Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord McNally, I warmly welcome the intentions behind the Bill and commend the Government for their desire to improve the life chances of young people in care. The Bill recognises that it is not sufficient to protect and care for looked-after children when they are young. If these young people are to have a stable and fulfilling future, our public authorities must help young people leaving care to navigate the transition into adulthood and independence by providing adequate support, advice and assistance as they begin adult life.

It is of great concern that so many young people who have formerly been in care are not in education, employment or training between the ages of 19 and 21. Many also find themselves homeless within the first two years of leaving care. As other noble Lords have said, research suggests that care leavers are also at risk of falling into debt and experiencing other financial challenges, such as benefit sanctions and council tax arrears. With this in mind, I strongly welcome the provisions in the Bill which will improve care leavers’ access to support and advice and extend the support to young people until they reach the age of 25, thus providing them with a firmer foundation as they set out into adulthood.

I have spoken in the House on a number of occasions about the duties that we all share in safeguarding the emotional well-being of looked-after children. This is no easy task, as their entry into care is often preceded by experiences of abuse or neglect that leave a legacy of trauma and poor mental health. Recovery from these early experiences is reliant on many factors but is likely to incorporate the provision of therapeutic support. The corporate parenting principles outlined in the Bill are a welcome recognition of the important role that the state must play in supporting children who are removed from the care of their families. However, so much more still needs to be done if we are to ensure that all children, no matter the start that they have in the world, have the opportunity to grow up in a loving, stable and secure home, which is the stepping stone to a healthy and successful life.

Although the corporate parenting principles are welcome, they do not offer a sufficiently ambitious platform for change. It is not enough to remove a child from their family and hope that a new home environment will facilitate recovery. Looked-after children should never be left fighting for therapeutic support while also fighting to recover from a legacy of abuse and neglect. Often, the problem is that needs are not identified and, on those occasions when they are, the thresholds for support are so high that young people in care are rejected from treatment until they have reached a crisis point. As one young person told the NSPCC:

“We shouldn’t have to do crazy things before people know that we need support and do something”.

If problems are left unidentified, it can have particularly grave consequences for children in care. The research report Achieving Emotional Wellbeing for Looked After Children, published by the NSPCC last year, highlighted how children are particularly vulnerable when they experience poor emotional well-being while in care. The report illustrated the way that poor mental health can lead to placement instability, which in turn leads to a further decline of emotional well-being. Given that 45% of children entering care have a diagnosable mental health condition, we know that they are a clinically susceptible population. We therefore need to improve the identification of mental health problems in the looked- after population. An early mental health assessment with a mental health professional would offer the right foundation, as it would ensure that recovery is at the heart of the care experience from the moment that a child is removed from the family home.

A mental health assessment would ensure that children and young people entering care are offered the support they need from the very beginning. However, this must be followed by a system of holistic support for looked-after children, so alongside the introduction of an assessment by a trained professional the following steps should be taken. First, there should be a strengthening of corporate parenting principles to ensure that the onus of responsibility to assess services is placed not on the young person themselves but on the local authority, to actively pursue and engage with looked-after children. Secondly, there should be priority access to services for looked-after children in recognition that they are a clinically susceptible population who often experience mental health difficulties and that poor emotional well-being can have an even greater impact on the outcomes for looked-after children, as well as the stability of their placement. Thirdly, there should also be improved training for foster carers, as recommended in the recent Education Select Committee’s inquiry into the mental health of looked-after children. All too often, foster carers struggle to support the emotional needs of children in their care. It would be possible, for instance, to develop a local offer for foster carers and looked-after children which outlines the therapeutic support services available in the community.

I hope that the Government will commit to these recommendations. In recent years, we have begun to acknowledge the poor outcomes that face children in care. However, we still have some way to go and, without appropriate therapeutic support, we will continue to fail some of the most vulnerable children in our nation. We all have a duty to keep children safe from harm but also a duty to support the emotional well-being of children in care. We know that the right support at the right time can make a huge difference to these young lives. I hope that the Government will hear the many calls made here today by colleagues.

When we consider improving children’s life chances we must also pay attention to the needs of other vulnerable children being cared for by our local authorities, so I turn briefly to the care provided to trafficked and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who are not in the care of their parents. It is well known that trafficked and asylum-seeking children are at great risk of exploitation and of retrafficking, even after they are brought into local authority care. After investigations by BBC Radio 5 Live and BuzzFeed News, in April they reported a shocking 75% increase in the number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who went missing from local authority care in 2015, compared with the previous year. Key to protecting these children is ensuring that they are provided with accommodation that is safe and where they can be adequately supervised and cared for. Can the Minister tell the House what the Government are doing in conjunction with local authorities to increase the amount of supervised accommodation available for children at risk of retrafficking? In particular, what consideration have the Government given to requiring local authorities to place all children who they suspect may be victims of trafficking into safe foster care?

Once again, I welcome the Bill and support the Government’s intention to improve levels of support and care for some of our most vulnerable children. I very much encourage the Minister to consider where the Bill might be strengthened as it goes through the debates in your Lordships’ House.