Family-strengthening Policies

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Obviously the noble Lord is a great expert in this area. I will do my best to reassure him. The Government recently announced over £1 billion in programmes to develop early help at any point from childhood to adulthood; as the noble Lord hinted, none of us always knows when a crisis might emerge. More specifically, on reducing the number of children in care, we are investing £84 million in the Strengthening Families, Protecting Children programme, which is working with the 17 local authorities with the highest numbers of children in the care system.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, one of the most interesting discoveries in the report, for which the Children’s Commissioner for England is to be commended—it is a really good report—is that policymakers work on households but families themselves think more broadly than households, and that “family” needs to be the thing that drives policy rather than “household”. This is seen, for example, in young offenders and in other areas of life. Can the Minister comment on thinking about changing how policy is made towards family?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

It might take more than the time I am allowed to talk about how policy might be made but, more specifically, it is at the heart of our work on offering children a better start in life through the family hubs that services should meet the needs of families, be seamless to access and have a stress on welcoming; there should be no stigma to accessing them.