Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Watson of Invergowrie

Thursday 12th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, introducing a national register for foster carers would produce many benefits. Overall, it would enhance their status. One resulting effect would be to attract more volunteers, thus beginning to reduce the shortage of foster carers across England, which currently stands at around 5,000. That in turn would improve the matching process by which children in care are placed with foster families, and increase the portability of foster carers. All those benefits would raise the level of safeguarding of children in the care system.

Last year the Commons Education Committee inquiry into children’s social care recommended that the creation of a national register of foster carers should be considered by the then Minister for Children. The inquiry was interrupted by the general election, but the new committee has reactivated it and is still considering these issues. It has been reported that the Government are considering the merits of a national register, which would certainly be appropriate because both the Scottish and Welsh Governments are consulting on the creation of such a register. Perhaps my noble friend can clarify the current thinking on this.

A register would safeguard children by keeping a central record of foster carers who have had their approval terminated for safeguarding reasons, ensuring that they are not reapproved by another service and then able to care for another child. Currently, services cannot always know this, particularly if potential foster carers are transferring between independents and local authority services. The introduction of a register would go hand in hand with an accredited pre-approval and post-approval training framework and robust national standards of practice, improving the overall quality of care for children.

The number of children in care in England who are moved outwith their local authority area is an issue that we have heard mentioned by noble Lords in several of the debates today. It increased from 41% in 2020 to 45% last year. A register would allow services to make matches more quickly at a local level, which would ultimately reduce out-of-area placements. That could be done by the new regional care co-operatives, which we are going to debate in the seventh group today and which will lead on regional placement commissioning, for which the Bill already makes provision. With a register in place, local authority fostering services could be given access to information on the number of fostering households with vacancies for children in their local area, including those with independent fostering providers, as well as in neighbouring local authorities.

This amendment would require the Government to establish a national register for foster carers. Linked to the regional care co-operatives, that would help to better safeguard children and, as I have said, improve the status of foster carers through formal recognition of their role, allowing services to match children to foster care placements more quickly at the local level.

I hope my noble friend will acknowledge that the register would bring the beneficial outcomes that I have outlined and overall assist in making a significant dent in that shortfall of foster carers, which results in too many young people being denied the option of improving their life chances by being able to find a loving foster family to embrace and nurture them. I beg to move.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 143 seeks to promote the idea of a national foster care strategy. I declare an interest in that a very long time ago my wife and I were registered as foster parents in the London Borough of Lambeth—nothing on the heroic scale of the Timpson family, of whom we heard earlier. It principally involved looking after the children of a single mother while she went into hospital to have her baby; somebody needed to look after her children before she was discharged. The regime in those days was much more relaxed than it is today.

Since then, the relatively informal system has evolved into a much more structured and regulated part of the child welfare system, particularly following the Children Act 1989. There is now a much stronger emphasis on the physical and psychological stability of a child, and more awareness of the risks of inappropriate placements.

I turn to the amendment. Most children grow up in their own home with two parents, one parent, or a parent and a partner, and most of the challenges that confront a family can be met within the normal support mechanism of families, friends, the local authority and heroic voluntary organisations. But at times children have to be taken into care by the local authority. In March 2024 there were 83,630 children in care in England, up from 80,000 in 2020. For those children, there is a range of options: for a very few it will be adoption, but for most it will be kinship care, fostering or children’s homes, and we had a good debate about kinship care and the role of local authorities as a constant theme.