Children and Families Bill

Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, we are all aware of the passionate concern of the noble Lord, Lord McColl, for victims of trafficking, and of the concern of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. I support the amendment strongly and do so as patron of the child trafficking unit at the University of Bedfordshire, which does amazing work in supporting young people who have been trafficked. The issue foremost in its mind is the importance of guardianship and advocacy. Children are still at risk and the present arrangements are not adequate. The noble Lord, Lord McColl, eloquently detailed the need for guardianship, and I wish to add a few remarks.

I remember when the noble Lord, Lord McColl, introduced the Second Reading of his Private Member’s Bill on human trafficking to the House in November 2011. These issues came up then. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich spoke of trafficking being an issue for our common humanity. Nothing seems to have changed and, in particular, children who are trafficked need all the help they can get. A guardian who advocates in the best interests of the child is a vital element in that support.

Many of these children remain unidentified unless they are associated with criminal offences. I am thinking of young boys who work in cannabis factories, of which, I read in the newspaper, there are about 500,000 in this country. These boys get caught and the bosses escape. I am thinking of girls sold into the sex trade, who have their passports removed and are kept locked away to have sex with dozens of men a day or are sold into domestic slavery. Sometimes, if these children escape or are discovered, they are passed around the systems. They do not speak much English and they have no knowledge of the support systems that might help them. Many simply go missing.

Even if they are found and receive support, it may be well meaning but inappropriate. I remember one girl who was accommodated in a flat in a suburb outside London with no friends. On Christmas Day, a social worker took round a cake. Apart from that she was isolated, and the isolation of such children can mean that they are at real risk of being unprotected and retrafficked.

These young people need a guardian, as the noble Lord, Lord McColl said, to help with language difficulties, legal issues, accommodation, finding a friendship group and protection. It may be the case that the people who trafficked the young person will come looking for them. Importantly, as the noble Lord, Lord McColl, emphasised, the guardian can help with the liaison between the agencies concerned with the child, such as police, social workers, health and education. This is an issue of child protection and should be in the plans of every local authority. Guardianship is the best way to ensure that there is a positive outcome for these children who have undergone the most horrendous and degrading experiences.

The University of Bedfordshire’s child trafficking unit provides interventions for trafficked young people, with individual and group support and education. I want to share briefly the story of one such young woman, just to show that enormous progress can be made with sympathy, understanding and formal support. I first met this young woman when she was about 17 and had been trafficked from a country in Africa. Her English was poor and she was still traumatised. Two years later she came to an event here in the Cholmondeley Room in the House of Lords, where trafficked young people presented their experiences in works of art and short speeches. The noble Lord, Lord McColl, attended and I think he was impressed. He certainly took many photographs.

The young woman I am talking about spoke very passionately to about 80 people. After the ceremony she said to me, “Did you notice anything about me today?”. I said, “Not in particular”, although she was confident, attractive and charismatic. She said, “I read my speech”. Two years earlier she could not read. This young woman, with support and encouragement from guardians and advocates, was now attending college and had ambitions. I do not think I need to say any more about the importance of guardianship and advocacy for trafficked children.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I intended to put my name to this amendment but failed to do so. I have supported each of the amendments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and I strongly support this one. He has set out extremely effectively, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, nearly everything that needs to be said and I do not propose to say very much.

I wish to pick up on what the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, said about this being an issue of child protection, among other matters. As I said earlier this week, very often when children go missing from local authority care, the local authorities do not know that they are trafficked children. Therefore, no one is identifying them and looking for them with the special care that is required for this small group of children. They are treated as ordinary missing children who will probably come back. This is a very serious child protection issue.

