Children and Families Bill

Lord Northbourne Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I support these two amendments. I am either patron or president of the Grandparents’ Association and I have a particular example of a friend of mine, who took over the care of her goddaughter at very short notice. She would otherwise have gone into care. The social workers encouraged my friend to keep the child and to take a residence order. Eventually she got a special guardianship order, which she has at the moment, but once she got the residence order she discovered that the social workers were basically saying, “That’s fine; now we don’t have to pay you, which is a very good reason why we didn’t want you to be a foster mother”. This is not as it should be.

It is not unusual for this to happen. Family and friends who are carers are quite often treated this way. Because they are prepared to care for one of their own family or somebody close to them, it does not become the requirement of the local authority to give them any support. I battled for this friend of mine to have some support and they gave her a small amount as a sort of honorarium. It really was very small indeed. It happens that some quite young grandparents or other carers, having achieved a good position in a job and a comfortable lifestyle, suddenly find themselves, after a daughter or daughter-in-law dies, taking over the care of a child or children at short notice. Their standard of living drops dramatically, often because they can no longer keep their job. They are therefore losing their comfortable lifestyle. Not only do they have an extremely exhausting time caring for their grandchildren, who of course they love dearly. It is also very trying because they find themselves short of money in a way that they had not been when they were ordinary grandparents and out at work.

It is a real need that the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, has set out with such care and the Government really should be looking at it, because in the majority of cases local authorities will not pay if they do not have to. Many grandparents in the association with which I am connected are in the very position that I have just described.

[Lord Northbourne (CB)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss on this issue. I declare an interest as I am also a member of the Grandparents’ Association. One point that my noble and learned friend did not make is that there is a history of some social workers going round at 2 am with little Johnny and saying, “Are you prepared to take him in? We are otherwise going to take him into care”. Of course the grandparent takes him in and then she has lost her money.

[Baroness Drake (Lab)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Massey’s amendments because it is worth restating that we are addressing here a community of an estimated 300,000 children. It is not a minor group of children; this is a major group for whom friend and family carers are caring. They are being raised by these carers, in many instances as an alternative to being in the care system. In most instances, that produces better outcomes for these children than entering the care system and with huge savings to the state. Yet many of them get too little help and too little support. Therefore, on the one hand as a society we depend on them to protect many children, but we reciprocate with such limited support.

Research reveals that a minority of kinship carers receive financial or practical support from their local authority. Only the foster carers—about 5% of all kinship carers—are entitled to financial support, as my noble friend said. For other carers, the support is discretionary. Yet kinship and family and friends care is the most common form of permanency for children who cannot live with their birth families. Research from Joan Hunt at the University of Oxford shows that there is no relationship between a child’s needs and whether they receive support from the local authority, and that those with the highest needs may in fact be less likely to get any help. This disparity between those needing support and those getting support is reinforced by research findings, which suggest that most family and friends care arrangements—86%—are initiated by the carers themselves rather than the social workers, so giving rise to some of the situations that the noble and learned Baroness referred to a moment ago.

However, it makes no sense at all that such vulnerable children and their carers should face such a lottery when it comes to support. Kinship carers have done the right thing by taking in a child who cannot live at home but then they are often left to struggle alone. However, the children for whom they care have similar high needs to those of the children looked after by the local authority. As a survey conducted by Grandparents Plus found, 45% of kinship carers were looking after children who had experienced abuse or neglect, 44% cared for children who had experienced parental drug or alcohol misuse, 22% were in kinship care because of parental illness, mental illness or disability, and 21% because of domestic violence. Therefore, despite the importance of these placements and the experience of the children, they are often left without adequate support, many under great strain.

Notwithstanding the existing statutory guidance on providing support for carers, to which my noble friend Lady Massey referred in great detail, I reiterate that the legal position remains that, while local authorities have to provide support for looked-after children, they do not have to support the remaining vast majority of children in family and friends care who are not looked after. These amendments would begin to address that failure by putting the onus on local authorities to provide support to meet the identified needs of children who cannot live with their parents and would otherwise be in care.

Research also reveals that many of these grandparents and kinship carers are living in poverty or on low incomes. Analysis of census micro-data from 2001 found that 71% of children in kinship care were experiencing multiple deprivations. I can put it no better than a powerful quotation from a study called The Poor Relations? By Elaine Farmer, Julie Selwyn and others from Bristol University:

“We found that many informal kinship carers lived in grinding poverty, which wore them down and reduced their quality of life. Yet, this was often a consequence of caring for the kinship children—many had given up good jobs to take the children … or in the case of retired carers, had only their pensions to live on … Most carers were under significant strain bringing up the kinship children on low incomes, often when they themselves were unwell”.

Yet these carers face significant additional costs, as eloquently detailed by my noble friend. An example is the widowed grandmother living on a pension raising a six year-old grandson due to the mother’s drug and alcohol difficulties, quoted in the Grandparents Plus report Too Old to Care:

“All my child benefit, £20 a week, goes on my bus fares and his bus fares to get him to school and back. I did say to him about moving schools but he just got so upset. He’s had enough people in his little life so I just keep taking him to school”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

It is the job of the judge to do his or her best to lower that. As I say, it is some time since I had experience of dealing with this issue but I have had that experience. However, it is counterproductive to do the opposite and to make important, and put up as a presumption which may be rebutted, something which is absolutely at the heart of the difficulty between the parents. As the noble Baroness says, this situation often arises. I feel that a judge would be better able to keep the situation under control if he or she did not have to focus on whether or not the contrary was proved. The judge would just have to take account of the nature of the relationships and make sure that they were properly taken into account when addressing the major question of principle.

[Lord Northbourne]

I seek guidance on one small issue. It is probably very stupid of me not to know about this but I am sure legal colleagues will be able to help me. Can the arrangement be changed? For instance, a little boy of two would be better placed with his mother but, by the time he is 12, his father may well become a much more important part of his life.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

If that is addressed to me, the answer is certainly yes. I have a distinct recollection of a case in which the mother left the family at a very early stage and the father and his mother had to look after the child. After a while, the child’s mother decided to come back. She had had a relationship which soured after a year or two and she thought that she would come back. You have to take account of the existing situation and the paramountcy of the welfare of the child, which may alter over time and need to be reviewed from time to time. There is plenty of machinery to do that, although, as my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss said, one’s time may be consumed by other things. However, so long as you can get a review, that can be dealt with.