Children: Looked-after Children

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for securing this important debate and congratulate him on his excellent speech. I declare an interest as a vice-president of the children's charity Barnardo’s, which has extensive knowledge and experience of looked-after children in residential care. I speak today about the charity’s concern.

There are currently more than 6,000 children in residential care homes. These are often the most vulnerable children with the highest levels of need. These children usually do worse on a whole range of measures, including educational achievement and social well-being, than other children in the care system—that is, those who are being fostered or who have been adopted. This is not to argue against the use of residential care. For some, it is the most appropriate, and sometimes the only, option. But we need to make sure that we get it right for these particularly vulnerable children.

I am particularly concerned about the vulnerability of young people in residential care to sexual exploitation. This issue has gathered much attention in the media recently, but Barnardo’s has been working on it for several years. Barnardo’s works with young people who have been exploited and staff hear how men wait outside care homes to befriend these unwitting children. They befriend them with gifts and pretend kindness, waiting for the child to fall in love with them before abusing them.

I want to be clear about what I am talking about. The term “sexual exploitation” is a euphemism. We are talking about young people being manipulated by predatory abusers who often use drink and drugs, and then being raped, often repeatedly. One 15 year-old girl whom Barnardo’s worked with went missing from her residential care home. Eventually, she revealed what was happening to her. A man aged 33, more than twice her age, had been taking her away, abusing her and tying her up, then taking videos of her and posting them on the internet. Barnardo’s hears of how other children return to their care homes with severe physical damage from the rape they experience time and time again. This all makes me weep, and I am sure it makes noble Lords weep too. It shames us as a society that we allow this horror to happen.

Organisations such as Barnardo’s do a lot to repair the damage that is done to these young people, but where a child’s home is provided by the state they should be able to feel safe there, especially as many of these vulnerable children have already been through abusive and traumatic experiences in their young lives. So what needs to be done? We need to look at who is charged with the responsibility of looking after these children. I find it greatly concerning that such a low qualification standard is required in order to work in residential care homes. Underqualified staff may have excellent experience, empathy and interpersonal skills, but specialist qualifications would, if administered correctly, only add to these skills. The national minimum training standards are welcome, but surprisingly they are not a requirement, and therefore we must ensure that best practice becomes common practice. To safeguard and protect these vulnerable children, all staff should be trained to recognise the signs of sexual exploitation such as, for example, prolonged or unexplained absences from the care home, or frequently having unexplained gifts or money. Most important is that they should know how to respond effectively.

Noble Lords may have seen the map of the location of children’s homes published in the Times earlier this year. It shows a clustering of homes in certain areas of the country and demonstrates that the majority of care homes are located in those areas where property is the cheapest. As the noble Lord, Lord Laming, said in his speech, it cannot be right for the price and availability of property to be the key determining factor in where residential care is placed. We clearly should not be putting our most vulnerable young people into areas of high crime, drug use and established sex industries, areas where young children can easily be preyed upon. It does not have to be like this and it should not be like this because there is considerable scope for alternative forms of provision. For example, Barnardo’s is piloting a project that involves using specialist, highly trained foster carers to care for children who are the most at risk of sexual exploitation. It is great that the Government have supported this time-limited pilot, but I urge them to consider how it can be continued and to look at other innovative approaches.

In the debate on the Queen’s Speech, I mentioned that there is also a need for much more joined-up working, in particular between those concerned with child protection and looked-after children, who sadly do not always communicate well. We need to see a real focus from the Government on this issue. They have been paying a lot of attention to adoption and fostering, and this looks to be continued in the children and families Bill. That is most welcome, but we also need to look really carefully at residential care. I want to ask my noble friend if the Government will take this issue seriously and give it some consideration. I await with great interest the report due in December of the quality expert group. It has been looking at the quality of provision in children’s homes, including the commissioning, location and ownership of the homes, as well as the qualifications and skills of the workforce.

Improving the experiences of young people in residential care is not a simple matter and there is certainly no magic bullet. But we have an absolute moral and social duty to do everything we can to care for children who have no one else to care for them. The Government have shown real leadership with their publication of an action plan on sexual exploitation. However, we are only at the beginning of a long road. I urge the Government to consider this matter very carefully, and to act decisively and with urgency to protect the most vulnerable children in society. They deserve it, and we must all make sure that this happens.