The other point made by the noble Lord, Lord McColl, is so important that I shall repeat it. There is a real need for one constant person to take an interest in the child, meet the child early on, offer a mobile phone number, be at the end of a telephone and be able to answer the questions that a child with very limited or no English will need to ask someone who can be there. One of the sadnesses highlighted at the Still at Risk event that I was glad to attend yesterday is that these children have multiple social workers. We all know the underresourcing and overwork of social workers, so can they give a special degree of care to a foreign trafficked child who is not even under a care order? Consequently, they have to cope with no one person in their life.

What the noble Lord, Lord McColl, is suggesting in this amendment is crucial. We are failing a small number of grievously disadvantaged foreign children. We are talking about hundreds, not thousands. There was a particularly worrying case in Kent, where children who had been trafficked into Kent were being trafficked out by the same traffickers. Fortunately, Kent Police got hold of this, but if there had been a guardian, that guardian would have kept in touch with the child, with any luck, and would probably have been able to prevent it as they would be the one person who would know where the child was and, in any event, would be in touch with the suitable authorities to try to deal with it.

I have been talking to Barnardo’s about whether it would be prepared to offer some sort of service. The most important point that it makes is that there has to be a sufficient legal status because the majority of social services and, indeed, the NHS, talk about the confidentiality of teenage children and so on, so they will not necessarily tell somebody coming in what is going on. If the person has legal status, people have to open their records. In the absence of that sufficient legal status, a wonderful organisation, such as Barnardo’s, the NSPCC, the Children’s Society and so on, would not be able to offer that service, even if it were to be financially supported to do it.

The noble Lord, Lord McColl, has raised a very important issue. He and I were, if I may put it rather bluntly, fobbed off by the Government in 2011 and 2012 on the basis that there would be this report, and nothing is happening now. Children are going missing and are suffering the trauma of trying to cope with inadequate English through the multiplicity of agencies with which they have to deal. Quite simply, it is unjust. It is not good enough, and we as a country should be rather ashamed of ourselves.

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[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, we share the concerns of my noble friend Lord McColl for the victims of the terrible crime of child trafficking. I pay tribute to his determined and enduring commitment to these children. I am sorry if the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and my noble friend Lord McColl feel that they are being batted away in any sense; they are not and will not be. These debates are extremely important in taking things forward.

At the previous session of this Committee, the failure of some local authorities to fulfil their statutory duties towards these child victims was discussed. We heard, as we have heard again today, some heartrending accounts. I start by emphasising that these failures are absolutely unacceptable. Local authorities should ensure that these very vulnerable children receive the care and support that they so desperately need. In fulfilling those duties, a looked-after child who has been trafficked should be allocated a social worker by the local authority, as noble Lords have heard. The social worker should be responsible for planning the care of the child, ensuring that they are safely accommodated and that their welfare is supported.

The social worker should plan to ensure that all the needs of the child are met. They should take particular account of the specific needs of a trafficked child, including planning to prevent the child going missing from care, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said, providing safe and secure accommodation and ensuring that the child understands any procedures in which they are involved. Throughout this they should treat the child as a victim of crime.

The child should also be allocated an independent reviewing officer who would, among many responsibilities, ensure that the child is aware of the implications of their immigration and asylum status and that the local authority considers these as part of its plan to meet the child’s needs. Further, as noble Lords have said, the child would have the right of access to an independent advocate responsible for accurately representing the child’s wishes and feelings. Advocates can support children on all issues, not just their care plan. Social workers have a duty to tell all children about their right to an advocate. Advocates can and do support children of all ages, even the very young children to whom my noble friend referred. The child’s needs and interests are best protected when these professionals work well together and fulfil their statutory responsibilities.

Legal status, perhaps unfortunately, is not the point. Local authorities have a statutory duty to assess and meet the needs of trafficked children. The issue is one of practice and, as my noble friend Lady Hamwee pointed out, trying to ensure that what should happen legally actually does happen.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and others mentioned Scotland, and I inquired as to whether this had solved the problem. I understand that the pilot of guardians in Scotland has, thus far, had mixed results. I can reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that we are keeping in touch with the Scottish Government to see what lessons we can learn from them, but it seems again to come back to practice; even setting the arrangements in place has not cracked it in Scotland.

