Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 7, leave out subsection (1) and insert—
“(1) Without prejudice to the duties imposed by section 22 of the Children Act 1989 (general duty of local authority in relation to children looked after by them) or any other specific duties imposed upon them by law in performance of their functions with respect to the children and young people mentioned in subsection (2), local authorities, the responsible bodies for maintained and independent schools, health authorities, responsible persons appointed under the Children and Families Act 2014 and the Secretary of State must, in carrying out functions in relation to the children and young people mentioned in subsection (2), take appropriate steps to—(a) safeguard and promote the best interests, health and well-being of those children and young people;(b) ascertain the views, wishes and feelings of the child or young person, and give due consideration and appropriate weight to those views, wishes and feelings in all decisions concerning them;(c) identify services available and suitable for the child or young person provided by themselves or another relevant partner;(d) in co-operation with other relevant partners, help those children and young people gain access to and make the best use of services provided by the public body or its relevant partners;(e) promote high aspirations, and seek to secure the best outcomes for those children and young people;(f) ensure that those children and young people are safe, and provide for stability in their home lives, relationships, education or work;(g) ensure provision of appropriate support to advance their recovery, happiness and emotional stability;(h) keep siblings together and ensure family contact wherever possible;(i) prepare those children and young people for adulthood and independent living.”

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords, we are at the start of Committee on this important and valuable Bill. Although, sadly, with the current political situation as it is, it is unlikely that we will know whether the Bill will complete its passage through your Lordships’ House—or indeed its passage through the other place—and become law, it is my great pleasure to start the first group of our Committee stage on the Bill with my Amendment 1.

The amendments in this group consider the extent and purposes of the corporate parenting principles set out in Clause 1. In many ways this section of the Bill seeks to reinforce existing good practice, with local authorities such as Trafford and Leeds already demonstrating that the care and well-being of looked-after children is not just the duty of social workers but a duty across the whole of the organisation.

Amendment 1 contains two new elements, the first of which extends the corporate parenting principle to health authorities and schools and the second of which, dealt with also in my Amendment 28, introduces a recovery principle to better ensure that looked-after children have access to therapeutic support.

I will be focusing on extending responsibility for the principles to other bodies such as schools and health authorities. We all have a responsibility to ensure that children have the care and support to thrive in life. Nowhere is this more important than for those children who are in the care of the state. Yet far too often we fail in this duty. There is a 40% achievement gap between looked-after children and their peers in the attainment of five GCSE grades A to C, including English and maths. We also know that 34% of care leavers are not in education, employment or training by the time they turn 19. The figure among the general population is less than half that: 15.5%.

It is extremely positive and important that the Government have sought to address this imbalance by introducing a set of principles that responsible corporate parents must abide by. This is a vital step, introducing a universal element that looked-after children up and down the country can count on while also providing consistent standards for the locally elected officials and local authorities responsible for meeting their needs.

So the Government’s proposals provide a good starting point. Yet I—and, I know, other noble Lords—believe that the legislation before us can be more ambitious in its intent. In laying out these responsibilities, we have to imagine the extent and breadth of a child’s world, the people, professional or otherwise, with whom they might come into contact, and the expectations that they will have of them. It is therefore vital that we extend the responsibility for these principles to include other bodies. We must put ourselves in a child’s shoes and imagine the kind of services they come into contact with.

Schools, for instance, are an obvious and integral part of their experience. The extension of these principles to other responsible bodies also has the important purpose of ensuring that health professionals—just like social workers—understand their responsibilities to looked-after children and that resources and support are properly directed to meet their needs.

I look forward very much to listening to the debate on this group of amendments—and, indeed, the whole debate—and I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Listowel]

I thank the noble Lord for answering my point about siblings. I look forward to the debate on the amendments. I also thank him for his clear reply to the important point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top. He said that the care plan process must involve parents. However, the experience so often is that parents do not get the help they need with their addictions or mental health support. So I hope that the noble Baroness will consider bringing back an amendment on this on Report. In the interim, I look forward to having discussions with colleagues to get their advice on whether anything more can be done to ensure parents get the support they need.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I am sure that noble Lords will agree that this has been an interesting and wide-ranging debate. It has opened up many other areas that we will need to address as the Bill progresses.

