Education and Adoption Bill

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington]

It is still a school or an academy, and if we remembered that it might help some of the progress on this Bill.

Regarding some of the points raised by the noble Lord, that school sits on sports grounds that have served half the sports clubs in the area. Indeed, the club where I started my career—I should declare—and finished, started on those grounds. These are the sorts of things that need to be worked into the system. We have to try to get them in somewhere along the line. On its use as a community asset, the noble Lord will not know the place but these are acres of prime playing fields in the heart of one of the fastest growing cities in the country. They are wonderful playing fields on flat, open ground that have been used as an asset by everything going on there. How we build on such a utility is something that should be taken into account. What are we doing on the broader picture? That has not been brought in here, and it should. The fact that the community and parents should be given that courtesy is self-evident. That greater asset to the local community is something we seem to have missed so far.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I shall be taking part in the Second Reading of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, so I apologise to your Lordships if I cannot be here for much of this afternoon’s discussion.

Listening to this debate, I think back to the experience of my half-sister, who for many years was a school librarian in Canada. She would complain about fathers coming in and taking books for their three year-olds about the planets and stars, which were completely inappropriate for the age of the children in question. Fathers were expecting children to understand things that they had no possibility of understanding. I think that probably happens a lot in the education system and outside it. People feel very strongly that certain things are important and others are less so.

My concern with sponsors is that they may have a very strong vision; sometimes that is a very positive thing, but sometimes that may not be so helpful. That is why I am interested to hear from the Minister, in a letter in due course, about the selection, training, support and development of sponsors, and why I have some sympathy with the concerns expressed by the Committee about who these sponsors are and who guards the sponsors. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)]

My Lords, I will make just a few comments on this group of amendments. I, too, apologise that I will not be able to be here for the whole Committee sitting. Unfortunately, because of other commitments I will be in and out a little bit.

I support the spirit of Amendment 25. I cannot see any reasonable and valid arguments why chains of academies should not be routinely inspected. The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, made the point that that discretion could be left with Ofsted, but if it does not actually inspect chains I do not know how it will know whether or not it needs to inspect them. They ought to be brought into the fold of those organisations that Ofsted routinely inspects.

I want to focus on parents and what I believe is the right of parents to be both informed and consulted about significant changes to the status and organisation of the school in which their children are pupils. We touched on this in an earlier meeting. We have since had, just before this Committee session started, the response of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, to the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, who raised some of these issues. It is now clear from this letter, notwithstanding the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, at the previous meeting, that in relation to a failing school the governing body does not have a duty to inform parents; it is required to take reasonable steps, but we all acknowledged in Committee that in many instances that does not happen. So there is not a duty on the governing body specifically to inform parents if Ofsted has decided the school is failing and that consequences will follow.

The noble Lord, Lord Nash, also admits in the letter that:

“There are no requirements within the Bill for the governing body to have to inform parents that the school has been identified as coasting”,

by the regional schools commissioner; nor is there a requirement on the regional schools commissioner to inform parents that he or she has decided that the school is coasting. It seems that, when it comes to these important matters, parents are falling between a number of bodies which may or may not decide that they should inform parents and which may or may not consult them. It is in the gift of the Government to make that a duty and to bring the rights of parents to information and consultation to the fore in the Bill. Surely that is right.

As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, the only argument we have heard against that so far is that the Minister thinks that that would delay things at a time when speed is of the essence in setting matters to rights when a school is not performing. But that is within the Government’s own gift. The Government could set strict time limits. They could set down the means by which that consultation should take place. They could set that in statute or in regulation to minimise any delay, but that could still involve putting the rights of parents to information and consultation to the fore as an equally important principle, along with the others in the Bill.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to that point, because if he is still relying on the very weak argument that this would cause unnecessary delay, he really has to say why the Government do not grasp that nettle and bring forward proposals that would minimise delay but still involve parents in decisions about their children.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his helpful reply. I found it very reassuring in terms of my particular concern about sponsors. I think that he was saying that most sponsors will already have a track record, and they will be the ones who are being looked at.

