Children and Young People: Local Authority Care

Baroness Cavendish of Little Venice Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Cavendish of Little Venice (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Laming, said that the state had a poor record as a substitute parent and often fell short. Every contribution that we have heard today has agreed with that. They agreed with the principle that, if possible, families should be kept together, and that is the statutory responsibility on local authorities. Too often, however, as we have heard, intervention comes too late and other things mitigate against that.

The independent review by Josh MacAlister, who was CE at Frontline when I was the chair of Frontline—I am currently the patron of Frontline—is really visionary. I congratulate the Government on putting some of that review on its pathfinder areas, but I feel that the radical reset that that report asks for is the fundamental answer to this question. It would enable social workers to work alongside a series of other professionals. It would enable us to get family help together much earlier. It also recognises the vital role that many kinship carers and guardians play. I ask the Government to accelerate their rollout of that programme because, as the noble Lord, Lord Wood, and others have said, to do otherwise really is a false economy. This is money you get back when you invest it early.

My other point is about the family drug and alcohol courts. These are a really impressive experiment that act as an alternative to conventional care proceedings. Where they have been tried, they have had quite extraordinary results. There was a recent evaluation that found, for example, that half the children in FDAC proceedings have been reunited with their primary carer, compared with only 12.5% in standard proceedings. Some 33% of parents have ceased to misuse drugs and alcohol versus only 8% in standard care proceedings, and only 7% of the FDAC cases have used external expert witnesses— some noble Lords will know that I have had a long-standing beef about that—compared with 90% in conventional proceedings. It is really a very impressive record.

What that project needs now is some commitment from the Government to provide a fairly small amount of ring-fenced funding. I have just heard that one project in Cardiff that was enthusiastically supported has had to be withdrawn because of lack of funding. I would appreciate a response from the Minister on that point because, as others have said—the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, made the point very well—what we do today influences the outcomes for these children for the rest of their lives.