Baroness McIntosh of Pickering
Main Page: Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Conservative - Life peer)Child Contact Centres (Accreditation) Bill [HL]
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be read a second time. I am delighted to have secured a second reading debate today. I took an early interest in this theme as a Scottish advocate—albeit now non-practising—and in the other place, as shadow Minister for early years and looked-after children for a year.
At the outset, I place on record my admiration for the work of the National Association of Child Contact Centres. NACCC has a hugely important function in the establishment, support and work of nearly 400 child contact centres and services throughout England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The majority of these centres are staffed by highly trained volunteers. We should recognise the work of those volunteers and thank them for all they do. More than 20,000 children use these centres each year. More than 1 million children do not have contact with parents after the breakdown of relationships.
The UK has one of the highest rates of family breakdown in Europe, for which there is immense emotional, psychological, social and economic cost. The Centre for Social Justice estimates the latter at £47 billion a year. NACCC, with Cafcass, is responsible for establishing rigorous national standards for the running of child contact centres in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Before they can begin to operate, child contact centres go through a thorough process of accreditation and are reaccredited every three years. Thanks to the judicial protocol first introduced by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, courts are required to refer families to child contact centres that are members of NACCC and so are subject to the national standards and accreditation process. Those standards and that accreditation protect children and their families in the private law arena. However, for children and their families involved in public law cases, there is no such protection.
This Bill seeks to ensure that all children and their families, regardless of where they live or whether they are subject to public or private law, enjoy the same protection provided by the national standards and accreditation process operated by NACCC and supported by Cafcass, the Ministry of Justice and successive Governments from both sides of the House. Therefore, I believe there is a need to call for regulations to be agreed to ensure that those responsible for commissioning contact arrangements for children and families involved in public law matters tender only with properly accredited suppliers who adhere to the agreed national standards. I look forward to hearing contributions to the debate from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss; a previous Minister in the other place, the noble Lord, Lord Wills; and my noble friend the Minister in summing up the debate.
I shall give a little background to the Bill. More than 1 million children do not have contact with parents after the breakdown of relationships, yet the importance of children remaining in contact with both parents and their broader families, where it is safe to do so, cannot be overemphasised. The National Association of Child Contact Centres is a charity that supports the establishment and work of 380 child contact centres and services throughout England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The UK has a highly efficient and effective system of centres and services to keep children in touch with their parents and broader families following separation. The UK system is unique, in that of the hundreds of centres that are part of the child contact centre movement, the overwhelming majority are charities run by volunteers.
There are two types of child contact centres: supported and supervised. NACCC has also developed supervised standards to enable contact centres to extend their services to supervising contact in the community. Supported child contact centres are safe, friendly places where children of separated families can meet in neutral environments with the parents they do not live with. The centres also provide safe handover places, thus avoiding flashpoints when families meet who have little other communication. Supported child contact centres also provide opportunities for grand-parents and members of children’s broader families to meet. Child contact centres are there to help facilitate children and families moving to positions where they can make arrangements to see each other without the help of the centres. Drawing up parenting plans with parents who come to the centres, and mediation, are also part of the services provided by child contact centres. Their staff and volunteers are extensively trained. Along with safeguarding, there is a need for appropriate training in mental health awareness; mental health matters for the families NACCC is working with.
Supervised child contact centres offer more specialist facilities when there may be a risk of harm to children, emotional or physical, in meeting the parents they do not live with. This may be because there has been a serious conflict with the parents, actual or alleged domestic violence or abuse, or because a parent has drug or alcohol problems. Supervised centres are staffed by qualified social workers who often provide reports for Cafcass when a family is involved in court proceedings. Families can move from a supervised setting to a supported setting, provided it is safe to do so.
NACCC has been the umbrella organisation for child contact centres for 25 years. Keeping children safe is a key priority for child contact centres. As a result, NACCC has ensured robust quality standards in training staff and volunteers, in developing processes for safe delivery of contact services, and in the establishment, running and management of child contact centres in the best interest of the child. Since 2007, NACCC has established national standards in conjunction with Cafcass, which have been regularly revised under successive Governments, with input and approval from the relevant government departments and Cafcass. NACCC is also responsible for accrediting and reaccrediting child contact centres and for removing accreditation where necessary, recognising the need for high and consistent standards for all children using contact centres. For more than a decade, a judicial protocol has been issued and revised by the president of the Family Division which states that when making contact orders for arrangements for children, courts must refer only to a NACCC-accredited child contact centre.
NACCC also has an independent standards board chaired by Sir Mark Hedley, a former High Court judge in the Family Division, which keeps a continuous watching brief on the standards operating in child contact centres and makes recommendations for improvement. Its patron is Sir James Munby, president of the Family Division. Historically, much of NACCC’s work has been with separated families who have been in private law proceedings. More recently, when the care of children involved in the public law system—looked-after children—is the responsibility of the local authority, child contact centres and services are used. Local authorities have a statutory obligation under Section 34 of the Children Act 1989 to promote contact between children and their parents and relevant others. In 2013, a change in the requirements of special guardianship orders meant that all local authorities are now responsible for supporting contact arrangements for children, subject to special guardianship orders up to the age of 18.