Perhaps he could say what proportion is likely to be coming in new to the field, and answer this example. Let us say I ticked all the boxes to become a sponsor for an academy, and seemed to be a very good person to do the job, but I thought that schools were places for work, not play, and that school playtime should be quite short. What would be the process to enlighten me that that is not the case or to weed me out and keep me away from the academy? How much influence might I have? I am thinking here of the story of an academy, which may be apocryphal, that was built without playgrounds for some reason, as somebody believed strongly that that should be the case.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that 28% of five to 15 year-olds are either overweight or obese? Is that not the point that he wishes to stress on this issue?

[The Earl of Listowel]

I thank the noble Lord for saying that. That is a very important point which, with his health background, he would raise. I am simply trying to give an example of a possible candidate and how he might be processed by the system. But from what I heard from the Minister just now I am very much reassured that most of these academy sponsors will be experienced and will have a track record, and we can have confidence in them because of that.

[Lord Nash]

If the noble Earl is contemplating making an academy sponsor application, I am sure we would be happy to guide him through the process, but as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, says, if he is serious about restricting play space, we can save him the bother. I believe a visit is being organised shortly to King Solomon Academy, which is a remarkable school. From memory, I think the statistics are that about 60% of children get free school meals, 90%-plus get five A*s in English and maths, and more than 75% get an EBacc. The noble Earl will have formulated his views on academies and we can discuss his pending sponsor application in more detail.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[The Earl of Listowel]

32A: Clause 13, page 8, line 35, at end insert—
“(f) the provision of child and adolescent mental health services for children in the adoption system;(g) the assessment of the mental health needs of children in the adoption system”

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I shall speak also to my Amendment 34A. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, regrets not being present and would have liked to support these amendments—she spoke eloquently on these issues at Second Reading. Perhaps I may also say how good it is to see the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, in his place. When he was Education Minister many years ago taking through Parliament the Children (Leaving Care) Act, he listened to the concerns of noble Lords and extended protections for children.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

I should just correct the noble Earl: for some reason, they would never let me near the Department for Education. I took the Children (Leaving Care) Act through as a Health Minister. Of course, I well recall our debates, because the noble Earl eloquently and consistently raised the issue of the poor outcomes of children in care, and we were concerned about the transition from care into adulthood and about making sure that there was still a duty on local authorities to support. We made some progress but, alas, the figures speak for themselves as regards the outcome for children in care. That is why this issue of mental health is so important.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I could not agree more. If we are reflecting for a moment on the past, Governments have invested a huge amount of money and resource into young people in care, and perhaps that money might have been better spent if more thought had been given to ensuring that mental health was fully integrated with all the educational support that is given to young people in care.

Amendment 32A extends the ability of the Secretary of State to allocate functions and includes the provision of child and adolescent mental health services for children in the adoption system as well as an assessment of their mental health needs. I suppose that the Secretary of State might say of a charity such as the Brent Centre for Young People, “They do a very good job—maybe they should do it more widely, and maybe a certain local authority needs them to give it help in this particular area”.

Amendment 34A ensures that the quantity and quality of mental health support provided for in the adoption system will be maintained or improved by these steps to ensure that there is a movement forward, not backward, in any changes made. The headline I put to your Lordships is that, while this is quite narrowly focused on children in the adoption system, I hope that the Minister might allow me to make a plea for improved mental health support for young people coming into care. In particular and most important, currently, children who come into care have a health assessment by a GP, which is welcome. I will expand on this later, but they really need a mental health specialist or perhaps a clinical psychologist to give them an assessment that is focused on their mental health. Following on from that assessment, they need the services that follow to help them meet the need to recover from the trauma that many of them will have. Therefore, that is the headline I put to your Lordships: an appropriate clinical professional at the very beginning, the services to follow up, then ongoing monitoring to ensure that those services are being provided, as well as of the mental health of the young people. That would make a huge difference.

