Children and Families Bill Debate

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Department: Department for Education
Tuesday 28th January 2014

(10 years, 3 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Baroness Pitkeathley Portrait Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)
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My Lords, I will speak also to Amendments 57ZB and 57ZC.

The Care Bill currently being debated in another place is making major changes to adult social care law. We have already put those changes through this House. It brings forward important and welcome new rights for adults caring for other adults. This Bill already strengthens the rights of young carers. These new rights will make it easier for other carers to have the impact of caring on them in their care assessment and to receive support services. I commend the Government most heartily and sincerely for the progress that we have made on this issue. However, as I said when it was discussed in Committee, these changes leave parent carers of disabled children as the only group of carers who will be left with the lesser rights to assessment and support provided in old legislation that will be largely superseded by the new Bills.

The purpose of these amendments is to bring the rights of parents of disabled children into line with the rights of other carers and ensure that they are consolidated into primary legislation where they can be better understood and used. Amendments 57ZA and 57ZB update the existing law that gives parents of disabled children under 18 the right to have a carer’s assessment that looks at the impact of caring on them—the parent carers. It updates and aligns these rights with the changes being brought forward in the Care Bill for adult carers of adults, and in this Bill for young carers. Amendment 57ZC replicates the new duty to promote well-being that is being introduced through the Care Bill in relation to adult carers of adults, and applies this same duty to parents caring for disabled children.

As a result of the Government’s changes, parents of disabled children will be the only group of carers with lesser rights to assessment and support, as the rights of other adult carers and young carers are consolidated and strengthened. Their rights will be left in rump legislation as the rest of the Carers Acts are repealed. These amendments are supported by the Law Commission and the Joint Committee on Human Rights.

I know that the aim of the Government’s legislative reform is to produce a clearer, consolidated social care system that is easier for professionals and individuals to use. However, I must point out that this aim will not be realised without consolidation and enhancement of parent carer rights. Without this, frontline professionals will have to navigate complex legislation in order to assess and provide support to those caring for children. There is little or no guidance in place to support social workers to use the existing rights for carers to receive assessments, currently sitting in three different Acts, each taken through Parliament by Back-Benchers with cross-party support. I was one of those Back-Benchers on a couple of occasions.

A lack of guidance and understanding by children’s social services already means that parents of disabled children find it hard to have their needs as carers recognised. Parent carers are being passed between adult and children’s services and are falling through the cracks. I was most grateful to the Minister for agreeing to meet last week with the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, myself and several parent carers and representatives of Carers UK. He was able to hear at first hand about—and understand—their current difficulties and duties. These and other parent carers whom I have met simply do not understand why they are not subject to the same rights as others. They told the Minister this in no uncertain terms. I very much hope that he will either agree to these amendments or agree to bring something back at Third Reading.

I turn briefly to the need for a well-being duty for parent carers. The Care Bill introduces a new statutory principle that embeds the promotion of well-being as the driving force underpinning the provision of care and support. This new principle is widely welcomed. I cannot overemphasise how strongly this has been welcomed and how important it is. The well-being duty in the Care Bill does not, however, apply to parent carers. Unless we put it in here, it will not apply to them at all. They face different challenges to other parents, but they have often struggled to establish rights as individuals on a par with other carers, and they are at particular risk of having their own rights as individuals overlooked. Too often they are seen only as parents, and their needs as carers are not identified or supported.

At this late hour I will not give many of the examples that I planned to give. However, I will end with the words of a particular parent carer, who said that a carer’s assessment,

“would help me loads, I feel very alone with massive pressure on my shoulders, I desperately need a key worker for my son, and a lot more time for me before I crack up … I lost my job because I was taking too much time away from work … caring has caused me nothing but sadness and loss of all dignity”.

I hope that we will be able to have a positive response from the Minister, and I beg to move.

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Portrait Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
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My Lords, I am pleased to support these amendments, to which I added my name. My noble friend mentioned that the Joint Committee on Human Rights has supported her amendment, and as a member of that committee I wanted to say a bit about what it said in its report on the Care Bill, which was published this week.

The committee expressed its dissatisfaction with the Government’s response to it on this issue, and recommended that the Government bring forward an amendment, either to this Bill or to the Care Bill, to give parent carers of disabled children an equivalent right to a needs assessment for support. The committee acknowledged the existing provisions, but stated that,

“they do not equate to a clear and single duty in law which requires a local authority to carry out a needs assessment of parent carers of disabled children and to meet the eligible needs of such parent carers”.

My noble friend gave an example of the effect this can have on parent carers, who do such a hard job already. Their job is made that much harder by the lack of clarity about the law and what they are entitled to.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights quoted from what the Minister said in Grand Committee:

“We are clear that any change to the Children Act 1989 to assess the needs of parent carers separately would change fundamentally the principles of the Act and risk the needs of the children becoming second to those of their parent. Recent serious case reviews for Daniel Pelka and Keanu Williams have shown starkly what can happen when the needs of parents are put ahead of those of the child. Our approach to legislation and statutory guidance is that the needs of the individual child are paramount”.—[Official Report, 20/11/13; col. GC 479.]

The committee said:

“While we are clear that the best interests of the child are a primary consideration in all actions concerning children, we do not consider the references to cases of child abuse and neglect to be appropriate in the context of discussing the rights of parent carers of disabled children to a needs assessment for support”.

I have to say that I was shocked when the Minister said that in Grand Committee. The JCHR went on to say:

“Children’s rights are not in conflict with parents’ rights in this regard. Indeed, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child recognises that a child is not isolated from his or her family”.

Speaking about the UN convention, a UNICEF global study of independent human rights institutions for children spelled this out:

“An important aspect of the convention is that it does not consider the child as an isolated individual. Instead, it situates the child as a member of a family and community, recognizing his or her need for support to develop and thrive. Action to realize the rights of children can thus be envisaged as taking place within and through a triangular set of relations involving the state, parents (and/or guardians) and child”.

These amendments embody the spirit of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and I very much hope that the Minister will be able either to accept them or to bring forward alternative amendments on Third Reading.

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Portrait Baroness Tyler of Enfield
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My Lords, the hour is late, so I will speak briefly in support of these amendments. I pay tribute to the tireless work of the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley.

As has been said, through other parts of the Bill, the new right to assessment and support that have been introduced for young carers is wonderful. It was also my privilege to look at the detailed scrutiny of the Care Bill. Again, the new right to assessment and support for adult carers is a landmark piece of legislation of which we can all be proud. As has been set out, the one group that falls between the stools are parent carers—generally parents who look after disabled children.

I, too, had the privilege last week of attending the meeting with the Minister. It was a very poignant meeting at which we heard three parent carers explain what life was like for them. One, I particularly remember, was looking after not one but three disabled children. She explained how she simply never had a minute for herself. She said that she was grateful for the support that she got in respite care for her children, but that she would be lucky to have the time to pop into the supermarket on the way home before having to go and collect the children or do something for one of her other children.

My final point concerns why I think that well-being is so important. What is often forgotten is the impact on the personal and family relationships of parents who look after disabled children. I felt that this was underlined very well in an excellent report in 2011 from Contact a Family. This showed the mental health problems that parent carers were having, including anxiety, depression and breakdown. They had to see their GP because they felt that their well-being was so poor, and they often had medication or had to see a counsellor. There was also an impact on their marriage, often with a breakdown in the relationship.

For all those reasons—I would love to say more but there simply is not time—I strongly hope that the Minister will be able to say something sympathetic in response to these amendments.