Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Pinnock]

I am very pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, has tabled the amendment and again raised the issue that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and I referred to at Second Reading. At that time I referred to the investigation by the EU Sub-Committee on Home Affairs into unaccompanied migrant children. It raises some important issues that reflect on what the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, has tabled in his amendment. One or two examples from the report expand on the issues raised. Evidence from Kent social services states:

“There have been issues in respect of the apparently competing demands of the immigration legislation and the childcare legislation in respect of over-18’s”.

That was the fundamental issue that I raised at Second Reading. We are in danger of creating a two-tier approach to care leavers. We quite rightly say that care leavers who are born in this country will receive support until the age of 21 or 25, but unaccompanied minors who have been through the most awful and traumatic experiences are suddenly deemed at 18 to be able to act as adults. Further evidence summarises the problem facing unaccompanied migrant children approaching 18. The report states:

“Those children who are given temporary leave on the basis that they are children are suffering terribly in their protection needs and, as has been identified for many years, their leaving care provisions. We recognise how much children need help in that transition to adulthood. For most of us in this country, we do not suddenly feel and behave like adults when we turn 18”.

We had evidence of the potential consequences of unaccompanied minors, as they approach 18, not given leave to remain but not wishing to return to the troubled area of the world from which they came. One of the consequences is:

“The severe delays experienced by some unaccompanied migrant children in their asylum claims and in accessing services may compound their lack of trust of state authorities. In such circumstances, smugglers and traffickers may come to be regarded by children in some cases as a preferable source of support—‘by choice, through desperation, or through exploitation and abuse’”.

That is the evidence that I have referred to. I do not think anyone in the Committee, which has now spent 20 hours or more considering how we can improve care for the most vulnerable children in our society, would want this particular group of young people to be affected in this way. As we approach Report, I hope that the Government can bring forward their own amendments to help to address the issues of unaccompanied minors as they approach care-leaving at 18, to provide them with the support they desperately need and confidence that they are not going to continue to be returned to the war-troubled areas of the world whence they came.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being here sooner, but I was the last person standing to chair the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children this afternoon. That is where I have been, and it is always revealing. I support the amendment because I have raised this issue on a number of occasions. I hope the Minister will look at this, though he knows well that I do not like long amendments; lists in Bills are not helpful.

I cannot understand why, from the moment when the child is identified as an unaccompanied minor in a school, we do not start not only to stabilise the child’s status but to look at their mental health issues. We know of the trauma they have been through. I know that mental health services are poor across the country—we have heard that repeatedly—but these children have very particular needs. I am appalled when I learn that often schools do not even know the status of these children. I have met a number of youngsters who realise their immigration status only when they are about to go to university and discover that they cannot. Instead, they spend a year on appeal, appealing being deported to countries about which they know nothing. One young man I met had been here from the age of six. He had been in a foster home and suddenly discovered that this was his status.

I am sure that that is not the way this Government wish to treat children. These children happen to be in this situation only by chance. There might be another child next door who happened to have come in to the country, or be part of a family, on a very different basis. We must treat these children equally.

I am not against returning children home when that is the appropriate answer. We know that there have been very successful programmes of returning children to their country of origin with the right support and understanding; but we have to start sooner than we are starting now, get the position of the child right, make continuous assessment and not leave it until their 18th birthday, when it becomes a crisis.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I strongly support my noble friend. His experience and commitment in this sphere are well known in this House. I wish his talks with the Minister more success tomorrow. It seems essential that the Government take what my noble friend proposes very seriously. Others have stressed, and I underline it, that the trauma through which these youngsters have been is almost indescribable. It is more than distressing; it is deplorable. They need to be helped to build future lives. An action plan of this kind will help, and it is very important. Yet no action plan will be better than the culture of those who are operating it. From that standpoint, all of us in politics have a responsibility to set the tone for what is expected. We have a duty of care and responsibility to these children. We say that in our post-EU future we want to be prominent members of the international community. There is no better way that we could establish a reputation to help us in that future than by becoming leaders in answering this challenge, and the commitment with which it is answered.

In our vocabulary, in the speeches of Ministers and opposition spokesmen and all the rest, it is therefore terribly important to bring home that if we mean anything at all when we talk about our civilisation, our values and so on, this responsibility to children must be there. For those who are to operate any scheme, it is terribly important that what the children need is stability of relationships and a feeling that there are genuine, reliable friends looking after them—not just a system but real friends on whose shoulders they can lean and cry from time to time, and from whom they can get reliable counselling and advice on the way forward. What they need is human relationships in their future. This framework will therefore have to be filled by the culture which we and all others are generating about responsibility.