I am most grateful for the many measures that the Government have taken to improve the adoption system, in particular with the assistance of my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss with regard to the adoption support fund. I look forward to hearing from the Minister how that will apply to this particular area, and on accelerating the adoption process so that children get to a loving family more swiftly than in the past.

There are challenges. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, 60% of children who come into care have experience of neglect or abuse, and 45% have a mental disorder in care as against 10% of the general population. Therefore it is not surprising that they will have often experienced trauma in their lives before arriving into care. Being taken into care—being taken from one’s family—is a traumatic process in itself; then there may be further trauma as regards shift of placements in care. Therefore, there is a huge mental health element to the work that needs to be done here as well as the educational attainment, which is being better grasped for.

It is very welcome that the Children’s Minister, Edward Timpson MP, is well aware of these issues. His father has written on the issues of attachment in the past and, of course, Mr Timpson has siblings who are adopted. He is very sympathetic and has been meeting with the NSPCC and young people who have left care recently to discuss these particular issues. I commend him for paying such attention to this area.

--- Later in debate ---

As I mentioned in our debate on the previous group—I do not apologise for repeating it—currently, children entering the care system are subject to a routine physical health check but are not automatically given access to a mental health check. I just do not understand how that can be rationalised, far less justified. There is a major gap in post-adoption support for children in care and those emerging from it—and for the families entrusted with their well-being. I invite the Minister to explain what steps she intends to take to ensure that that gap does not remain for much longer.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I hope it may be helpful to the Minister if I fill in a large omission that I made in my opening statement; I apologise to the Committee for not having alluded to this. One important issue is the cuts to local authorities over the last several years. One understands why those cuts have had to be made, but it is a particular dimension of child and adolescent mental health services that half the funding comes from health and half from local authorities—the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, might correct me if I am wrong. However, for some reason the cuts to local authorities have particularly impacted services under CAMHS, so there is very little CAMHS around. Therefore to target the CAMHS resource at the most needy children might be an improvement with regard to using a scarce commodity in the most effective way. However, in any case, because of the scarcity of resource and because of our particular responsibility for these children in the care of the state, we should take more steps to ensure that they get the appropriate specialist mental health service that they need.

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

I will quickly say why I support Amendments 32A and 34. I am very sorry for not having been here earlier, but I am on the Select Committee on Communications; we are looking at the BBC charter renewal and were just questioning John Whittingdale, the Secretary of State.

I am here because we must ensure support for all options for looked-after children that are considered, whether they remain in care, leave care independently or live with a special guardian. I support Amendments 32A and 34A because they will create provision in this Bill to improve the timeliness and quality of mental health assessment and support for all looked-after children. Looked-after children have significant needs, and improvements are needed to ensure that their emotional well-being is better promoted.

We have an increased focus on children and young people’s mental health, but we must not forget children in care, who are sometimes the most vulnerable children. One young person told the NSPCC recently that the trauma associated with the abuse that she experienced was not picked up on her early entry into care. She felt that she did not receive help until she reached crisis point. She said:

“We shouldn’t have to do crazy things before people notice we need support and do something”.

That is why I put my name to the amendment. I see that it is not on the list, but I did put my name to it because I feel very strongly that it should be given as much consideration as possible. It creates such provision in the Bill that will make sure that children’s mental health is assessed automatically and supported much earlier in the adoption system.

Another young adult, Liza—not her real name—told the NSPCC that before turning 16 she had around 15 placements and between 20 and 25 placement moves. This caused her so much stress and trauma because she had to travel around from place to place, which was extremely tiring, both physically and mentally. Reflecting on this experience, Liza made it clear to the NSPCC that she would have benefited from easier access to therapeutic services which would not have required her to travel long distances. Liza’s experience is not untypical of that of many children in care who struggle to find the right therapeutic support. Amendment 34A, which I support, would require the Secretary of State to oversee an increase in the quality and quantity of therapeutic support services and would create provision in the Bill to stop more children having the terrible experience that Liza outlined.

