Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness King of Bow (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 90A, which would place a duty on local authorities and specialist NHS children and young people’s mental health services in England to provide long-term support for adopted children. I thank Adoption UK and the other adoption agencies for the work they have done on this issue. We believe that it is imperative that the Government change the law to give all adoptive families the right to appropriate adoption support when they need it. I have been calling for this for many years, as have all those colleagues who sat on the Lords Select Committee on Adoption Legislation, chaired by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, whom we heard from earlier.

Our 2013 report stated:

“We are concerned that the provision of post-adoption support is often variable and sometimes inadequate. We believe such support is essential to ensuring the stability of adoptive placements, and to increasing the number of adopters coming forward. We therefore recommend a statutory duty on local authorities and other service commissioning bodies to cooperate to ensure the provision of post-adoption support”.

That, essentially, is what the amendment would do in the areas outlined.

This is a very important issue. Most adopted children have experienced abuse or neglect in their early lives, and they require ongoing support. I usually welcome programmes such as the adoption support fund, which the Minister mentioned earlier, but as we know, it is currently dependent on short-term funding arrangements. Given the extreme difficulties adoptive families can face, they need to be given a right to access programmes such as the adoption support fund.

Further supporting evidence from the research report Beyond the Adoption Order: Challenges, Interventions and Adoption Disruption of April 2014 highlights startling findings. We should bear in mind that this was a government-backed report. It found, for example, that the majority of adoptive parents were,

“dissatisfied with the overall response from support agencies”.

It also stated:

“About a quarter of parents described major challenges with children who had multiple and overlapping difficulties”.

Some of the children’s behaviour, such as aggression,

“self-harm, night terrors, soiling, manipulation and control”,

was literally ruining their lives. The report continued:

“Many were struggling to get the right support in place. Parents reported that they were physically and mentally exhausted”.

In some cases, a lack of support led to a breakdown in adoption. The report also stated:

“Respite care was often used as a last ditch attempt to keep the family together”,

and was almost never used “proactively”. I cite one other finding from the research report which is possibly its most shocking—namely, that adoptive parents were forced to use the police “as a support agency”.

I strongly urge the Government to accept the spirit behind Amendment 90A, which places a duty on local authorities and specialist services. We all know that children adopted from care are the most vulnerable in Britain. The neglect and abuse they experience, even in the womb or after birth, does not disappear just because they are adopted. We clearly must do better for these children.

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 90 tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Pinnock. In many cases it must be truly terrifying for a child who feels that their future is out of control. It surely is absolutely imperative that they be listened to and given the feeling that their wishes will be respected. Disregarding them will only add to their trauma and the feeling of insecurity they are going through. Surely, any solutions are likely to be less successful if they do not have buy-in from the child.

[Lord Warner (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 89 and 90. I say to the Minister that in any legislation you cannot sprinkle too many references to taking account of children’s wishes and feelings. I encourage the Minister to be even more liberal than the measure proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. I very much support the amendment spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. I say that having been on the Select Committee on Adoption Legislation, which was so ably chaired by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. We heard a number of pieces of evidence in which concern was expressed about whether the balance between adoption and fostering was getting out of kilter. I have certainly been in the company of social workers—I will not say where or when, but reasonably recently—who have talked about the adoption “hawks” taking over the Department for Education. The prospects of older children who are fostered being adopted are extremely limited. Therefore, we should give stronger encouragement to long-term fostering arrangements and indicate in the Bill an equivalence between adoption and long-term fostering that is currently lacking. Sometimes we get carried away with what can be achieved with adoption, which I support. However, it is not right for everybody and where children have established a good fostering relationship with foster parents, we need to encourage that and not make foster parents feel like second-class citizens.