We are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for the way in which he has dealt with the comments made. Clearly, he will take into account many of the points made and will consider whether changes can be made in the right direction to satisfy us so that we all know the right way forward.

I gather that there is probably something substantially wrong with my amendment which might cause problems at a later stage. Certainly, at the moment, I do not wish to press it. I will look at it again and, unless other Members of the Committee wish to press the amendment at this stage, I suggest that we withdraw it and think about the next stage. We should think about the other amendments we shall be going on to in Committee, but we should also consider how we might reframe them to meet the problems we may still have on Report.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

As I said at Second Reading, this assessment and treatment should include any speech and language needs because, if not detected and addressed, this lack of ability to communicate freely can not only hold the child back in their education but cause such alienation that they may find themselves in trouble with the law. That would be a terrible disaster, as we heard when discussing the previous group. It can also prevent children engaging fully with their own care and expressing their views. It is so important that those views are heard when decisions are made about their care, so we must ensure that children are equipped with the skills and abilities to make their views known. So I hope that the Minister will look kindly on these additional principles and agree to their incorporation.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, my amendment in this group is Amendment 28. But before I turn to it I should say that, having listened to all the points that have been made, whether on speech and language difficulties, referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, the kinship carer issue mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, or the splitting up of siblings—all these issues are so important. The fact that they have not been addressed effectively does not speak well of what we have achieved so far. We must ensure that we achieve more appropriate success in future.

My Amendment 28 stresses the need for a recovery principle to guarantee therapeutic support for looked-after children. Amendment 1, to which I spoke, also proposed that relevant bodies must also ensure the provision of appropriate support to advance looked-after children’s,

“recovery, happiness and emotional stability”.

As many as six in 10 children in care are there because they have experienced abuse or neglect, yet our support offer often falls woefully short. Between 60% and 90% of children who have experienced sexual abuse will not get access to therapeutic support. NSPCC research has also found that as many as one in five children are turned away from CAMHS after referral to a service. While the average waiting time between referral and assessment is two months, unbelievably many children are waiting up to six months.

Around 100 children contact the NSPCC’s ChildLine service each week about mental health concerns and abuse. This has profound implications for children. Looked-after children are four to five times more likely to attempt suicide than their peers outside the care system. Research from the United States also indicates that nine out of 10 children who are abused go on to develop a mental health condition by the time they are 18.

Young people who worked with the NSPCC to provide evidence for the Education Select Committee’s inquiry into the mental health of looked-after children said that the traumatic reasons that caused them to enter care are often never really dealt with. One said:

“Wounds turn into scars that will never heal”.

Another child, describing her care experience, explained to the committee that she had just accepted that she did not deserve the best in life. No children should ever have to carry these burdens with them throughout their lives.

It is therefore vital that the Government accept this amendment. Some £1.25 billion is on the table to improve mental health provision in the UK, and we must ensure that this reaches looked-after children. A robust legislative framework that puts the needs of looked-after children first is a vital way of achieving this.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

Amendment 33 in this group is mine. In the natural parent system there are normally one or two people who are linked to the child, and that link continues. When children go into care, the difficulty is that the staff looking after the children are apt to be different from day to day and week to week, and certainly from month to month. My proposal is that when a child comes into care, a member of the local authority care staff should be appointed with a responsibility for the well-being of that child. When I use the phrase “well-being”, I am thinking of course of the Care Act and the wonderfully large coverage that that phrase embraces. It is extremely important that this should happen.

Inevitably, there will be a need for change from time to time. I have therefore proposed that where it has to be changed, a new appointment is made so that there is always some individual responsible for the well-being of that child. An example of where this can happen and be important is in relation to the provision for the child. If a child is being provided for in a certain situation and it appears that a more inexpensive arrangement can be made for that child’s care, the idea might be to move that child from the more expensive arrangement to the less expensive. It is important that someone with responsibility for the well-being of that child should have an opportunity to be involved in that kind of decision. That seems to be well worth while.

The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, in his report on deaths in custody, suggested that where a vulnerable person came into the custody system it was important that a single person should have responsibility for looking after the well-being of that vulnerable person. I do not think the Government have actually refused to accept that particular proposal but they have not accepted it as yet. What lies behind that proposal is very much the same as what lies behind mine and I hope the Government will accept both.