Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Hampton Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to speak in support of Amendment 62 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler.

The case for this is, really, fairly straightforward. Children in care often have quite strong mental health needs and are not in the best of mental health. Care leavers comprise about 1% to 3% of the general youth population, but that translates into them being responsible for one quarter of the homeless population. That group are twice as likely to die prematurely than the general population, and in many cases suicide is the largest reason for that high death rate. That is a fairly strong causal link between children in the care system, or those going into the care system, having fragile mental health, and that not being picked up as early as it should be. This amendment simply asks that we please ensure that, when children have an assessment of the quality of their mental health, the practitioners who are doing that are qualified in mental health. Only in that way can we be sure that we catch those vulnerable young people at that early stage and that they do not become one of the depressing statistics that I have just mentioned.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 62, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and to which I have added my name. I declare, as ever, that I am a teacher and I thank the National Children’s Bureau for its help on this.

Children do not come into care because they have won the lottery of life; trauma is unlikely to be far from their lives. Yet our assessment processes still rely on professionals who may have little or no training in mental health or trauma-informed practice. Care-experienced young people told the Education Select Committee, as part of its inquiry into children’s social care, that local authorities are not always fulfilling their obligations to include emotional and mental health in their health assessments of children in care. One young person told the committee:

“I feel a lot could be explained if they understood the experience of trauma. It will take time. It will not go away at night, and sometimes before it gets better it could get worse. No one talks about that. You will not be okay if you are going into care; there is a reason why you are there, and so it is important that the minute you go into care every child should have a mandatory assessment, physical and mental, and there should be that on-call support for them”.


Bringing qualified mental health practitioners into the mandatory health assessment of children in care is simple, practical and overdue. I hope that the Government will use this amendment as an opportunity to do more for children in care and to make their lives and, as importantly, their futures better.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I feel a strong need to speak on Amendment 61, this wonderful amendment, on

“Amending the sufficiency duty to prevent children being moved far away from home”.


Especially where a child has been put under a deprivation of liberty order, if you then move them a long way away, it means that parents or even foster carers have quite a difficulty in keeping in touch with the child. So the sufficiency duty on local authorities should be amended from requiring them to take

“steps that secure, so far as reasonably practicable”

to requiring them to take

“all reasonable steps to secure”,

which is a far better phrase that gives some assurance.

As somebody who fostered children and was in touch with other foster carers, I know that children were put a long way away when, under the expression of the Children Act 1989, steps had been taken that were “reasonably practicable”. But, actually, you could scratch under the surface and see the pressure in an area such as Tulse Hill near Brixton, where I was a vicar and where a lot of children were placed in care. The council had a big job to do, and your Lordships and I know that it was extremely busy. It is easy to say, “Yes, I’ve taken reasonable steps and done what is practicable”, whereas “all reasonable steps” should be taken, and you need to catalogue them in case somebody asks questions.

I suggest to the Committee that Amendment 61 would remove a lot of anxiety from parents whose children find themselves deprived of their liberty. Moving them a long way away is almost suggesting that parents will, or maybe will not, find a way of going to where these children have been placed. In the place where I ministered for 13 years, they were always living in a time of financial crisis. Buses were needed, taking a long time, to get to where these children had been put, which was such a huge burden.

I hope the Minister will see that this amendment would actually help our children. They are not someone else’s children; they are our children. As that wonderful African proverb says, it takes a whole village to raise and educate a child. They are ours; would we be happy if they were placed such a long way from home? That would be quite a burden, and I congratulate the noble Baroness for tabling this amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, this is a very important and sensitive area of law, and valid issues and concerns are raised in the amendments spoken to so ably by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. I also pay tribute, as she did, to the work of the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory in this area. I know the Government have been working hard to see what can be done and to give various assurances. I hope the Minister can provide further assurances today so that we can all be satisfied that they are taking this issue very seriously and have a clear plan to tackle it.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

I have added my name to Amendment 53. It is vital that children who are deprived of liberty can access quality education. Otherwise, we really are depriving them of hope and a future. I too quote the Children’s Commissioner:

“For the very small number of children where controls on their freedom are necessary in order to keep them or others safe, we must make sure they have not only excellent, individualised care, but also full protection under the law … we have a moral obligation to ensure that children at risk of harm are not simply contained and kept out of the community, but are seen, heard, and given the care and support they need to thrive”.


She continues later:

“Where a deprivation of liberty is authorised, the conditions should include a plan for meeting the child’s specific needs through intensive intervention and work aimed at helping them to be safe in the long-term. This plan should be co-produced by health and social care if appropriate, and could include mental health support, mood and behaviour management, work on addressing risks of exploitation, educational support, and any other specialist therapeutic intervention that is required”.


