Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Storey Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I am very grateful that these amendments have been proposed. They may not go as far as my Private Member’s Bill did a few months ago in terms of seeking a better financial deal for care leavers, but Amendment 40 takes us some considerable way towards that. At least it will make local authorities be honest about what they are and are not doing. My only regret is that it will not completely get rid of the postcode lottery that besets so many young care leavers, particularly if they move from one authority to another. But I am grateful for the amendments the Government have tabled, and I hope that they will be swiftly passed.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I thank my noble friend Lady Tyler for all the work she has done on this important topic. It shows the real power and strength of this House that, by talking to each other, listening and supporting, we can bring about real change, so I thank the Government for putting down these amendments. As my noble friend rightly said, there are so many young people living independently by themselves, and the most important thing is that they have an understanding of how finances work. I do not like the term “financial literacy”, but it is important. The national curriculum is going to bring that in for every young person, but for these young people it is even more important. So, I thank the Minister for getting to a place where we can all support and get behind this important issue.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, I welcome the amendments that the Government have tabled to Clause 8. I think they will meet the aims of our Amendment 35, so I look forward to hearing from the Minister about the additional support that the Government will offer to care leavers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate. Having signed his amendment in Committee, I did not manage to catch up on Report, and I encourage him to think about putting it to a vote if necessary when it gets to that stage.

I support all the amendments in this group, but will speak to Amendment 59, which is about continuing the Staying Put arrangements to the age of 25. As the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, said, I have signed this amendment, along with the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, who is not currently in his place, and the noble Lord, Lord Watson. You could say that that is the broadest possible range of political support imaginable for this amendment.

I spoke extensively on a similar amendment in Committee, so I will not go into it at great length here. I cross-reference the horrific tale I told in Committee about Duncan, who was dragged with no notice at all out of his fostering arrangements and dumped into wildly unsuitable accommodation. That is the kind of thing that is happening to young people now. If we are to think of the state as a statutory parent, as it is to children in care, surely we should expect the same kinds of things from it that we expect from other parents, such as the societal expectation that parents will often have their children at home until age 25 or later. That is a reality that the state should be making provision for.

To pick up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, even this amendment would not finally cover the financial issues here. The Fostering Network notes that three-quarters of foster carers who continue caring after 18 end up financially worse off. The idea that housing benefit or wages—we know how low wages are for young people—might be able to top that up does not reflect the reality of our society.

I was discussing this morning the intrusion of private equity into the fostering system. A quarter of all places in fostering are now provided by private equity-based companies, which are making massive profits. There is a commodification of fostering. We would really like to think about how we can address that issue more broadly and whether there are ways to ensure that massive profits are not being made from this important additional provision that the state should be providing.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I very much look forward to the Minister’s reply on this group of amendments. There are 80,000 children in care—12,000 more than a decade ago—all of whom have different needs and requirements, mature at different ages and experience different feelings. I do not think you can put an arbitrary date on when somebody has to leave. Nationally, young people increasingly stay with their family into their 30s and get all the support that a family gives them. A friend of mine and his wife, the Kellys, foster regularly. They had two foster boys; one came to the age to move on and just said, “I am not going—I am staying”. Malcolm, being the sort of person he is, said “Okay”. That child needed that. He needed that support from the family. I hope the Government will consider this carefully.

On the amendment from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, I do not understand what the problem is. Why can this information not be available? It seems to me good, solid practice for society generally and for people in care and care leavers. I do not understand why we cannot say yes. Will it cost more money? Do we think local authorities do not have the expertise to do this? I would be interested to know why the Minister thinks it cannot be agreed.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, we have had a good debate on this group. I have a great deal of sympathy with the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and would be interested to know whether the Minister knows what the cost of this funding would be if it were extended in the way that the noble Lord’s review suggests. One could absolutely imagine a situation where proper funding for foster carers of young people in receipt of Staying Put support might relieve pressures elsewhere in the system.

I also look forward to the Minister’s response on Amendment 59, which, as we heard, would extend Staying Put support up to the age of 25. We agree with the principle underlying Amendment 95 that local areas should constantly be learning from one another about the best support for care leavers, but we are not convinced that it would be achieved by this approach.

