Adoption: Adoption Legislation Committee Reports

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I, too, sincerely thank our chairman and all who advised and assisted us, who, from where they are sitting probably want to join in this debate. They joined in very helpfully in the committee. They made it an enjoyable and productive process, about which I want to say a word.

I have been involved for some years in judging awards, mostly in the local government field but more broadly, to scrutiny committees and scrutiny branches of organisations. I have been increasingly aware that scrutineers are being involved by their executives in co-operative and forward-looking, not merely reactive, responsive work. I hope that we have fulfilled something of that function in our work. Our chairman has referred to some of the evidence given by children and their carers about their experiences of care and adoption. She, like me, might sometimes put quotation marks around the word “evidence” but they contributed to our consideration. I have been wondering about whether, as Bills come before committees of Parliament, there might be more scope for combining our current work with the sort of post-legislative/pre-legislative scrutiny that our inquiry became. This is done more by the Commons than it is by us. Is there room for more liaison? Perhaps I should pause while I am struck by a thunderbolt for suggesting any such thing. However, I hope that both Houses can continue to explore new ways of looking at what we are doing.

Like other noble Lords, I found the leapfrogging government announcements somewhat frustrating at the time but, with hindsight, I recognise that there was more of a pattern to them than it felt when we were doing it.

I have come across some amazing people in the adoption world. I first became involved with adoption towards the end of the 1970s, and I want to use this opportunity to put into Hansard the names of two couples who formed the agency, Parents for Children, with which I worked. Both couples—Sheila and Michael Crawford and Hilary and David Chambers, who also founded the Parent to Parent Information on Adoption Services that later became Adoption UK—were adopters of children with considerable disadvantages. With the first director, Phyllida Sawbridge, some really ground-breaking work was done in this country with, as I said, children who had multiple disadvantages.

Last year, I met Phyllida Sawbridge again, and we reminisced about, bluntly, the advertising of children who needed to be adopted, requiring permanence, and about other mechanisms, such as activity days, when potential adopters met children, involving picnics on Parliament Hill and that sort of thing. I wonder about the wheel sometimes being reinvented.

I was quite young at the time and maturity gives one a different perspective. What it has given me is a perspective on the importance of identity—one’s own identity. The first report that the committee produced dealt with the Government’s proposal regarding changing legislation concerning the place and consideration of religion, race, language and culture. We felt that our proposal gave those matters appropriate weight and an appropriate place, and I am sorry that when the Bill was published it was clear that the Government did not accept what we had to say.

Legislation is not everything—that was something that we felt time and again in our work—but changing the legislation, as the Children and Families Bill will do if it is unamended in this regard, sends a very particular message, and it is not a message that I am comfortable with. A parent’s understanding and a child’s sense of who he is seems to be one of those issues which is rather susceptible to the swings of the pendulum in thinking. The noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, referred to this as a moving target—a phrase that I may adopt at some point.

Another pendulum is where responsibility lies between the local and the national. I am naturally a localist but I found myself thinking again and again during the committee’s work that adoption is in some sense a national service.

The committee has expressed concern about the Secretary of State’s power to direct local authorities to outsource recruitment, and reference has been made to that. We encourage the Government to allow time for the sector to develop alternative proposals. I am not entirely sure what the Government mean in their response by saying that they will not impose a solution,

“unless it becomes clear that the sector as currently constituted is unable or unwilling to address these problems”.

The response goes on:

“We will, however, not hesitate to intervene if the sector is unable to make the urgent changes that need to happen”.

That sounds to me more top-down than I am comfortable with.

The Local Government Association, in its briefing for today—and I have no doubt that it will brief us extensively for the Bill—makes the point that, as many adoptive parents say, the relationship between adopters and their council lasts long after they adopt. It says:

“This is why it is so crucial that we have a joined-up adoption system”.

The committee identified issues regarding social workers’ training and continuing professional development and status following Professor Munro’s report. I was not left with complete confidence that the Government had understood what we were saying in this regard.

I understand that each local authority is accountable for its own performance but we heard interesting and encouraging things about joint working and consortia, to use the term quite widely. I hope that the Government’s response rejecting joint scorecards and joint inspections does not mean that they are rejecting out of hand ways in which authorities can work together. Like others, I was disappointed by the way in which the early intervention grant had been regarded, although we have been given information about new moneys which will become available.

The committee was fortunate to have members directing us to evidence and data. One of the areas in which more information is required is the breakdown of placements. Our chairman has referred to this already. I know that work is being done in this area but I am not clear how breakdown is defined and, in particular, whether any longitudinal work is going on or whether the Government, who I know have already commissioned some work, are looking only at the relatively short term. A problem with a placement arising from a child’s background may evidence itself perhaps only in the teenage years, and it may be quite difficult to untangle the components at that stage.

We have raised the issue of value for money and the costs and benefits of adoption support in this context and we learn from the report—or, at any rate, I learnt; others may have known of this before—of work commissioned from the Childhood Wellbeing Research Centre. I have given the Minister notice—not very much notice, I am afraid—that I would be interested to know the terms of reference of that work, how it is being carried out and, in particular, of course, who is being consulted. I have looked at the centre’s website and I notice that one of the partners in the work is part of the Coram Foundation, which has much experience, including in concurrent planning, but presumably a wider trawl is being undertaken.

The committee argued for post-adoption support, not only an assessment of adopters’ needs. I understand there is a lack of information as to how assessments are carried out by local authorities and adopters report varied experiences. There seems to be no model for the assessment—I would not necessarily support a single model—and that means that there is no benchmarking. I wonder how evaluation of the assessments is being undertaken.

The Government’s response to our reports also referred to work on a social impact bond. Again, I hope the Minister will be able to say more about developments for funding mechanisms which the Government are monitoring. I think I have used almost all the words which were applied to this issue in the report. It was a very short paragraph.

Finally, let me raise a narrow point which the noble and learned Baroness had in mind but did not develop—she is leaving it for the Bill—and that is access to information by the descendants of adopted people. We have evidence of the need for a change to the legislation. A woman who was affected was not herself adopted, but her father was, and she made an application to the court. She said:

“I believe that knowing my origin is an important part of who I am, and having access to my father’s birth information would restore my sense of identity and belonging. Society’s attitude towards adoption has been changing for some years, and these are amendments which should reflect a more open approach”.

The Government responded that:

“This is a complex and sensitive issue which needs careful consideration before any change to legislation could be considered”,

and went on to say that they are in discussion with the Law Commission. Can the Minister say today what considerations there are which are greater than or different from those applying in the case of adopted people? I might be able to imagine them, but I would be glad to hear them at this point.

We were asked to look at legislation and of course, as has been said, what we found was that there were issues mostly around practice. For reasons of time, I will not rehearse the arguments about the importance of early permanency, but I want to end by going back to some of my own early experiences, which still apply. In essence, although it is not the whole of it, if permanency is not achieved early, a child becomes a child who is difficult to place.