Almost two-thirds of looked-after children have experienced some sort of abuse or severe neglect, and 45% of children in care have a mental health disorder compared with just 10% of the general child population. We know that looked-after children are four to five times more likely to attempt suicide, less likely to attain good results at school and more likely to end up homeless. However, the mental health needs of children in care often go unassessed and unidentified and there is a substantial lack of mental health support for these children.

Current guidance from the Department of Health and the Department for Education on mental health assessments for looked-after children does not go far enough. The BBC—I have the BBC on my mind; I am sorry. The NSPCC believes that the important aspect of quality support in Amendment 34A relies on quality assessment as outlined in Amendment 32A, so the two go together. Looked-after children’s initial health assessments rarely include the involvement of mental health professionals, thereby reducing the chances of identifying their mental health needs. Furthermore, there should be direct contact with the child and their carer to fully explore the child’s emotional and mental health needs. We have to make sure that children know that they are being considered, no matter where they are from.

I welcome the Education and Adoption Bill but urge the Government to include specific measures around mental health in particular: all children entering care should receive an automatic mental health assessment in addition to the physical assessment that they currently receive; children in care should then immediately receive the subsequent necessary support to help them deal with issues of mental health identified in the assessment; and there should be regular monitoring of children’s mental health while in care to inform the support the child receives and ensure that it contributes to their improved well-being.

The NSPCC recently released figures which show that more than a fifth of all children referred to local specialist NHS mental health services, including children with problems stemming from abuse, are rejected for treatment. This cannot go on. Children who have been abused or neglected could face serious long-term mental health problems because of the lack of support. The NSPCC recently stated that this is a serious “time bomb” because it is getting worse, not better. So I hope that the Government will take on board the things that I have said and support this amendment. This is something that we need to address in the best way possible. I hope that the Government will consider the amendments in the constructive spirit in which they are intended as the Bill moves through Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

Clinical commissioning groups have been working with their local authority partners to develop local transformation plans to improve their local offer based on the recommendations. These plans, alongside additional government funding, will cover the full spectrum of mental health issues, including, crucially, addressing the needs of the most vulnerable children.

Improving assessment of and support for looked-after children will be a key priority in our programme of work. We welcome the recent report on this issue from the NSPCC, as mentioned by a number of noble Lords, and agree that getting assessment right when children enter care is critical. All looked-after children already have an annual health assessment, which must include an assessment of their emotional and mental as well as their physical health. That assessment, which informs the development of their health plan, should take account of the information provided from the strengths and difficulties questionnaire which is completed by their carer. The guidance also sets out clear expectations that all looked-after children should have targeted and dedicated support through child and adolescent mental health services and other services according to their need, arranged by CCGs, local authorities and NHS England. However, I accept the point made by the noble Earl that, for some young people with a range of problems, a follow-on referral to specialist health services is required.

The Department for Education hosted a round table last month, bringing together children’s social care and mental health stakeholders, to discuss how to improve mental health services for adopted children. As a result, we are considering how centres of excellence, possibly linked to regional adoption agencies, might enable the mental health needs of looked-after and adopted children to be better met.

At the moment, the specialist support that many adopted children need in order to address the effects of abuse and neglect in their early years is simply not available in their area, as the number of adopted children at local authority level is too low to ensure that the right provision is there. Assessment and commissioning of specialist support on a regional scale will allow providers to expand their services, provide better value for money for the taxpayer and help ensure that all adoptive families receive a consistently high quality of assessment and provision.

In addition, we are providing £4.5 million of funding this financial year to accelerate the development and implementation of regional adoption agencies. Adoption support, including mental health, is a key element of that. We are clear that regional adoption agencies must have a focus on improving the assessment of adopted children’s mental health needs and the provision of appropriate mental health support services.

