Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Baroness King of Bow

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I would like to support Amendment 89. I am grateful to the Government for clarifying the importance they place on long-term foster placements, but this amendment is also welcome. In the Government’s very important drive to secure more adoption placements, the risk is that it might appear to some that they do not value as much the very important role of foster carers who provide long-term placements for children. I welcome this debate and I encourage the Minister and his colleagues to take every opportunity, whenever they talk about the continuity of care that young people who have been traumatised and enter the care system need, to also speak very highly and positively of foster carers who provide long-term foster placements.

[Baroness King of Bow (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 90A, which would place a duty on local authorities and specialist NHS children and young people’s mental health services in England to provide long-term support for adopted children. I thank Adoption UK and the other adoption agencies for the work they have done on this issue. We believe that it is imperative that the Government change the law to give all adoptive families the right to appropriate adoption support when they need it. I have been calling for this for many years, as have all those colleagues who sat on the Lords Select Committee on Adoption Legislation, chaired by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, whom we heard from earlier.

Our 2013 report stated:

“We are concerned that the provision of post-adoption support is often variable and sometimes inadequate. We believe such support is essential to ensuring the stability of adoptive placements, and to increasing the number of adopters coming forward. We therefore recommend a statutory duty on local authorities and other service commissioning bodies to cooperate to ensure the provision of post-adoption support”.

That, essentially, is what the amendment would do in the areas outlined.

This is a very important issue. Most adopted children have experienced abuse or neglect in their early lives, and they require ongoing support. I usually welcome programmes such as the adoption support fund, which the Minister mentioned earlier, but as we know, it is currently dependent on short-term funding arrangements. Given the extreme difficulties adoptive families can face, they need to be given a right to access programmes such as the adoption support fund.

Further supporting evidence from the research report Beyond the Adoption Order: Challenges, Interventions and Adoption Disruption of April 2014 highlights startling findings. We should bear in mind that this was a government-backed report. It found, for example, that the majority of adoptive parents were,

“dissatisfied with the overall response from support agencies”.

It also stated:

“About a quarter of parents described major challenges with children who had multiple and overlapping difficulties”.

Some of the children’s behaviour, such as aggression,

“self-harm, night terrors, soiling, manipulation and control”,

was literally ruining their lives. The report continued:

“Many were struggling to get the right support in place. Parents reported that they were physically and mentally exhausted”.

In some cases, a lack of support led to a breakdown in adoption. The report also stated:

“Respite care was often used as a last ditch attempt to keep the family together”,

and was almost never used “proactively”. I cite one other finding from the research report which is possibly its most shocking—namely, that adoptive parents were forced to use the police “as a support agency”.

I strongly urge the Government to accept the spirit behind Amendment 90A, which places a duty on local authorities and specialist services. We all know that children adopted from care are the most vulnerable in Britain. The neglect and abuse they experience, even in the womb or after birth, does not disappear just because they are adopted. We clearly must do better for these children.