I turn briefly to my modest Amendments 41 and 42. I reread the Minister’s argument in Committee that these amendments were not really necessary—a familiar term—as every care leaver should have a pathway plan that would cover accommodation, health and several other important aspects of their life. As she said, the pathway plan covers accommodation, yet the Government have chosen to put the publication of the local offer in relation to accommodation in the Bill, if I have understood correctly, so I am not quite clear about the resistance to minimum commitments in relation to healthcare. To be absolutely clear, my Amendment 41 would create a statutory duty for the health service to set out arrangements for those leaving care so they can be given additional considerations that they deserve as they enter adulthood. The Minister knows very well that children in care tend, through no fault of their own, to have much more complex health needs than those not in care. A lot of the specialist care available to children stops at 18. Taking the time to make sure they understand what support is available to them as adults is surely the minimum we might ask for.

That links to Amendment 42, which would make it explicit that care leavers under 25 need additional support from their GP. The noble Baroness will remember from Committee that the suggestion is that there should be an extended initial appointment offered to those young people as they transition from specialist support to universal systems. They do not have parents to support them through that and, as we all know, their needs are extended. It seems a tiny request that might make a great difference.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I will speak on Amendment 71 in my name. I am grateful to the Minister for her movement on this issue. In her letter to me of 7 October 2025, which was some time ago, she said:

“When used effectively, non-school alternative provision offers tailored support that meets individual needs and helps re-engage children in education, supporting future regular attendance in school. However, in some areas, inadequate oversight is putting already vulnerable children’s safety and the quality of their education at risk. Too often, children whose needs could be met in school are instead placed in unsafe, low-quality settings with no clear plan for returning to mainstream education”.


I do not understand why anything in our society is unregistered—whether a school, a care home or alternative provision. We should not allow that to happen, because we put the lives of people at risk.

Let us understand what alternative provision means. It means that a child or young person who has been permanently expelled or removed from school becomes the responsibility of the local authority. The local authority has to make provision for them. However, in many cases, schools have their own units on site, which is the best model by far. Where that provision is not available, local authorities have to find providers.

Remember that these children and young people are the most vulnerable. They often have special educational needs, are from difficult circumstances or suffer trauma or mental health problems. The Minister realises the issue and has come forward with some suggestions of how we might develop this. I am genuinely grateful for that. I hope that this will be another way that we can deal with this issue.

I will raise a number of issues with the Minister on which I hope she might be prepared either to write to me or to respond in her reply. Unregistered provision cannot be inspected by Ofsted, but we use the same criteria for registered provision that we use with maintained schools, academies and independent schools. This is a very different situation. These pupils require flexible timetables, smaller groups, therapeutic approaches, outreach work, incremental attendance and a curriculum that prioritises core skills, well-being and preparation. Often, inspections of alternative provision already highlight that applying mainstream criteria to alternative providers creates inconsistent judgments, perverse incentives and misunderstandings about what meaningful progress looks like for these pupils. Without adaptation, the strengthened regulatory framework in the Bill may unintentionally constrain innovation, reduce placement availability, push provision back into semi-regulated spaces or penalise alternative providers for not behaving like mainstream schools.

I am sure that the Government and the Minister want to get to grips with this issue, and I hope that their proposals actually deliver what we all want.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, this group of amendments focuses again on children in the care system. As we have heard expertly and eloquently expressed across the House, the focus on relationships is so important for those children, as is allowing them to sustain relationships with siblings and families where it is safe to do so, and not being moved too far from their home and network wherever possible. Obviously, this is most sensitive where siblings do not live together, either because they are not all in care or because they are in different care placements.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Storey]

46: After Clause 9, insert the following new Clause—
“Adoption and special guardianship support fund review(1) Within one month of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must conduct a review of the level of funding available per child from the adoption and special guardianship support fund.(2) The review must produce recommendations regarding any steps necessary to increase the funds available per child.(3) The review must be laid before both Houses of Parliament.”