Regional adoption agencies will be able to make use of the government-funded Adoption Support Fund, as the noble Earl mentioned. More than 2,000 families have already benefited from £7.5 million of therapeutic services provided by the fund for adopted children and their families. We know that getting a high-quality assessment of need is critical, and local authorities are increasingly using the fund to pay for specialist assessments and, where appropriate, specialist therapeutic support.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, asked about harder-to-place children. We are providing £30 million to help pay the interagency fee to both local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies so that harder-to-place children might be adopted more quickly. More than 200 children have already been placed through this new scheme. On recruiting adopters for harder-to-place children, we believe that recruitment from a wider geographical base than simply a local authority, which takes into account the needs of children across a number of local authorities in a regional recruitment strategy and uses specialist techniques for recruiting adopters of harder-to-place children, will have an important effect.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, said that schools needed expertise in supporting looked-after children and children with mental health issues. We made changes in the Children and Families Act to introduce a virtual school head for looked-after children. This measure was designed specifically to ensure that looked-after children receive the support that they need at school.

I hope that noble Lords will see from this range of initiatives the importance that this Government and the previous Government have attached to ensuring that our most vulnerable children receive the support that they need, and that we are already committed to meeting the objectives of these amendments. I hope that the noble Earl will feel reassured enough not to press them.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate on these amendments today and for the supportive comments made by many of your Lordships. I am also grateful for the care with which the Minister has responded: to some extent, I am somewhat reassured. I was interested to hear what she said about centres of excellence and that seems most welcome. In Wales, for instance, a fostering charity that provides services has to find its own mental health professionals, because there simply is not enough of a CAMHS in that particular area of Wales to provide for it. I can imagine, as the noble Baroness says, that there will be areas where there is a deficit of expertise, and therefore the principle of drawing in from the best elsewhere—as provided in the academies programme—is a good principle to utilise.

The noble Baroness referred to the strengths and difficulties questionnaire and to the fact that the initial and ongoing health assessments look at the emotional and other needs of young people in care. That is welcome. However, given the experience of these children before entering care and that that they are pulled away from their families into the care system and have that trauma too, I feel that that is not sufficient. They need at the very beginning to see a specialist and to have a specialist assessment. I do not want to push that too hard but, as we speak, I remember a young woman who had been through the care system and whose brother was in the care system with mental health difficulties. She must have been 22 or so and she said to me that what she would have liked to have had when she first went into care was a therapist to speak to and somebody to stick with her through the care system—they had one mental health professional to stick with her through the system—and she wished the same for her brother, who was having difficulties.

I am going to make a slight detour and I hope that your Lordships will forgive me. These are difficult issues. In the past, the Department for Education used to employ civil servants who had a long tenure and a lot of experience in one particular area. For instance, the recently deceased Rupert Hughes was one of the chief civil servants behind the Children Act 1989, under Baroness Thatcher’s Government. I used to serve with him as a trustee for several years. One did not realise his important background from meeting with him but from hearing about it from others and seeing how important his memorial service was to so many people who knew of him. He was a hugely important figure. In dealing with these systemic responses to the difficult questions that we are discussing today, I wonder whether the Minister might consider what more might be done to ensure that there is a continuity of experience within the Civil Service to deal with these difficult problems over time. I do not think that it was this Government—the Conservative Government—who got rid of these longer tenure civil servants but in the past they frequently had more people like Rupert Hughes.

I am sorry for the digression. There is much to be welcomed in what the noble Baroness has said and in the investment that has clearly been made by the Government. I thank her for her helpful reply and other noble Lords for their comments. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 32A withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

I finish where I started. By focusing solely on adoption, this clause does not go far enough. I hope the Minister will tell us why that is the case and what the Government intend to do—although she may regard it as outwith the scope of the clause—for the overwhelming majority of children in care who are not covered by it. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for allowing us this opportunity to have a clause stand part debate.

Of course, it would be much better if children were not taken into care in the first place. We need to think about what we might do to support families better so that these circumstances do not arise—for instance, what we can do to ensure that more fathers stick with their families.