I realise that my noble friend Lord McColl does not accept this point but we continue to feel that adding another person in the form of a child trafficking guardian to those already working in the interests of the child could add another layer of complexity. There could be a real danger of confusion about the role of social workers, independent reviewing officers and the new guardians. The current system is clear about who is responsible for taking decisions about how best to support the young person. However, we accept, as I said on Monday, that this is clearly not working out in practice as it should do. Noble Lords will know that the statutory framework includes specific duties to consider the particular needs of the trafficked child and, for example, keeping the child safe from their traffickers.

From November, every Ofsted inspection report must say how local authorities are doing in reducing the number of, and supporting, children who go missing. It is therefore vital to focus on the reasons for the failure of some local authorities to provide adequate support to trafficked children, rather than perhaps to conceal those failures below further operational layers.

Noble Lords have made reference to the Still at Risk report. They may have noted that several of its recommendations highlighted that all agencies need to implement properly statutory and practice guidance. The structures already exist to provide the support required by trafficked children if the relevant authorities put them into effect. The report showed that effective multi-agency working is an essential part of providing the right support.

I said on Monday that we have already put in place a major programme of reform to transform the care system. We want to see stable and permanent placements, high-quality education and health support, and better support for care leavers as they transition to adulthood. We will ensure that, as we implement these programmes, we will take account of the particular needs of trafficked children. As I said on Monday, we have already published revisions to the statutory guidance on missing children, which strengthen advice on meeting the needs of child victims of trafficking. However, I repeat that we recognise the strength of feeling and the strong arguments around this issue. As I said on that occasion, we would like to take this issue away and I invite further discussions to try to take this forward, drawing on every noble Lord’s expertise. In the light of that, I hope that my noble friend will be willing to withdraw his amendment.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

Perhaps I may ask two questions. First, I cannot accept that a guardian or advocate would add an extra layer to the system in supporting trafficked children. The guardian or advocate is supposed to link the layers together and support the child. Secondly, will the Government be talking to Barnardo’s, the NSPCC, the Children’s Society, the University of Bedfordshire and ECPAT in order to hear first hand the experiences of dealing with trafficked children?

[Baroness Northover]

I heard what noble Lords said about feeling that the guardian would cut through those layers; my noble friend Lord McColl put that case extremely cogently. I should like to reassure noble Lords that we are seeking to tackle this problem as effectively as possible. In some ways, it is perhaps slightly dispiriting to hear that it has not been cracked by the Scottish model. It looks to me as though we need to look further into why this is not working. That is why it is important that we meet up for a discussion, and it is vital that the organisations that the noble Baroness referred to feed in their expertise so that we can best take this forward.

