Vulnerable Children: Kinship Care

Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, let me congratulate the noble Baroness on introducing this very important topic. I share her endorsement of the excellent work done by the Kinship Care Alliance and the Family Rights Group.

I do not want to cover again many of the areas that the noble Baroness has addressed, except to say that the framework within which we are debating this subject goes back to that landmark piece of social legislation, the Children Act 1989. It was a quite remarkable piece of legislation, to which reference is made around the world. It clarified the paramount interests of the child. In the words of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the child is always to be treated as a person, not just as an object of concern. It clarified the role of the local authority and the rights and the role of the parents. Having myself been chairman of a juvenile court for several years before I entered this House, primarily in Lambeth but also in other parts of London, as well as working with the CPAG, for Frank Field, in a child guidance unit and as a trustee of the Children’s Society, I was only too aware, as I know the noble Baroness was, of the chaotic and fragmented nature of the legislation concerning children. Local authorities then had a new duty to promote the upbringing of such children in need by their families, in so far as this can fit in with their welfare and the duty to the child themselves. That was a very new statement, and is very compatible with what we are discussing this evening. Local authorities had an absolute duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of any child looked after by them, for reviews promoting contact between the child and his family, and to consult the family on decisions. There was also specific mention of grandparents. At that time, as the noble Baroness will remember, there was a great deal of discussion of how grandparents were overlooked.

I want to make a particular comment about the debate around the Children Act 1989. I remember the wonderful work of the then Lord Chancellor, James Mackay—now my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern —and the remarkable work of a very talented and dedicated civil servant Rupert Hughes, who died this year. He worked with all political parties and all interests, including the law, the voluntary sector and local authorities, not only to take the consultation and legislation through but then—so unusual in legislation—to oversee its implementation. I arrived in the Department of Health three weeks before the Act received Royal Assent, so my job was its implementation. It was a component of our framework for protecting children, of which we should justly proud. The briefing goes back, time and again, to that 1989 Act. However, in that debate, there was a particularly impressive speech by the leader of the Opposition in another place, who gave a very strong endorsement of the impossible decisions made by social workers: if they intervene too much, they get it wrong; if they intervene too little, they get it wrong. I commend to noble Lords the words of the leader of the Opposition during that debate.

Recently, I talked to a very talented woman I know who has taken on responsibility for her nephew as a kinship carer. She is like many others: she is quite affluent, but her problems are no different from anybody else’s. The sister has mental health problems and the whole family has become involved in the turmoil, the complications, the ambiguity, the anger, the loss and the mourning. I touched base with her today and she said that she has had help of an unimpeachable standard from social workers in Essex, one working with the child, who is 13, and one working with her. As the noble Baroness said, nobody expects adoptions to be easy, and neither are kinship care arrangements easy. There may be a complicated relationship; there may be gratitude from the mother but there may also be resentment. Many people suffer from mental illness or addiction problems, and this makes for great complications and tension within families.

There is one particular group I want to mention, and which this House discusses fairly frequently: the 4,000 women in prison, three-quarters of them mothers of dependent children. These families have a double punishment. The women go to prison—about half of them for theft or handling stolen goods and hardly any for violent offences. Over half have or had emotional, physical and abuse problems, either currently or in childhood. Of their children, only 9% are cared for by the father and the vast majority of the others go to kinship carers. Some 4,000 move in with their grandmothers each year because their mothers have been sent to jail, 5,000 are taken in by other family members or friends, and 2,000 others are adopted or fostered. These children are then likely to suffer greatly and repeat the problems of anti-social or delinquent behaviour. In our work supporting kinship carers, I have particularly identified this group of children who are all too easily overlooked.

In the 1960s, a remarkable woman called Mary Webster started a charity called the National Council for the Single Woman and Her Dependants. I became involved in the early 1970s and about eight years later, the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, became chief executive of what is now Carers UK. During those early years, nobody knew what a carer was. They used to say, “This is Mrs Bottomley from the careers organisation”. It was not a familiar term. It is the same with kinship carers. The work of recent years, since the Children Act, has begun to give kinship carers the priority and the recognition that they rightly deserve.

It cannot be said that simply because a child is with another member of the family that it is fine—it is the natural model and has happened for ever and a day. These are individuals and families with special needs. I commend the Minister for Children and Families for recently reporting back on the number of local authorities which have put in place guidance on what they are prepared to do for kinship carers dating back to Family and Friends Care: Statutory Guidance for Local Authorities. That number is up to 83% now—maybe the Minister will have further information for us. I congratulate the noble Baroness and look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about how we can all work harder to make this an even better service for children.