Many boys grow up without a father in the family. Obviously, there are circumstances where parents have to separate, but I am sure that we could do more to enable parents to stick together and to help young men who grow up without a father in the family experience what it is like to have a father through providing mentors and positive male role models. This is a huge challenge for us. Currently, 22% of our children grow up without a father in the home. However, that figure will rise to more than 30% in the next 10 or 15 years, according to the OECD, so we will overtake the United States. Many boys will grow up without a father in the family. How will they know how to be a father if they have not had one themselves? As a society, we need to think what role models and mentors we can provide for these young men.

It is also important to think about the impact of the huge cuts on local authority funding over the last five years or so. I declare an interest as a vice-chair of the Local Government Association, which has expressed concern that we have reached the point where any further cuts will inevitably cut into services for adults and children. I sponsored a meeting recently with a charity that provides excellent support to families—for instance, providing an Arabic-speaking woman to support Arabic-speaking mothers in London who would otherwise be very isolated. That body was on its last legs and said, “You cut us any further and this service will disappear”. It costs a lot to regenerate that service, so it will be lost to those families.

Cuts have also been made to children’s centres. One understands the pressures the Government have been under, their achievement on the economy and on many other levels, and the huge importance of the increase in employment in terms of benefits to families. However, we have to keep in mind the removal of family support services as a result of the cuts to local authorities.

I think that a fairly recent ruling has led more courts to choose to go down the special guardianship line rather than the adoption line. Perhaps the Minister will write to me on the direction of travel in that area. That may be the reason why new regulations on special guardianship are being introduced. I know there are concerns that special guardianship may on occasion be granted too easily.

I agree with what the noble Lord said about the pathways to permanence being many, and adoption being just one of them. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and his ministerial colleagues for introducing the “staying put” amendment on the last education Bill, thereby allowing all young people leaving care stability in circumstances where they wish to remain with their foster carer, and their foster carer wishes them to remain, to the age of 21.

Another issue relates to adolescence. Many children are adopted at a young age and from when they enter primary school until the age of about 10 or 11 they may be quite manageable and easy to deal with. The emotional tantrums and outbursts of the under-fives tend to dissipate. However, when they become teenagers and enter adolescence, all that stuff can re-emerge, so services need to cater for that. I would be interested to hear from the Minister about outcomes for adopted children.

I was speaking to a researcher recently and she said that the issues around teenage pregnancy for adopted children are not that far removed from the issues experienced by young people leaving care. That suggests that some issues are important still even with the benefits of a more permanent experience through the adoption process. It occurred to me that one might think of allowing young people who are aware that they have been adopted to have entry to the care-leaving system. This would give some kind of support for young people growing up in adopted homes through the care-leaving system. I am not sure that that would work but it did occur to me. I will be interested to hear from the Minister what information he has on the outcomes for adopted children, particularly during adolescence and up to the age of 21 or 22.

As I say, I am grateful to the noble Lord for this opportunity to have a more wide-ranging debate on the adoption procedures. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, Amendment 33A seeks to ensure that adoption agencies match children with the right parents for them, regardless of which agency recruited and approved those parents. The noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, also oppose the inclusion of this adoption clause within the Bill.

Clause 13 introduces powers to direct one or more local authorities in England to have certain adoption functions carried out on their behalf by another adoption agency in order to create regional adoption agencies. Regionalising adoption is necessary if we are to remove delay from the adoption system and ensure all adopted families have access to the support services they need wherever they may live.

We have already made significant improvements to the adoption system, with record numbers of children finding permanent loving homes, but there is still more to do. The system remains highly fragmented, with around 180 different adoption agencies currently recruiting and matching adopters. We do not think such a localised system can deliver the best service to some of our most vulnerable children. This is starkly illustrated by the almost 2,500 children who are still waiting for their forever families despite there being enough approved adopters across the country. Forty-five per cent of these children have been waiting longer than 18 months.

