Children and Families Bill

Lord Bishop of Truro Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Truro]

My Lords, I want to add my voice to the growing volume of Members of this House who are giving a general welcome to the Bill. I declare an interest that noble Lords will have heard of earlier: I am chairman of the Children’s Society. Your Lordships will have heard my colleague the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester say that I have the privilege of taking over from him in that capacity. I suspect that in these times of financial stringency, the real reason why I became chairman of the Children’s Society is because I share a first name with my colleague and the marketing people are delighted that they do not have to change too much paperwork.

I warmly welcome the emphasis in the Bill on listening to the voice of children. In the Children’s Society, I have the pleasure—I think that that is the right word—when I chair board meetings of always having some young people sitting with us and contributing fully to our meetings. I much commend that as a practice.

The two points that I want to make have of course already been made, so I will not go on at length. The first is something that I mentioned in my maiden speech: the importance of young carers. As others have said and as I was encouraged to hear the Minister say in introducing the Bill, I think we are moving forward to see how this Bill and the Care Bill can be joined up. Young carers are children and young people under 18 who provide regular and ongoing care and emotional support to a family member who is physically or mentally ill, is disabled or misuses substances.

Young carers often do not receive the support that they need. A failure to identify and support young carers and their families can also lead to crisis and avoidable child protection issues. The recent report published by the Children’s Society, entitled Hidden from View, revealed the following things: one in 12 young carers is caring for more than 15 hours per week; about one in 20 miss school because of their caring responsibilities; and young carers have significantly lower educational attainment at GCSE level—the equivalent of nine grades lower, overall, than their peers.

I pay tribute to all the young carers out there who do so much to support their families, who also deserve our support. I thank the National Young Carers Coalition, which has been working together to improve rights for young carers. As I said, this Bill and the Care Bill represent together a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve the long-term outcomes for young carers. Young carers and the organisations that support them have been calling for the same rights for young carers as for adult carers.

It is also important that there is better identification and assessment of young carers so that they and their family get the support that they need. That is why I welcome the statement by the Children’s Minister on Report of this Bill in the other place. He said:

“I have asked officials to look at how the legislation for young carers might be changed so that rights and responsibilities are clearer to young carers and practitioners alike. We will also look at how we can ensure that children’s legislation works with adults’ legislation to support the linking of assessments, as set out in the Care Bill, to enable ‘whole family’ approaches”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/6/13; col. 267.]

I believe that that is a particularly important announcement and I welcome what I think I heard in the Minister’s introduction to the Bill: that that is our direction of travel.

Inappropriate caring roles performed by young people are not being prevented or reduced because the needs of the person for whom the child is caring are not fully met and the needs of the whole family for support are not taken into account. The separation of adults’ and children’s services is a significant structural barrier to improving support for young carers. Stronger legislation will make a difference because it will help to create the right culture to support the whole family.

It would be helpful to hear from the Minister today more about what is being done by the Department for Education and the Department of Health to ensure that changes made to the Children and Families Bill work with adults’ legislation—primarily, of course, the Care Bill—support the linking of assessments and enable the “whole family” approach to carers. I reiterate my thanks to the Government for listening and responding on that important issue.

My second brief point relates to the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, which is also covered in the Bill. I warmly welcome the reforms to the role of the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England introduced in the Bill, and the legislation’s close adherence to the recommendations in the Dunford review. The UK is of course a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and England needs a commissioner with adequate powers in order to meet its obligations under the convention.

The commissioner performs a vital role in promoting the views and best interests of children and young people in England. Under the Bill, the role of the Children’s Rights Director will now fall under the remit of the Children’s Commissioner. In taking on this role, the Children’s Commissioner will be able to provide advice and assistance to specific groups of vulnerable children. That is something that the Children’s Rights Director currently does. The groups specified include children in care, care leavers, children in boarding schools and children receiving social care services. I believe that this is an opportunity to ensure that other vulnerable children who are living away from home or their families—such as, as have been mentioned already, those living in custody, separated children who are seeking asylum or children who have been trafficked—can also receive that advice and assistance.

I understand that the Government would like simply to incorporate the current role of the Children’s Rights Director very neatly into the role of the commissioner. However, this would miss an opportunity to extend the powers to cover children in other circumstances who are also deprived of contact with their families. These vulnerable children need support. Enshrining in legislation the ability to provide support for children living in custody, separated children who are seeking asylum or children who have been trafficked would be an important power for the commissioner. More importantly, it could ensure that a wider group of vulnerable children can receive advice and assistance from this very important role.

I hope that the Minister will consider this carefully during the Lords stages.