from their employment. Yet kinship care is the most common permanency option for children who cannot live with their birth parents. The same arguments apply to the extension of parental leave to kinship carers as were advanced for the introduction of adoption leave in the Employment Act 2002: the need for time for children to settle with and bond to carers and the advantages of enabling carers to remain in the labour market.

To scope the problem, an estimated 60,000 kinship carers have dropped out of the labour market to bring up children. The reasons for this include the needs of the child, but the fact that they are not entitled to time off increases the likelihood of their leaving the labour market, so contributing to the high proportion of kinship carers living in poverty. Family Rights Group research found that one-third were living on incomes below £350 a week. Grandparents Plus found that 73% of kinship carers were working before the children moved in, but that almost half of those who had been working left their jobs when the children arrived. Some 83% of those who gave up work say that they would have liked to have remained in work, while of those who gave up work just 13% are now back in work. Similarly, a Family Rights Group survey found that 38% of family and friends carers had left their job, lost their job or taken early retirement when they took on the care of the child.

The Bill presents the opportunity to extend parental leave entitlements to kinship carers who take on the indefinite care of a child, and to give them parity with prospective adopters. The majority of family and friends carers are not entitled to even one day of statutory paid leave. That cannot be fair. The arguments for providing a right to leave are equally compelling, whether looked at from the perspective of the carer or of the child.