That is why we are proposing the measure in this Bill to increase the scale at which adoption services are delivered. Actively encouraging local authorities to join forces and work together will give regional agencies a greater pool of adopters, enabling them to match children more swiftly and successfully with their new families. It will also ensure vital support services are more widely available as these will be planned and commissioned at a more effective scale.

The noble Lords raised important issues about how decisions on matches between children and prospective adopters are made. The amendment seeks to remove the practice of sequential decision-making, where agencies seek first to place children with adopters they have recruited and approved before looking more widely. I appreciate the intention behind the amendment and can reassure the Committee that one of the primary motivations in introducing regional adoption agencies is to prevent this sequential practice and to encourage agencies, both local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies, to work much more closely together, always putting the interests of the children first.

The Government will also continue to invest in national infrastructure to enable matches to be made between children and adopters from different regions. We will also continue to use data to bear down hard on any delay so that regional adoption agencies are incentivised to find the right family for a child as quickly as possible, regardless of which agency recruited and approved the family in question. The proposals in the amendment would be difficult to make work in practice and could have unintended consequences.

Effective agencies will plan their pipeline of adopters so that they match well with the children coming through the system. This means links can be made early in the process to avoid any delay. This good practice would be difficult to maintain if the agency was discouraged from shaping its own recruitment to match the needs of the children it knows are coming through the system. If we break the link between the children waiting and the adults being recruited, the opportunity for strategic targeting of recruitment will be weakened.

Furthermore, if agencies have to consider all adopters available nationally in every single case, it is likely to increase delays as they try to filter and sort a large number of potential adopters. It could also impact negatively on adopters who are considered and rejected for a large number of potential matches.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

I do not think that I can add anything at the moment, but I will think about what the noble Lord said.

The noble Lord asked about the £30 million figure. This is for children in one of the following groups: children who have been waiting for 18 months or more at the time of placement; children who are aged five or over at the time of placement; children who are in a sibling group of two or more and placed as siblings at the time of placement; children who are from a BME background; or children who are disabled.

The noble Lord asked why the clause covers only adoption. If local authorities are interested in bringing together other permanent services voluntarily, they have the freedom to do so. Furthermore, they can apply to our regional adoption agencies support programme for support to create a “permanence hub” that goes wider than just adoption. More than half of the bids for which we announced funding recently are interested in going wider than adoption. However, given the specific nature of the adoption system, this legislation is in relation to adoption only. Adoption is the system where consolidation and scaling-up of services is a pressing concern.

The noble Lord was not around when we passed the Children and Families Act, a substantial piece of legislation with 177 amendments which comprehensively covered wide aspects of SEN and children in care. Had he been, I think that he would have realised that we have substantially reformed the system for children in care and SEN. His comments about the Prime Minister’s recent concerns about adoptions are ill-informed and unfortunate. The Bill does not go any wider because we have covered fostering in the Children and Families Act and taken considerable steps to improve the situation for children in care homes. The children’s homes regulatory framework underwent significant consultation and review in 2014 to enable the development of new quality standards that must be achieved for looked-after children living in children’s homes.

The Prime Minister announced on 28 October that Sir Martin Narey will lead a review into residential care for looked-after children. Sir Martin will report his findings and recommendations in spring next year. The overall purpose of the review is to set out the role of residential care within the wider care system and to make recommendations about how outcomes for children who are currently placed in residential care can be improved. Given the proportion of looked-after children who have poor mental health, it is likely that the review will explore mental health and well-being of looked-after children in residential settings.

