Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Stedman-Scott Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to and declare my interests as laid out in the Members’ register of interests. Along with other noble Lords, I welcome the Bill and the steps that the Government are putting in place to improve the life chances of children in care and care leavers, an aim which all our hearts should beat in concert to achieve. It is tragic when any young person is taken into care, and this Bill should enable us to redouble our efforts to give those young people an opportunity to have a second chance to have stability in their life and, most importantly, to succeed.

The human cost of not doing this is vast. If I understand it correctly, 11% of all homeless people have been in care. Of those who end up in adult prison, 25% have been in care. I really hope I have got this figure wrong, but 70% of those involved in the sex industry have been in care. Of teenagers who become pregnant, 22% have been in care. In addition, 39% of those in care end up being NEET. These are hardly the outcomes we want for these young people, and I do not think any one of us would want to tolerate such bad performance.

My contribution to this debate is based around the commitment to offer all young people in care and care leavers a personal adviser from the age of 18 to 25—an extension to the existing commitment to the age of 21. However, I have said this many times and will say it again: this is too late. My experience, and the experience of others, is that where this support service can be brought forward to the age of 14, the outcomes achieved are beyond question.

The other point is that we are going to offer this to them if they want it. Young people have their moments. Sometimes their judgment is not quite what we would like it to be, and no matter how much we sing to them, they do not take our advice. I do not agree that they should get this support only if they want it, and fully agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, that we need to encourage them all to take up the offer. Reflecting on the stats I quoted earlier, I hope we have it in our power, capacity and commitment to these young people to make sure that they do. I have seen for myself the difference that this support can make. If we could get it to them earlier, we could prevent so much of what we have talked about this evening. Early intervention is best.

The Bill is set to encourage new ways of working, delivery and true innovation, and I hope that local authorities will look at the complete set of offerings before deciding how best this can be achieved. What would the personal adviser ideally be? They would not just ring the young person up now and then and see how things were going. They would not just write now and then but would be in face-to-face contact—weekly would be the real offering. As for funding, I am not quite sure how we are going to pay for this; I live in hope that there will be some additional funds to do this. The whole sector would work with the Government, because this is ripe for social investment and for a social impact bond. I am looking forward to the launch of the life chances fund on 4 July, because it will take away all the protests about how we cannot do this or cannot do it properly—I think we can. My noble friend Lady Shephard referred to ThinkForward; Tomorrow’s People was fundamentally involved in its delivery. All young people aged 14 who need it— not just those who want it—should have a personal adviser.

I will share some good statistics with your Lordships: 96% of 17 and 18 year-olds are currently in education, training or employment; 60% of school leavers achieved at least 5 GCSEs at grades A to C; and 85% of 14 to 16 year-olds have shown statistically significant improvement in attendance at school and in behaviour—the very fact that they have turned up has made people’s hearts sing.

I have tried to find stats for the effectiveness of the current personal adviser role. I do not wish to make negative judgments about things I do not have the facts on, but the only thing I could find out was that 25% of care leavers have lost contact with their adviser by the time they reach 21. We need some benchmarks for what our personal advisers will do. If we get this offer in the Bill right, it will make significant changes to the life chances of our young people, who are precious to us and who deserve the very best we can give them.