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the adoption and special guardianship support fund was established in 2015 to provide therapeutic support to families caring for children through adoption and guardianship. Since its inception, the fund has supported over 4,000 families and played a transformative role in so many families’ lives, offering interventions that have helped children manage emotions, process early trauma and build trusting relationships, while equipping parents and guardians with the tools they need to care effectively. In fact, over the past 12 months, the Home for Good charity talked to a large number of families who had used the fund: 67% accessed therapy, such as counselling, play therapy and family therapy; 34% accessed therapeutic parenting support or training; and 33% accessed specialist assessments.

I am grateful to Minister MacAlister for his letter following a meeting with a number of us, in which he said:

“Many children who become adopted or are in kinship care have faced difficulties in early life that mean that they cannot live with their birth parents. These experiences place them at greater risk of mental health challenges, often made more complex by increased SEND prevalence compared to their peers. I am clear that government has a responsibility to these children which I am determined to meet it both now and in the future”.


He also said:

“The Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund has helped children and their families access a wide range of interventions, including play therapy and therapeutic parenting courses”.


Imagine the dismay among those parents that this element of the fund has been reduced.

In Committee, I gave the example of a family living close to me that had adopted two children at a very young age who were absolutely traumatised. Counselling, paid for by the support fund, has created a huge change in those children. Because the fund has been cut, they are not able to continue with that provision.

Interestingly, that has been mirrored by a number of comments from other families talking about the support, who have said: “The support we had so far dramatically helped. Any loss of it would be devastating”; “My child is sick. She needed the help so she grows up feeling accepted and cared for and not angry and let down”; “Both our boys have additional needs. It scares us that we might lose the help they desperately need”; “The recent reduction of the adoption support fund has been a shock and has led to huge stress for the families who rely on it’; “The new financial limits imposed are a major concern. We are already stretched to our limits financially”; and, from a professional, “It is hard, when told by professionals that your child needs more support, and then you realise you cannot access what they recommend”.

My amendment is simple: that element of the fund should be restored, so that parents who adopted and fostered children can get that resource, which those children so desperately need. I beg to move.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, in speaking to these amendments, I declare that I am a co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Adoption and Permanence, alongside Rachael Maskell, the MP for York. In 2019, the APPG carried out an inquiry into the fund. I will simply read its recommendation 6, which is headed “Continuity”:

“The department should ensure a continuity of therapeutic support by removing the current annual application requirement, enabling agencies and authorities to apply for support that orients around the needs of children and their families”—


not necessarily the budgeting needs of the department in question.

I know, from carrying out that inquiry and subsequent work that I have been involved in—I am a governor of Coram, the children’s charity, which has a large say in adoption—that the experience of families that have been fortunate enough to access the support given by the fund is that it is literally transformative, albeit in many cases, when the therapeutic support is accessed, there is already a situation within the family where adoption breakdown is potentially a reality. Unfortunately, over the past couple of years, there has been an increase in the level of adoption breakdown. If one looks at the amount of effort, time and emotional expense involved in going through an adoption, one will find it difficult to imagine having, in the end, to admit that it has not worked but has failed—which is devastating both for the adoptive family and for the child or the children. This fund genuinely does make a difference. One of the achievements of His Majesty’s occasionally loyal Opposition when they were in government was getting it on to the statute book.

One of the problems with it is that continuity of support is fundamental; this is not the sort of support that responds well to being stop-start. Unfortunately, because the flow of funding has not been consistent and because, for whatever reason—perhaps through negotiations with the Treasury—the department has been unable to be assured enough of the funding, that makes it extraordinarily difficult for the department to say to the families that are currently getting or wish to get support that it will be available.

It makes the livelihoods of those practitioners providing this therapeutic support very difficult. This support is highly specialised because, in many cases, these children have been, and are, subject to really quite severe trauma. To be able to give the level of care required at the rate required, those professionals need consistency of funding from the Government, to enable them to stay in business and to be able to engage with a family on the basis that they will be able to provide sufficient support, over whatever time required for it to be effective, and to really make a difference. For those reasons, I hope that the Government will look at this carefully.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

As I reply to this group of amendments, I assure noble Lords that I will try not to drench anybody during the course of my response—although I have now decided to set myself an ambition of juggling three bottles of water by the time we get to the end of Report.