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Moved by

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

44: After Clause 9, insert the following new Clause—
“Support for family and friends carers when children are not looked after
(1) Each local authority must make arrangements for the provision within their area of family and friends care support services, including—
(a) counselling, advice and information; and(b) such other services as are prescribed, in relation to family and friends care.(2) The power to make regulations under subsection (1)(b) is to be exercised so as to secure that local authorities provide financial support.
(3) At the request of any of the following persons—
(a) a relative, wider family member or friend caring for a child in any of the circumstances (hereinafter referred to as C) set out in subsection (4) below;(b) a parent or other person with parental responsibility; or(c) a child living with C in circumstances set out in subsection (4) below; or(d) any other person who falls within a prescribed description, a local authority must carry out an assessment of that person’s needs for family and friends care support services.(4) The circumstances referred to in subsection (3)(a) and (c) are—
(a) the child comes to live with C as a result of enquiries or plans made under section 47 of this Act;(b) the child comes to live with C following an investigation under section 37 of this Act;(c) C has been granted a residence order or a child arrangements order to avoid the child being looked after, within care proceedings on the child or following the accommodation of a child;(d) there is professional evidence of the impairment of the parents’ ability to care for the child; or(e) the parent is dead or in prison.(5) A local authority may, at the request of any other person, carry out an assessment of that person’s needs for family and friends care support services.
(6) Where, as a result of an assessment, a local authority decide that a person has needs for family and friends care support services, they must then decide whether to provide any such services to that person.
(7) If—
(a) a local authority decide to provide any family and friends care support services to a person, and(b) the circumstances fall within a prescribed description, the local authority must prepare a plan in accordance with which family and friends care support services are to be provided to him, and keep the plan under review.(8) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about assessments, preparing and reviewing plans, the provision of family and friends care support services in accordance with plans and reviewing the provision of family and friends care support services.
(9) The regulations may in particular make provision—
(a) about the type of assessment which is to be carried out, or the way in which an assessment is to be carried out;(b) about the way in which a plan is to be prepared;(c) about the way in which, and the time at which, a plan or the provision of family and friends care support services is to be reviewed;(d) about the considerations to which a local authority are to have regard in carrying out an assessment or review or preparing a plan;(e) as to the circumstances in which a local authority may provide family and friends care support services subject to conditions (including conditions as to payment for the support or the repayment of financial support);(f) as to the consequences of conditions imposed by virtue of paragraph (e) not being met (including the recovery of any financial support provided);(g) as to the circumstances n which this section may apply to a local authority in respect of persons who are outside that local authority’s area;(h) as to the circumstances in which a local authority may recover from another local authority the expenses of providing family and friends care support services to any person.(10) A local authority may provide family and friends care support services (or any part of them) by securing their provision by—
(a) another local authority; or(b) a person within a description prescribed in regulations of persons who may provide family and friends care support services, and may also arrange with any such authority or person for that other authority or that person to carry out the local authority’s functions in relation to assessments under this section.(11) A local authority may carry out an assessment of the needs of any person for the purposes of this section at the same time as an assessment of his needs is made under any other provision of this Act or under any other enactment.
(12) Section 27 (co-operation between authorities) applies in relation to the exercise of functions of a local authority under this section as it applies in relation to the exercise of functions of a local authority under Part 3.”

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, my amendments in this group address the issue of kinship care. Amendment 44 concerns:

“Support for family and friends carers when children are not looked after”.

Amendment 45 addresses carers’ allowances and financial support. I should ask for the Committee’s patience in my speaking to these amendments; some of these issues are rather complex and all are important.

Both amendments seek greater support for family and friends carers. Last week, I described such people as heroes—and so they are. They take over the care of children, very often in the direst circumstances, and lack the support that they need and deserve. I am grateful to the Kinship Care Alliance, which includes many organisations concerned with children’s families’ rights, for its tireless and highly professional support for family and friends carers, and for its determination to seek a better deal.

The House has discussed family and friends carers many times before. Some colleagues may remember the discussions, which have notably taken place in Bills concerned with welfare. Ministers from both sides of the House have been sympathetic, and some adjustments to the situation have been made, but not enough. I used to meet kinship carers regularly when I chaired the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse, because many of the carers looked after children of a relative who had a drug or alcohol problem. I became aware of what a brilliant job these carers do, often without or with very little support, and often to the detriment of their own physical, emotional and mental health, particularly if they are older carers such as grandparents. Kinship carers take over the care of young relatives because they want the best for them, often in an emergency, such as the sudden death of a child’s parent. I remember a grandmother in a London borough whose daughter died suddenly late at night, and who took over caring for three children aged between one and 10 in a one-bedroom flat. “You know what they call us?”, she said, “The midnight grannies”.

Two key issues underline what I have to say. One is that the outcomes for children who are looked after by a relative are better than those for children looked after outside the family. Secondly, such care saves an enormous amount of money. The cost of a place in independent foster care is £40,000, and the average cost to the state of care proceedings is more than £25,000. However, research indicates that most family and friends care arrangements—86%—are initiated by carers themselves, rather than social workers seeking them out.

