Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede

Monday 10th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 2 rectifies an ongoing anomaly in the way 17 year-old children are treated by the police. While all other children detained by the police are entitled to a local authority bed, 17 year-olds are not. This means they must be held in a police station. This is one of the remaining areas where 17 year-olds are excluded from the protections available to other children, and it needs to change. I tabled amendments on this matter in Committee and on Report and I will not repeat all the arguments made then, but I would like remind the House briefly why this matter is so important.

Since 2010, three 17 year-old children have taken their own lives after being treated as adults by the police. They were Kesia Leatherbarrow, Eddie Thornber and Joe Lawton. It is worth taking a moment to think about what it means for a child to die in this way, the terrible waste and the pain that it causes those they leave behind. These children are much loved and deeply missed, and I should like to take a moment to read out some brief words of remembrance about each of them. Nick Lawton said of his son, Joe:

“He was a beautiful boy, everyone agreed. Joe was a happy, successful 17 year-old studying for his A-levels. He is missed every moment of every day”.

Eddie Thornber’s mum, Ann, says:

“Eddie was head boy of his school, looking forward to studying in America. We would do anything to make sure Eddie was still with us”.

Martina Brincat Baines, Kesia’s mother, said:

“Kesia was my only daughter. She was beautiful. A funny, lively girl who, despite her mental health issues, was loving and great company, she was so hugely loved and is so hugely missed”.

In Committee and on Report, the Minister explained that a review was looking at the treatment of 17 year-olds in police custody and that the Government wanted to receive and digest its recommendations before acting. However, things have moved on since then. The review has recommended that the law be changed; the Home Office has committed to do so as soon as possible; and recently the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children published the report of its inquiry on children and the police, and recommended that this change take place. I pay tribute to the chair of that group, the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, for the work of that important inquiry.

There has been much movement forward. Almost 30,000 people have signed a petition requesting that today be the day that this law is changed. I look forward to the Minister’s response and beg to move.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I have given the Minister’s office notice of the point that I am about to raise. It is to do with youth anonymity, which is a slightly different point from that made by the noble Earl.

On Report, the Government introduced amendments which are now Clause 77 of the Bill. Those amendments gave lifetime reporting restrictions in criminal proceedings for witnesses and victims under 18. The amendments clearly give the judge discretion to give lifetime anonymity to witnesses and victims. It is also clear from the Government’s amendments that that discretion of the judge does not extend to the accused.

What I would like to know—as I said, I have given notice of my question to the noble Lord’s office—is what the status would be of somebody if they had been found not guilty at trial. Clearly, after they have been found not guilty, they are no longer accused, but they may well still be a witness. Would that discretion of the judge extend to those found not guilty at trial?

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel]

I rise briefly to support these amendments and to make three points. First, above all, children who have experienced trauma—indeed, all children—need parents who stick with them through their lives. Children who have experienced abuse over periods of time need carers who stick with them over the years and who are reliable and consistent.

Last night, I was at a meeting and met psychiatrists from all over the world who have just published a book on the mental health of looked-after children. The final point in the editor’s chapter in the book was that he encouraged all clinicians always to remember that the most important thing to help these children recover from past trauma is to enable them to have relationships with people who care about them and stick with them. Family relationships—long-term committed relationships—are what they need. If they cannot find that at that particular time in their lives then, as a clinician, you need to equip them to be able to make and keep those kinds of relationships. It seems to me that that is much more likely to happen in these kinship care models than in foster care, although it often happens there too.

Secondly, good social care interventions can make a difference. The most popular intervention that foster carers talk to me about is support to understand how they manage the behaviour of their young people. All young people can, at different times in their lives, be difficult to manage, but young people who have been traumatised, abused or neglected will often display very difficult behaviours. In fact, in 2004 a report from the Office for National Statistics on the mental health of looked-after children highlighted that those in foster care had, I think, a 40% rate of mental disorder compared with, I think, a 5% rate in the general population. The rate for those in residential care was 70% or so. A very high percentage of those mental disorders are conduct disorders, things such as troubling behaviours from young people. Carers need support to understand and manage those behaviours, and they tell me they really appreciate it.

They also need to be connected with other carers with the same experience. When foster carers are helped to connect regularly with other foster carers in the same position and the same job, they value being part of a community of carers and being able to share experience and learn from it.

Finally, I take this opportunity to highlight the letter sent to me by the noble Lord, Lord Nash, regarding the recruitment and retention of child and family social workers. It is key to this area, to trafficked children and to children returning from care. In this brief debate, we have heard examples of poor and variable practice in child and family social work. I know that several noble Lords trained and practised as social workers. It is enormously encouraging that, in recent years, in the previous Government and in this Government, there has been a real commitment to raising the professional status of child and family social work—to raising entry requirements and training standards. In his letter, among several other things, the Minister drew my attention to a review by Sir Martin Narey commissioned by the Government into the initial training of social workers, which is being published in January, and to new data-collecting on social workers on the front line in local authorities, so that we will have a better understanding of how well we are retaining the new social workers that we are recruiting. I draw that to your Lordships’ attention because I think it is important.

I also want to commend the Government for taking this consistent stance towards social work, which in the past has been far too neglected. One of the key ingredients for getting better outcomes for children, whether they are in kinship, foster or other settings, is to get support from the right professionals, and I hope we are moving in that direction now. I strongly support these amendments.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I wanted to speak briefly in support of these amendments. My noble friend Lady Massey has set out the framework and how important it is statistically, but I was sitting as a family magistrate only last week and I thought it might be interesting for the Committee to hear the decisions that we were invited to make as a court. The scenario was of a two year-old boy in a successful fostering arrangement. His uncle had come forward with his wife. They already had three children and they were willing to take on the boy. That would put them in the situation of having four children under the age of six in a two-bedroom flat in London. All parties supported the arrangement that was to be made by the court and the decisions that we were invited to make as a court were to finalise the financial arrangements between the local authority and the carers. There was a bit of brokering and toing and froing on what those payments were to be. As far as I know, they were discretionary but nevertheless they were offered. As I say, it was a bit of a haggle but a figure was agreed for the kinship arrangements to go ahead.

The second decision we were asked to make was whether to put in place a special guardianship order. This was opposed by the local authority but we decided to put it in place in any case, very much for the reasons that my noble friend has said. We believed that it would help the carers to have the support of the local authority for the first 12 months. That was no reflection on their ability to be good parents—in fact, we were sure they would be—but we wanted to help them. So we went against the local authority’s wishes on that particular decision. The other decision we made was to put in place the contact arrangements for the mother. The mother was a recovering drug addict. She was in court and we wished her well. We arranged that she would have contact on a yearly basis and that can be reviewed in due course.

Another issue that we were invited to address was the housing arrangements of this family. As I said, they would have four children in a two-bedroom flat. There was really very little we could do about that other than include a sympathetic paragraph in the judgment, urging local authorities to review their situation sympathetically. Realistically, they were looking at a two or three-year wait for a transfer. Nevertheless, that was something we put in the judgment. The final thing we put in, which we thought about very carefully, were the transfer arrangements. As I said, this particular little boy had been in a successful fostering arrangement where he had blossomed for two years and now he was moving to another arrangement. Obviously, however well-meaning everyone was, it would be a difficult transition arrangement for the boy.

The point that I wanted to make is that all the parties supported this. The local authorities put extra money in and the mother agreed to the arrangement, even though she was losing her boy and the kinship carers would have to take the child on. This is a good solution for all concerned, and if it can be put on a more statutorily substantial footing, I think that that will be to the benefit of all concerned.