Young People

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, for initiating this debate. I declare my interest as a governor of Coram, the children’s charity. Part of Coram, Coram Voice, delivers on behalf of the Department for Education the national advocacy safety net and advice service for looked-after children and care leavers, which goes under the name Always Heard. Our role is to attempt, as best we can, to voice the needs, concerns and experiences of the children and young people who are not represented here in person and who, in most instances, do not yet qualify to have their voices heard through exercising their right to vote.

The Prime Minister, yesterday morning, in what was perhaps even by her standards a rather busy day, said that she wants,

“a thriving economy with nowhere and nobody left behind; a stronger society where everyone can make the most of their talents”.

Those are laudable aims, but Brexit is, and has been, so all-consuming and reactive that it has allowed far less focus on those in danger of being left behind than they deserve. Debates such as this remind us of other pressing priorities. Surely, helping children and young people who are in many instances being left behind is a priority in which we all have a personal stake.

I will focus first on the issue of providing adequate independent advocacy for the more than 70,000 children and young people in England who are reliant on the state for their care and well-being because their families cannot safely care for them or they have suffered abuse or neglect. The complexities of and inconsistencies in the system mean that many children and young people are unaware of their rights and unsure where to turn for help, and they struggle to access the support to which they are legally entitled. An independent advocate could ensure that children’s views and wishes are communicated clearly and are taken into account—a point made clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Addington.

A 2016 report from the Children’s Commissioner for England indicated that half of local authorities were supporting less than 8% of the children they considered eligible for advocacy. Less than 10% of children in care and care leavers accessed a service in half of local authorities.

Secondly, I want to highlight the concern that many local authorities are struggling to provide timely or effective support to children who present as homeless or at risk of homelessness. The charity Centrepoint estimates that 103,000 young people in the UK presented to their council in 2017-18 as homeless or at risk, and less than half received effective support. And this is nearly 10 years since the Government issued clear joint guidance to children’s services and local housing authorities about their duties to secure or provide accommodation for homeless 16 and 17 year-olds—guidance that has recently been reinforced as a result of the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017. An important part of that Act is a new data-collection initiative, H-CLIC, which has the potential at last to create a central uniform hub of information that can be used to inform wider policy. What progress has been made on implementing the H-CLIC software and putting in place the necessary staff training programmes?

I suggest four ideas to the Minister for the Government’s consideration. The first is a duty on local authorities to provide an active offer of advocacy support. The second is the right to an independent advocate, enshrined in law, for all children and young people receiving or seeking care or support from the state, including those leaving care to adoption. Thirdly, there should be a requirement for local authorities to ensure provision of independent advocacy support and its active promotion to any child approaching local authority children’s or housing services. Fourthly, there should be a requirement to collate data on children presenting as homeless, including how many receive support under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989, how many receive support under Section 20 and how many were refused support.

Data is king; without it one is flying blind. It is difficult to identify trends, good or bad, in a timely fashion without it. It is essential in helping to identify best practices, and without reliable data it is impossible to establish appropriate key performance indicators, which create an easily intelligible shorthand to understand and analyse the extent to which we are succeeding in our legal and moral duty to help these children and young people.