Important issues are covered in this group. Amendments 46 and 47 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, concern funding for the adoption and special guardianship support fund and provide a further opportunity to debate these important issues. Around 3,000 children are adopted each year and more than 3,800 enter special guardianship. I salute all those who welcome these vulnerable, often traumatised children into their homes and hope that the centenary celebrations noble Lords have alluded to, taking place here this evening, enable a celebration of that contribution and, rightly, as we have heard in this debate, a challenge about how we can do our best to support those who undertake adoption and special guardianship in future.

Almost 57,000 children have received adoption and special guardianship support since 2015, and many of them more than once. Since April 2025, we have approved applications for nearly 16,000 children. However, it is important to remember that this is not the only source of funding. The Families First Partnership programme will total £2.4 billion over the next three years. That funding is available to both adoptive and kinship families and to the services that support them. We have already confirmed that adoption and special guardianship funding will be continued for 2026-27. Further details will be shared in due course through the usual funding announcements.

As several noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Watson, have made clear, we need to think longer term about the future of adoption support, as we promised to Parliament in September that we would—and perhaps even more so as we celebrate the centenary of adoption. We will shortly set out plans to engage widely on this with the aim of understanding how best to support children and young people to thrive in their new families and get the support they need in the most effective way.

I turn to Amendment 100, tabled in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and thank her for raising this important issue again. I would have to look back at the record, but I have a considerable amount of sympathy on this, which I hope I shared in Committee. Foster carers offer crucial support to some of the most vulnerable children in our society. They provide love, stability and compassion to children and young people when they need it most. They therefore need to have the ability and the responsibility to make the decisions that they think are suitable for children.

The Government are prioritising fostering. Through the fostering recruitment and retention programme, we have been supporting over 60% of local authorities across England in 10 regional clusters to recruit and support foster carers. We know that we need to build on this to further accelerate foster-care recruitment and retention and we will soon publish a comprehensive set of measures to achieve this with regional care co-operatives and fostering hubs at the heart of these plans.

In relation to the issue specifically covered by this amendment, which seeks to ensure that foster carers have, by default, delegated authority on day-to-day issues, except where an alternative decision-maker is listed on the child’s placement plan, our guidance already sets out that foster carers should be able to make day-to-day decisions about the children in their care. I accept that too often we hear that this does not happen in practice, meaning that children in care miss out on normal childhood experiences and feel as if they are treated differently from their peers. I agree with the spirit of this amendment, but it is not necessary to include this in this Bill. Local authorities should already delegate all day-to-day decisions, and we have clear guidance that sets this out. We will nevertheless be taking further action on this issue as the noble Baroness pushes us to do.

Our upcoming fostering publications will set out our plans for ensuring that foster carers can feel confident in making day-to-day decisions for the children in their care. Our publications will also set out plans to reform the fostering national minimum standards. These will also reflect our position on day-to-day decision-making and how fostering services can support carers to make these decisions. Any changes to the national minimum standards, including those concerning decision-making for foster carers, would benefit from a period of consultation with relevant stakeholders. I accept the noble Baroness’s point that it is important that we make progress in this area.

Given that commitment and our plans on the longer-term provision of adoption support, I hope that I have addressed the concerns of noble Lords and that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, feels able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful that the Minister agrees with the spirit of this amendment. She highlights that some parents have made up the difference and found the money themselves to carry on with this. I find it perverse that, for children with all sorts of problems who need therapeutic counselling, it is suddenly going to stop because the money is not there. Some parents have made up the difference, but those who cannot afford it are not able to do so. Those who come from a poor background and do not have the money are probably the ones who most need it. Those who have got the money can dip their hand in their pocket and pay the difference. That cannot be right in 21st-century UK. For those reasons, I wish to test the opinion of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

Tabled by

[Lord Storey]

47: After Clause 9, insert the following new Clause—
“Restoration of funding to the adoption and special guardianship support fundWithin one month of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must increase the funding available per child per year under the adoption and special guardianship support fund to a level equal to or greater than the funding available per child under the fund in March 2025.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would reverse the cut to the adoption and special guardianship support fund.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I am sure that the Minister will want to carry out the wishes of the House and ensure that those parents—all parents—have the support that they need. In the spirit of co-operation, I will not move the amendment.

Amendment 47 not moved.