Due to the demands on local authority services, most child contact centres and services provisions in the public sector are outsourced by local authorities to independent child contact services. Currently, child contact centres and services in the public sector run by independent contractors can be set up by individuals and organisations without specific qualifications, and the centres and services that they provide are not subject to accreditation or reaccreditation. That means that those centres and services are not subject to any nationally agreed standards and do not necessarily have the appropriate safeguards in place for children or their parents, so children using those centres may experience different levels of support and standards of care. As the number of special guardianship orders continues to rise, so too does the urgent need to protect children subject to these orders by ensuring that any contact arrangements outsourced by the local authority are subject to the same standards and accreditation that have functioned so successfully for a decade in private law proceedings. That means bringing all child contact centres and services in line with NACCC national standards, specifically those that meet the needs of children who are looked after by a local authority.
The Bill is drafted to support the work of the local authorities, having been drawn up after discussion with local authorities and having had approaches from, for example, a London borough, which felt that such provision would assist in its tendering arrangements. Some local authorities, such as Liverpool and Coventry, already tender with NACCC-accredited providers.
The Bill will ensure that all local authority services, the contact services operated by independent contracting agencies, and fostering organisations will be required to operate to the same high standards and be subject to the same accreditation and re-accreditation procedure. This will ensure that, regardless of where they reside, children can have the same standard of service that ensures safe and meaningful contact with their birth family. This Bill is an opportunity to reform practice by raising standards within our public law contact centres and services, to a level that would be expected from any other children’s services and educational provision. I beg to move.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering
My Lords, I thank those who have contributed to the debate and, in particular, my noble friend the Minister for her summing up. This has been a welcome opportunity to raise the issues, such as they are, relating to contact centres.
I turn to the concerns and reservations that have been raised. The noble Lord, Lord Wills, brings great experience to this debate—experience gained in the other place, especially as the Minister with responsibility in this area, and experience from his more recent work with contact centres. I think we all agree that the interests of the child must come first. He raised very real concerns, particularly as regards the removal of flexibility and the imposition of regulatory burdens, neither of which are intended in the Bill before us today—indeed, nothing could be further from the intentions behind it. Therefore, I hope that both those issues and the issues raised by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, who has been a pioneer in this field, could be addressed were the House to agree that the Bill should proceed to Committee.
As I said, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, has been a pioneer in this field and has brought her immense experience to bear in today’s debate. Of particular concern is the role of the judge in circumstances where there may be no legal representation, and I think we will all take note of that. It is a matter of regret that the legal aid provisions are as they are and that they apply in only extremely limited circumstances, although I think we can understand the pressures on the budget.
The thrust and provisions of the Bill are intended basically to draw a distinction between the services provided in the public law and private law sectors and to try to bring them together as much as possible. This has been a welcome opportunity to take note of the standards that apply in the private law sector and to see how they can be transposed, where appropriate, to the public law sector.
No slight was intended to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, with whom I had exchanged pleasantries prior to coming into the Chamber. I particularly enjoyed his contribution and now regret not having said how much I was looking forward to it. It is a matter of note that, until their friends or close family are involved in family breakdown, many members of the general public are not aware of the excellent work done by the child contact centres under NACCC, so I welcome the noble Lord’s recognition of that.
The noble Lord made a very good point about limited resources. Obviously I realise that there is not a blank cheque as regards requesting more resources, but that was not the intention. He drew attention to the danger of having an over-rigid structure—a point that was well made—and expressed concern about the new duties that might be imposed on local authorities. I do not think there is time for the Bill to pass through both Houses but, were it to reach the statute book, it would be the intention, under the new burdens doctrine, not to increase those burdens. The noble Lord very much brought to bear the sensitivities surrounding breakdown for families and for the wider family. He said that there would be lifetime consequences for the immediate and wider families.
I particularly thank the Minister, my noble friend Lady Buscombe, for her very full reply to the points raised across the House. It was an especial pleasure to be able to host the reception for NACCC and to raise awareness of the excellent work that it does. We were very grateful to the Ministry of Justice and the then Minister—I know that he has not left the department but he has left responsibility for these issues in the Ministry of Justice—for announcing the financial support for 2016-17. That was most welcome.
My noble friend set out the key issues in some detail. The point was well made in the debate that we are not seeking to increase regulation. Through this small Bill we seek to ensure that the standards that work so well in private law should be observed in the public law setting. I think it was the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, who said that sometimes an informal setting may be more appropriate. As long as it is supervised and safe, I think your Lordships would continue to support that.
I welcomed the support shown across the House, particularly by the Minister, for signposting the excellent work of NACCC. I hope noble Lords will see fit to allow the Bill to proceed to Committee, where we can elaborate further on the principles and standards. I welcome having had the opportunity of this debate, and I welcome, too, the Minister’s reference to the broader dialogue that will continue. On that basis, I ask the House that the Bill be given a Second Reading.