An estimated 300,000 children are being raised by relatives and friends. Only an estimated 6% of children who are raised in family and friends care are looked after by the local authority and placed with approved foster carers. By far the majority live with their relatives and friends outside this care system, either with the parents’ agreement, or under a residence order or special guardianship order granted by the courts. Despite the lack of support, children in the care of family and friends do better in terms of attachment. They have a sense of belonging, a sense of safety and the confidence that they will not be moved about. This results in better educational outcomes and fewer behavioural problems. There is a greater likelihood of an ethnic match—88% as opposed to 78%.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes)]

My Lords, it is now 5.12 pm. I apologise again to the noble Baroness for interrupting her mid-flow. The Grand Committee is now resumed.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

It was quite a welcome break in this long speech. I am moving Amendment 44 and speaking to Amendment 45. They support financial and other support to family and friends carers. I was summarising briefly the benefits to children of such care and the hardships suffered by family and friends carers. Although there is a duty on local authorities to establish a special guardianship support service, similar to adoption support, this does not give an individual carer the right to a specific service. Moreover, there is no equivalent support service for children in kinship care under a residence order or no order. A survey of family and friends carers shows that those with special guardianship orders are the most satisfied with the legal order compared to those who do not have such orders.

Secondly in the list I started earlier, despite the Government’s 2011 guidance on family and friends care, most local authorities are not proactive in supporting family and friends care. There is no dedicated family and friends care team, for example, in most local authorities. This means that the carers and children are dealt with—here we go again—by different teams in children’s services, who may not have specific expertise.

The third factor is that there are no official statistics published on the number of children in family and friends care either nationally or locally. One analysis by the University of Bristol excludes friends care, for example. Local authorities do not routinely collect such data so it is difficult to see how they can design and finance such services. The 2011 guidance is clear: it requires all English local authorities to have a family and friends care policy stating what support they would provide by September 2011. Sadly, much later after that deadline, more than 30% of local authorities still have not published a family and friends care policy. The guidance does not change the legal position but while local authorities have to provide support for looked-after children placed with family and friends carers, which is 6% of children, they do not have to provide support for the 94% of children in family and friends care who are classified as not looked after.

I am aware that, in the climate of financial restrictions, local authorities are seeking to reduce service provision and that non-statutory services are being cut. My Amendment 44, which mirrors the special guardianship support service required, seeks to redress the shortcoming by requiring local authorities to provide support to meet the identified needs of children being raised by family or friends under a private arrangement or residence order. The circumstances as to when this would apply restrict the support to children who would otherwise be in the care system because they are at risk or their parents are incapacitated, dead or in prison. I hope the Minister will be able to address these concerns and meet with the Kinship Care Alliance to discuss the urgency of this situation.

Amendment 45 seeks to insert a new Section 77A into the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992. It aims to ensure that family and friends carers receive a basic financial allowance from central government to support them in raising a child who cannot remain with their parents and would otherwise be in the care system. Support would be restricted to cases of children whose parents are incapacitated, dead or in prison. The amendment would provide the mechanism for local authorities to provide discretionary support to meet more effectively the assessed needs of children in family and friends care under residence orders or where there is no order at all. However, this does not address the additional costs to family and friends carers of raising a child who is not their own.

Of course, the legal liability for maintaining children lies with the parents at all times, even if their children are cared for by someone else. At no point does legal liability transfer to family and friends carers, except on adoption, but these carers often have existing financial responsibilities—for example, caring for an elderly relative or their own existing children.

They may apply for child benefit, although there are sometimes problems in transferring this from the parents to the carer. They may apply for tax credits according to their means, and an allowance for the child where they are in receipt of income support. However, there is no recognition in the benefits system of the additional costs of raising a child who is not their own. Caring for a child, according to the Fostering Network, is calculated to be 50% higher than the cost of caring for a birth child. This is partly due to emotional distress in the children, maintaining contact with parents and other family members and engaging with social workers and health and education staff. This is why foster carers receive specific allowances from local authorities, paid at substantially higher rates than state benefits and tax credits.