Once again, adding one word to the Bill could change many futures.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for raising important points regarding Clause 11, which, as noble Lords have identified, relates to some of the most vulnerable children in the country. I know that noble Lords rightly feel particularly strongly about this measure. I thank the noble Baroness for her engagement with my officials ahead of this debate, as well as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield.

It is important to remember that Clause 11 will already make an important change from some of the situations identified by noble Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Meston, correctly and graphically identified some of the challenges with the current operation of the system, which is why this measure seeks to bring more children who would otherwise be deprived of their liberty under the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court within a statutory scheme where they will benefit from enhanced safeguards and protections, which many of the amendments in this group are seeking.

Turning to these amendments, I reiterate that this measure is intended not to encourage the practice of depriving children of their liberty but to ensure that there are appropriate rights and safeguards in place to prevent children being deprived of liberty inappropriately or for longer than is absolutely necessary. We are committed to reducing the number of children in complex situations as part of reforms to rebalance the system away from crisis intervention towards earlier help and to prevent children’s needs escalating to the point where they need to be deprived of their liberty, and to ensuring that when they are, it can happen in more appropriate accommodation than has been the case up to this point.

We are grateful to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee for its scrutiny and have, in government Amendment 57, accepted its recommendation that regulations developed using the powers under Section 25 of the Children Act 1989 be subject to the affirmative procedure, ensuring parliamentary scrutiny and approval in both Houses.

Amendment 56 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, is about joint funding arrangements between partners for children deprived of their liberty under this measure. The Government wholly agree that care for these children must be jointly funded and delivered through an integrated, whole-system approach, which should include social care, health, education and youth justice. However, we do not wish to restrict pooled funding arrangements in the way this amendment does, tying it to the existence of the Section 25 order. We think pooled funding arrangements would be beneficial to a wider cohort of looked-after children, including those whose order has recently come to an end or who are at risk of needing to be deprived of their liberty. This requires testing first to ensure that the right cohort of children and relevant partners are included.

That is why the Department for Education, with NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care, is leading a national programme to tackle underlying systemic failures and to support local areas to work together more effectively. We are building cross-system integration, starting with the peer collaborative convened by the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory—rightly praised by several noble Lords this evening—which identified key elements for transforming care for children with complex trauma, supporting professionals to stand together so that risk is better tolerated and supported.

West Sussex, part of the South East Regional Care Cooperative, is working closely with the ICB to test how a cross-system team can drive integrated support, build an understanding of need and identify gaps in the current pathways across health, social care and justice for this cohort of children. We are not waiting; we are making quick progress in a way that is most likely to be appropriate and solve the problems. Next year we will expand to pilots, where we will evaluate methods of pooled funding, developing best practices that can be adopted and adapted by other local areas. We know that pooled funding works—such as through the better care fund for adults—but legislating now would be premature. We must first test and refine the most effective approach to ensure that the eventual framework enables the right level of cross-system integration and innovation.

Amendment 55 on recovery plans, tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, aims to ensure that there are plans to remove restrictions from a child. The Government agree that no child should be deprived of their liberty any longer than absolutely necessary, which is why there are already several existing duties on local authorities in this regard, including the duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of any child looked after by them, and that placement decisions are informed by a care plan based on an understanding of the child’s needs and best interests.

Rather than legislate further in this space, diverting local authorities’ attention toward navigating an increasingly complex statutory framework instead of focusing on the child’s needs, we want to strengthen the way in which existing legislation is applied, re-emphasising the need for a care plan that is co-designed between all the professionals involved in a child’s care and treatment.

As part of the court application, it is the practice of local authorities to submit the child’s full care plan. The court should be provided with both the restrictions they plan to impose and the action and progress required to end restrictions as quickly as possible. The plan should be formulated with input from all those professionals involved in the child’s care and will be scrutinised by the court and used to assess progress. If the court is not satisfied about the level of detail included in the plan to allow it to monitor progress and de-escalation, the court should require further input from the relevant professionals.

Similarly, regarding Amendment 60 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, relating to the abilities of independent reviewing officers to escalate concerns on the implementation of a child’s plan to Cafcass, IROs already have the statutory power to perform this function. They are responsible for monitoring the performance of local authorities in relation to a child’s care plan and must consider escalating cases to Cafcass whenever appropriate. This includes issues related to deprivation of liberty. It is therefore not necessary to legislate to expand the legal duties of IROs.