Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top and Earl of Listowel

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I know the Minister will think that I go on about the issue I am about to raise, and in a sense I am not apologising. I remind the House of my interests as chair of Changing Lives, a charity based in the north-east of England.

Children who are removed and placed in care are overwhelmingly from economically and socially deprived backgrounds. There has been a lot of evidence on this, recently and over many years. The experiences of those who try to parent in a profoundly unequal society are simply not considered sufficiently. That sounds a bit academic—let me explain what I mean. Mental health difficulties, substance misuse and domestic abuse are seen and accepted as central risk indicators for child abuse. However, these are intrinsically linked with living in poverty and disadvantage in a very unequal society. Psychosocial reactions to deprivation and shame, which are the experience I am talking about, are important in understanding self-harm and harm to others.

Currently, our policy has moved—on some occasions I have been part of that movement, and have resisted it on others—to being absolutely focused on the individual child, with very little space to consider the family context. As I have consistently argued in this House, the role of wider family members—of grandparents, siblings and friendship networks in supporting children—is too often neither recognised nor supported effectively.

Perhaps it would help if I reminded the House of an actual case which came from a Family Rights Group assessment—a study that was done on some of its advocacy work. The study says: “Julia cried as she explained that social workers had told her she was unable to have healthy adult relationships as a result of a brief period in care as a young child. Her child had been removed from her because it transpired that her partner had a history of abuse that she had been unaware of. She immediately separated from him and paid privately for counselling as it was not available from the social worker, who was concerned with the child’s welfare only. Despite her actions, the child was placed in care while a risk assessment was carried out. No one seemed to have considered the ironies here. Would such a separation, for example, result in this child being seen, too, as unable to have healthy adult relationships?”. In other words, the whole system was reinforcing the problems, rather than tackling them.

The importance of attachment is recognised in study after study of child-rearing. Not to understand and consider that in our child protection policies is, at best, unwise. This amendment seeks to ensure that appropriate counselling and therapeutic support is offered to any parent whose child is permanently removed. The context of the amendment is that child protection inquiries are continuing to increase; the number of new care proceedings is at record levels. As of 31 March 2016, there were over 70,000 looked-after children in England, which is the highest figure since 1985. If this does not tell us that we have to think again about what we are doing, I do not know what will.

The new clause would enable any parent whose child has been permanently removed to get the therapeutic support and counselling to help them deal with their grief, emotional hurt and other difficulties, so they can avoid the appalling cycle of repeat pregnancies that lead to repeat removals of children. Analysis of court data found that one in four mothers subject to care proceedings was subject to repeat care proceedings. That figure rose to one in three for those who became mothers in their teenage years. Provisional results from further analysis show that more than six out of 10 mothers who had children sequentially removed were teenagers when they had their first child. Of these, 40% were in care, or had been looked after in the care system, during their own childhood.

The figures go on. Some 354 mothers were looked at in this study of recurrent care proceedings. It found that approximately 65% had had their mental health issues mentioned in their first set of proceedings; 75% had domestic abuse mentioned in their first set of proceedings; and 90% had experienced some form of neglect or abuse—emotional, physical or sexual—in their childhood.

The President of the Family Division has recognised the importance of the work that programmes such as Pause are doing in trying to make sure that there is not this cycle of repeat pregnancies and repeat admissions to care. But the programmes that are available, including the one we run in Newcastle, are not nationwide or underpinned by any statutory duty. Most vulnerable parents who have lost a child are therefore left unsupported emotionally and not assisted to parent in future. The new duties set out in the amendment would ensure that all parents who have lost a child receive the therapeutic care and counselling that would help them to avoid that cycle.

I move this amendment in the hope that, in thinking about the future of social work and children in care—and I know that the Government are doing that—they look carefully at the evidence on the importance of working effectively with women in vulnerable situations, so that they are better able to handle the trauma in their lives that inevitably adversely affects their relationships and those they can develop, particularly with their children.

