Children and Families Bill

Lord Bishop of Leicester Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Leicester]

My Lords, as other noble Lords have said, there is much to welcome in this Bill, especially the important changes for looked-after and adopted children. I add the support from this Bench too for the broad ambition of the Bill to extend a greater level of choice, participation and long-term support for young people with special educational needs and their families. I declare an interest as a former chair of the Children’s Society and I am delighted that my successor, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro, will take part in this debate.

I want to touch briefly on three particular areas: care leavers, young carers and children with special educational needs. First, I am concerned that we may have missed an important opportunity during the passage of the Bill to make a much-needed change for care leavers. These are young people who are in need of special attention and ongoing support as they transition into adulthood. One particular category of care leavers who are seriously disadvantaged is those who are subject to immigration control. Many of those young people are here on their own with no parent or legal carer looking out for them and have come here from places such as Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Eritrea to seek sanctuary. They have often lost their loved ones. They have experienced unimaginable violence and abuse. Some may have been recruited as child soldiers or have been exploited in multiple ways. However, when they come to the United Kingdom for safety, too often they are denied the protection they need due to the decision-making process within government departments. They can be left in a limbo where they are not recognised as refugees, but cannot return home because it is too dangerous for them to do so. As they turn 18, they get caught by immigration restrictions which put them at risk of being made homeless and going hungry.

A report by the Children’s Society entitled I Don’t Feel Human was published in 2012 and highlighted this issue by showing how young people who had come to this country on their own as unaccompanied children were ending up destitute and homeless. This was because they were being cut off from the local authority support as they turned 18 due to their uncertain immigration status.

Many of those young people are destitute and resort to self-harming and attempt suicide out of sheer desperation about their situation. We need to do what we can to ensure that those vulnerable young people continue to get the support they need as long as they are here. Would the Minister be open to exploring making an amendment to Schedule 3 to the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 to ensure that it does not apply to lone children and care leavers?

I want to say a brief word about young carers. The recent census from 2011 stated that there were approximately 166,000 young carers in the United Kingdom, but there is reason to believe that that is just the tip of the iceberg, as many young carers remain hidden from the view of the professionals. I know from my experience how many of them live lives that are profoundly restricted, demanding and exhausting, bearing responsibilities well beyond what is reasonable for their years. When the Children's Society looked into the long-term outcomes for young carers in its recent report, Hidden from View, it found no strong evidence that young carers are more likely than their peers to come into contact with support agencies, despite government recognition that that needs to happen. That research also found that young carers are 1.5 times more likely than their peers to have a special educational need or a disability. Young carers are more likely than the national average to be not in education, employment or training between the ages of 16 and 19.

That is why I welcome what the Children’s Minister in the other place said when he made a clear commitment to consider how legislation might be changed so that rights and responsibilities are clearer to young carers and practitioners alike in this important area. I also welcome his commitment to a “whole family” approach to the assessment of care needs. It is therefore important and encouraging that the Children’s Minister and the Minister for Care Services have come together to ensure that both the adults’ legislation in the form of the Care Bill and the children's legislation which we are discussing today can work together to allow for whole-family approaches.

Can the Minister update us on when we might see any proposed changes to legislation to support that approach? I would also welcome any update from the Minister about the work that his department is doing to support the linking of assessments across adult and children's services.

Finally, I would like to say a word about children with special educational needs. I welcome much that is here, but share the disappointment of the consortium of national specialist colleges that many of the amendments tabled in Committee in the other place proved to be unsuccessful. In particular, can the Minister provide greater clarity on the composition and functioning of the Section 41 list of providers that young people will be able to request for inclusion on their education, health and care plan? Can the Minister ensure that there is positive affirmation in the Bill that young people will be entitled to an education, health and care plan up to the age of 25 and ensure that local authorities will not end these plans too early?

On these Benches we warmly welcome the fact that the Government have chosen to give legislative priority to a number of very important issues that affect children and young people. We look forward to making our contribution to shaping this Bill in its passage through this House.