Briefly, there are four key financial issues for family and friends carers in raising a child outside the looked-after system. First, there is the immediate cost of a child coming to live with a carer, often, as I said earlier, in an unplanned or emergency situation. Secondly, there are the costs of applying for a legal order to provide the child with security and permanence. Thirdly, there is the lost income resulting from the carer reducing their working hours, leaving paid work, forgoing career opportunities or losing pension rights. Finally, there are the actual costs of raising a child, which may include a larger home, higher utility bills and so on.

When special guardianship legislation was passed, it was envisaged that many foster carers would apply for special guardianship orders for older children in their care. There have been cases of successful orders in such situations but many foster carers are reluctant to apply for such orders because they fear that the financial support received would be inadequate, as compared to the mandatory support they and the child would receive as foster carers. It is likely that more foster carers would apply for special guardianship orders if they could be guaranteed continued financial support. The regulations should be amended accordingly. I hope that these two amendments will be favourably received by the Government, so that family and friends carers get a much better deal.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I support these two amendments. I am either patron or president of the Grandparents’ Association and I have a particular example of a friend of mine, who took over the care of her goddaughter at very short notice. She would otherwise have gone into care. The social workers encouraged my friend to keep the child and to take a residence order. Eventually she got a special guardianship order, which she has at the moment, but once she got the residence order she discovered that the social workers were basically saying, “That’s fine; now we don’t have to pay you, which is a very good reason why we didn’t want you to be a foster mother”. This is not as it should be.

It is not unusual for this to happen. Family and friends who are carers are quite often treated this way. Because they are prepared to care for one of their own family or somebody close to them, it does not become the requirement of the local authority to give them any support. I battled for this friend of mine to have some support and they gave her a small amount as a sort of honorarium. It really was very small indeed. It happens that some quite young grandparents or other carers, having achieved a good position in a job and a comfortable lifestyle, suddenly find themselves, after a daughter or daughter-in-law dies, taking over the care of a child or children at short notice. Their standard of living drops dramatically, often because they can no longer keep their job. They are therefore losing their comfortable lifestyle. Not only do they have an extremely exhausting time caring for their grandchildren, who of course they love dearly. It is also very trying because they find themselves short of money in a way that they had not been when they were ordinary grandparents and out at work.

It is a real need that the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, has set out with such care and the Government really should be looking at it, because in the majority of cases local authorities will not pay if they do not have to. Many grandparents in the association with which I am connected are in the very position that I have just described.

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[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

I thank the Minister for her response. The case has been made by all the speakers, and I thank those who have given of their expertise today for that.

I shall make a few comments. I am hearing about a great deal of guidance and information packs coming out but not about what local authorities must do rather than what they should do. I want to hear what they must do. I return to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, under which the welfare of the child is paramount. Clearly in some of the cases we have heard today, the welfare of the child is not paramount. Local authorities do not need information packs; they need the will to support these vulnerable families and children.

I will look at the Ofsted report if the noble Baroness can point me to it. It sounds like an interesting breakthrough. I was involved in the legislation that the noble Baroness mentioned earlier. We managed to get one or two little chinks, but we did not get far enough. I hope that we might get further with these amendments. It is quite clear that there is a lack of local authority support to family and friends carers. They should have teams or individuals specifically to support such carers, particularly when they are providing stability for children, often in an emergency, as we have heard. The emotional and educational outcomes are better for children in family and friends care.

I am happy that the noble Baroness will meet those of us who are interested and the family and friends care network so that we can look at this issue again and try to put some steel into it. It is not only children who will suffer; family and friends carers will also suffer because they do not have the money or the support for the magnificent job they are doing. I beg to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 44 withdrawn.