This year, we are providing up to £4.5 million of start-up funding to support the development of regional adoption agencies. As my noble friend Lady Evans mentioned, we have already announced the first 14 projects, which involve more than 100 local authorities and more than 20 voluntary adoption agencies. However, for that small number of local authorities which prove unwilling to rise to the challenge and to get involved voluntarily, we need the power in the Bill as a backstop measure. Without it, children in those local authorities would miss out. They would continue to face unnecessary delay, which we know causes lasting harm, and miss out on the vital support that they need. I therefore recommend that this clause stand part of the Bill and I hope that noble Lords will feel reassured enough not to press their amendments.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I was particularly interested to hear what the Minister said about Martin Narey and his work around children’s homes, which is very welcome. I endorse what he said about the quality standards for children’s homes, which are a step forward. If there is one thing that I might ask him to bring up with his colleague, Edward Timpson MP, it would be with regard to residential childcare. It is a matter of great regret that mental health and social care in children’s homes have not been embedded together from the word go. I was talking to a psychiatrist about the history of residential care in this country. We have some excellent residential care, but I am afraid that in general the quality is pretty variable in my experience.

The continentals were interested in our approach. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, published his report on staff in children’s homes, Choosing with Care, which I think came out in 1993. In the witness evidence to that inquiry the psychiatrist said that on the continent staff in children’s homes have an ongoing relationship with mental health professionals. I discovered later that they learned that from us. If we only had that ongoing partnership in all our children’s homes, we would see better outcomes and better protection for children in those homes. I am asking for a model where a clinical psychologist, who is appropriately trained, a child psychotherapist or some other mental health professional goes into children’s homes regularly—maybe once a fortnight—and speaks with the manager and staff, providing an opportunity for them to talk about their relationships with young people and how they are managing them.

In my experience that has such an effective input. This kind of work is emotionally exhausting. People talk about the turnover of staff and how they just burn out after a few years. However, if there was that kind of support, staff would be far more likely to stay. There would be a continuity of relationship, which is so important, and experience would be built over time. Staff members would have years of experience of children with complex needs and they would know the right things to do. We should make sure that all children’s homes have that close support from CAMHS which would make all the difference in this area. I am glad to hear from the Minister of Martin Narey’s review.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

I thank both the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the Minister for their replies to the debate. I very much share the comments of the noble Earl relating to the importance of role models, particularly for boys. Having a father figure or male in the household is important for many reasons.

I note that the noble Earl picked up the point I made about resources for local authorities. The Minister did not, but in fairness to him that is not his remit. It is important if we are looking at the broader context. The £30 million that has been made available will be welcome and well used. There will still be people in the hard-to-place groups that the Minister highlighted, as well as those who have been waiting for some time in the logjam. They will need specific assistance. At a time when local authority budgets are shrinking, it would be helpful if the Minister had something to say about the clause being robust enough to withstand the stresses and strains that will inevitably come in the years immediately ahead of us.

I note what the Minister said about the Narey review. I await that with interest as it will cover important issues. I hope that it will provide some positive ways forward. In terms of the overall structure, we can exchange a bit of political knockabout across this Committee Room but the professionals who are doing the job daily—I mentioned the NSPCC, Barnardo’s and the voluntary adoption agencies—would not have been speaking to members of the opposition parties had they not been sufficiently concerned that the proposals as they stand, and how they are likely to play out, would create further difficulties in the future. As I said earlier, it is not me or my colleagues that the Minister has to reassure but those at the sharp end. It appears, so far at least, that they are not reassured.

I was disappointed that the Minister made a rather dismissive remark about my comment on the Prime Minister. I note that in his earlier remarks, the Minister himself talked about loving families. He must realise that the point I was making was that the Prime Minister’s statement seemed to suggest that other forms of care were of a lesser value, or were not providing enough loving homes, whereas adoption did. That was the point I was trying to make. Adoption seems to be a buzzword within the department and the Prime Minister has used it in this context. I think that is unhelpful and, again, the professionals in the field think it is unhelpful. There are many loving homes that are not the subject of adoption orders. That was the point I was trying to make. It just so happened that the Prime Minister had made the remark. I want to see children secure in whatever form of care is best for them. If it is adoption, fine; if it is any of the other forms of care, so be it. I want to see the resources available to make sure that permanence is the watchword for those children.

It has been a lively and, I think, helpful debate. A lot of the points have been highlighted and we will return to them in other forums. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.