Children and Families Bill

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I am speaking to Amendment 224, to which we have added our names, and to Amendments 225, 226, 227, 228, 229 and 230, as well as to government Amendment 241. I echo the comments already made—that this is a very welcome breakthrough in the Government’s approach to young carers. I am very pleased at this unusually effective twin-track approach, with the Department of Health and the Department for Education coming together to address these issues from both aspects. That is a welcome development.

Without rehearsing all the arguments, we can all identify with the overwhelming evidence that there are an increasing number of children and young people caring for a family member, parent or sibling and that that is affecting their education, their chance to socialise and their health. We have not had the processes in place to identify these young people and give them the help they need, but I am pleased to say that we are now moving forward.

The key to this new requirement is the duty on local authorities to identify young carers. As we know, they are often hidden from view. Our amendment places parallel duties on schools, social care and health providers to play their part in finding these young people, and in putting in place co-ordinated support packages for the children and for those for whom they care. Our amendments spell these out in some detail. Amendment 225 also specifies a duty to provide sufficient resources to improve the well-being of all young carers in the area.

We have now had an opportunity to consider the government amendment to the Bill, and I appreciated the chance to attend the meeting with the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and with representatives of young carers’ charities. As the Minister has said, there was a strong welcome for the steps that have been taken and for the Government’s recognition of the importance of this issue. We feel that the government amendments provide a useful outline framework to address the issue. We also accept that some of the detail will inevitably have to be spelled out in regulations. However, our amendments go one step further in stipulating the specific duties required of health, social care and FE institutions. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain how his amendments—which impose a much more general duty—relate to all those different aspects of the combined package that is meant to apply to young carers in future.

We have acknowledged previously that you can only go so far in driving change from the centre. There also has to be the political will at local level. Concern remains about the appetite of local government for embracing these extra duties. Their representatives were noticeably absent from the meeting we attended, though at the time we were assured that they were supportive of the changes. Would the Government look again at Amendment 225? This goes one step further than simply putting in place whole family assessments—it places a duty on local authorities to provide a range and level of service sufficient to improve the well-being of young carers. We are not just talking about the structure; we are talking about the resources as well. Without the sorts of amendments that we have put forward, there would be a concern about the level of resources made available locally. In other words, we would ensure that the resources were in place to make a real difference to these young people’s lives. Could the Minister clarify whether he agrees that there is merit in such a duty?

We also have residual concerns about the split between adult and children’s services in local government and their inability to work together in a co-ordinated fashion. These structural problems still need to be addressed going forward. How, if not in legislation, might we make some progress on these issues so that all sides of local government are talking and working together?

There is also a big training need. For example, schools and other education institutions, which often have no knowledge that their pupils are carers, need training to identify the symptoms of young carers and in the skills needed to champion their needs. As we have previously identified, teacher training has a big role to play here. Could the Minister address the issue of training, particularly at school level?

Finally, an issue came up in the Care Bill: that of parent carers. It was raised by my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley. On Report, in response to her concern the noble Earl, Lord Howe, said that it was the Government’s view that the main provision for assessing and supporting those caring for disabled children should be in the children’s legislation, so that the family’s need for support could be looked at holistically—in other words, it should be in this Bill. It feels as if we are addressing everybody’s needs in this wonderful new holistic arrangement apart from the parents of disabled children. How has that read-across from what happened in the Care Bill to this Bill been followed through?

Nevertheless, we feel that the Government are on the right track and support their amendment. We accept that this is a unique opportunity to improve the lives of young carers. Obviously, we should grasp that. I very much welcome the steps taken so far but would like answers on the points I have raised with the noble Lord this afternoon. That could help to make a lot of difference to young carers, in terms of the reality of their experience on the ground.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 224, to which my name is attached. I will also make some comments about government Amendment 241.

I agree with other noble Lords who think that today is a landmark moment in what has been a very long journey for young carers to get the support that they need. More than a year ago, the Government announced new rights for adult carers. Those were extremely welcome but no equivalent provisions were put forward at the time for young carers. I pay tribute to the Government today for the very hard work they have done over the summer, across government and working with the sector, to get to this situation.

Like many other commentators at the time, I was particularly surprised a year ago at that omission, given what we know about children and young people who care for someone. They are particularly vulnerable to poor outcomes and life chances. Obviously, the reasons for that are straightforward. It was clear that for far too long young carers had not been sufficiently protected by the law. Indeed, very few young carers had received statutory assessment and support. Where they did, they often continued to undertake inappropriate levels of caring, simply because the adult that they were looking after continued to have unmet needs. The law was so confusing for young carers that it often was not even clear who had responsibility for them.