The charity that I chair works with many women who are in this position. Among other work, we have a project in Newcastle that works with women recovering from addictions, and with their children, in a residential setting. Many of them have already lost children into care, and we work with them intensively for about six months. The programme has been successful in breaking that cycle, which has meant that the local authorities involved will happily talk to the Government and others about saving money through children not having come into care who otherwise would have. This is a really challenging time for the Government regarding the future of social work and children in care, and this is one way we can help to break a cycle that is not only depressing but destructive to the children and mothers involved. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness’s amendment and what she has said. After witnessing this weekend, at a gathering of child and adolescent psychotherapists, the superb work that a therapist can do in supporting mothers and their infants to make good, strong relationships, I know that what she asks for is absolutely crucial. It was wonderful to see, for instance, the case of a mother who had grown up with a violent father, been taken into care and then gone on from care to become a teenage mother and have several of her children removed. Then she found the help of a child psychotherapist who helped her to understand her relationship with her child and to build a strong attachment with that child, so that eventually she was able to get back her other children. So I agree absolutely with what the noble Baroness is calling for. It is particularly important in the light of the recent view expressed by the President of the Family Division, highlighting the year-on-year increase in the number of children being taken into care, expressing the concern that that may well accelerate. It is much more difficult to give a high quality of care in the care system if the numbers of children arriving increase year on year.

I was grateful to the Minister for offering to meet me yesterday to discuss whether more can be done by central government to minimise the flow of children coming into care. I look forward to that meeting. I am particularly concerned about the new lower benefit cap and how it might impact on families. The noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, highlighted the background of poverty for most families whose children are taken into care. I am concerned that this may increase that poverty and force more of these families into homelessness. It raises the risk of more children being taken into care—but we will debate that this evening in the dinner break.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top and Earl of Listowel

Monday 7th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, my name is attached to Amendments 1 and 16 in this group. First, can I make an apology to the Minister and the Committee? On Second Reading, I feel I was rather too soft on the Government. I commend the Government for their achievements in terms of employment, but there are several areas in this Bill that cause me real concern the more I contemplate them, and I should have said more about them at Second Reading.

I agree with the right reverend Prelate—if I may agree with him—that it would be unwise for the Government not to pay full attention to these amendments. I was speaking to a kinship carer earlier today. She was a godmother to a child. About six years ago, the child’s mother came into difficulties so she became a kinship carer. It was very challenging for her because local authorities do not offer much support at all for such carers. The child must have been about 11 when she came into the godmother’s care. Over the last six years, the girl has done well and done well at school. About a year ago, the carer adopted the girl. Currently, the girl is making applications to university and it is very good to see how well she has thrived, first under the kinship care arrangement and now under the adoption arrangement.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said, people in care often lack stable relationships and the only one they may have is with their siblings, yet it can be difficult to find a foster carer or an adoptive parent who will take on a sibling group. We should be very careful to avoid any disincentive to potential adopters to do that. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of Delma Hughes, a care leaver herself, who never got to know her five siblings. As an adult with care experience, she set up a charity called Siblings Together, which she has now been running for about 10 years. It provides holiday gatherings for siblings in care and opportunities for them, for example, to go to the Young Vic and perform in plays together or to go off to write poetry together, which bring together separated siblings and are immensely important for them.

I am sure the Minister will give a very sympathetic response to these concerns, which I look forward to. I also thank the Family Rights Group, which provided a very helpful briefing for this amendment on kinship care and has been working in this area for many years. I very much value its work, as I am sure all those in this area do.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, support these amendments, although as I have a debate tomorrow in the dinner break on kinship care, I will not detain the Committee at great length. As my noble friend on the Front Bench said, both the outcomes for kinship carers and the financial issues point to the Government needing to think again.

Kinship care is, by any measure, the most successful means of looking after vulnerable children who cannot live with their parent or parents. All the evidence points that way. However, the evidence also shows that more than 70% of kinship carers are technically in poverty. I know that there will be arguments about what that means, but the reality is that these families struggle. They do this because they want the children to have the very best opportunities, but when people become a kinship carer, as my noble friend and the right reverend Prelate said, they take the family on immediately. Very often, the children whom they are now taking care of will be traumatised and have real challenges. That also means that many of them are unable to work—certainly until they have got the children settled and the children are strong and resilient enough to be able to manage with their carer at work.

The costs of care are enormous, both in terms of the outcomes for children and financially. Have the Government considered, across government, the financial burden that they will be putting on to families that may then break down because kinship carers will not be able to maintain the care of more than two children? Have they considered the emotional and other burdens that they will also be inflicting on those kinship carers who end up having more than two children to care for? They have not sought this or set out to have two children: they do it because arrangements with the parents, for whatever reason, have broken down. I hope that the Government have thought about this and realised that this is an area that they really do have to exempt.