These are critical points in what we are looking at today because young carers’ well-being was directly affected by how far the adult they looked after was supported. That is why the whole family approach to assessment, which we have heard about already from the Minister, is so important. If this is to make a difference in practice, it is absolutely critical that children’s and adult services are able to work together. That sounds obvious but any of us who have been involved in the sector know that in practice it is often quite the reverse.

As my noble friend Lord Storey said at the beginning, the two Bills are scheduled at the same time. Originally when I saw that, I thought “Oh my goodness, I do not know how I will cope running between the two”. Actually, I think the opportunity provided to link the Bills is rather important. It has felt quite a complex process at times but I think we are almost there.

I have a final couple of points to make. What it really comes down to now is regulations. In addition, the Government have made it absolutely clear in various briefing sessions that the Care Bill provides a whole family approach to assessment, and this will need to be set out in the regulations. I would very much welcome any further assurances the Minister can give today that all those loose ends will be tied up so that the jigsaw is absolutely complete. One of the reasons that I attached my name to Amendment 224, before the government amendment was tabled, was to make it clear that adults’ support needs should be met in order to protect children. I would particularly welcome assurances that the Government intend to look at how regulations relating to the Care Bill will make this crystal clear. I, too, commend all the collaborative work that has taken place. I pay particular tribute to the expert advice and real-life experience that the National Young Carers Coalition has fed in.

The only remaining point I would like to highlight concerns the respective roles and responsibilities of other agencies, particularly health and education agencies but social care as well, in identifying young carers and knowing how they can best be supported. That is also something I would like to see picked up in the guidance. These amendments, particularly the government amendment, together with the provision in the Care Bill, provide an excellent opportunity to set new standards for identifying young carers and approaches to supporting the whole family. Regulations and good practice guidance on these new standards would be a very good place in which to take the provision forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

My Lords, I also would like to speak briefly in support of Amendment 233, which was so ably and vividly introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I have a particular responsibility in the Church of England for education, so I am pleased to be able to bring that authority and support, as it were, on behalf of all the schools that I represent. This is a small but important and crucial piece of work.

As has been said, it is interesting to note that the Mothers’ Union, the Children’s Society and a further 70 different organisations which are involved in and have some knowledge of this area all support the proposal. It was a few years ago now, but the board of education that I represent worked with the Sex Education Forum to try to produce some new guidance, but unfortunately that work was not taken up. It is clear from all we have been saying that the purpose of education is not simply to present children who can pass exams, but to create an opportunity for young people to take control of their lives and values, and to realise their hopes through their approach to life. It is a much larger task, and for that social, emotional and spiritual intelligence is important, along with academic prowess. When the chips are down, nothing matters more to us than our relationships and how we form them. As we have just heard described so vividly, this is a new age for people as they form their relationships.

Building a network of friendships and exploring more intimate relationships with particular people are hard tasks for young people today because they have been made extremely complex by the rapid changes in technology. It is in fact some 13 years of revolution since the last guidelines were produced. This is a fascinating world, but it is a jungle, and our young people have to navigate it. A rare consensus seems to be building around the need to update the guidelines, so it is vital that we seize this opportunity. As part of its commitment to addressing these issues, the board of education that I represent has been compiling resources for use in church schools and any other schools to help combat homophobic bullying. That is an important piece of work, but the problems go much wider. Given that, I want to say briefly that we need to get on the case urgently.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, briefly, I lend my support to all three amendments. In their different ways they are designed to do something about which I feel absolutely passionate, which is to make sure that all children and young people, in whatever sort of school they are, have access to high-quality, age-appropriate and up-to-date sex and relationships education. Of course, I always put it the other way around and say “relationships and sex education”, for a reason I shall come to in a moment; that is absolutely critical. We must focus on the need for all young people to understand the importance of healthy relationships. It should serve them as part of their fundamental education going through life.

I have read through all the evidence of what people think at the moment. We have heard it and I do not want to repeat it. We know what the National Association of Head Teachers thinks. We saw the reports of the consultation on PSHE education in March this year and the Mumsnet survey. I will just quote from the Brook survey of 2011, where one in four young people said they did not get any sex and relationships education in schools at all and 26% of those that did said that their SRE teacher was not able to teach it well. I fundamentally believe that relationship education should be a compulsory part of the national curriculum and taught by specialist teachers and others who really understand these things. At the very beginning, I should have declared an interest as vice-president of the charity Relate.