Children and Families Bill

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, both in Committee and on Report, we have discussed support for parent carers. I am delighted to move Amendment 42, which will insert a new clause on the assessment of support for parent carers into Part 5 of the Children and Families Bill. I particularly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, and my noble friend Lady Tyler for the time they spent discussing the issue with me and officials. I sincerely thank the parent carers whom I met recently for sharing with me their moving stories.

On Report, I committed to bring back an amendment in response to the powerful arguments that had been made. I am pleased to bring forward an amendment to consolidate existing legislation on parent carers of disabled children into the Children Act 1989 and to streamline the legislation so that it is consistent with the approach being taken to young carers and carers of adults. The consolidated legislation will remove the requirement for those with parental responsibility for disabled children to be providing substantial and regular care in order to be assessed. It will take a more consistent approach across carers and avoid confusion. The legislation will also require local authorities to assess on the appearance of needs as well as following a request by a parent carer. This will benefit those parents who are not aware of the rights.

The amendment specifically requires a local authority to consider the well-being of the parent carer in carrying out the needs assessment alongside the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of the disabled child, which of course must remain of paramount importance. The requirement to consider well-being builds on existing legislation, which already requires local authorities to consider aspects of parental well-being, including whether they wish to work or to undertake education, training or leisure activities. The amendment widens the definition of “well-being” to the definition in Part 1 of the Care Bill. This wider definition includes other aspects of well-being, such as physical and mental health and emotional well-being. The amendment means that we are taking a more consistent approach to different groups of carers.

As I said on Report, I also recognise that there is work to do to ensure that guidance sets out clearly the legislative framework on how services should work together to support families. My officials are working with representatives of parent carers and local authorities to consider the changes to statutory guidance that are needed.

I hope that your Lordships agree that this amendment is necessary, and I urge noble Lords to support it. I beg to move.

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

Noble Lords will not be surprised to hear that I am very pleased with the government amendment. Much more important, parent carers everywhere will be relieved and delighted. All that we ever wanted was for parent carers to have the same rights to assessment as those which have been given by this Government and previous Governments to carers of adults and to young carers. We also wanted the well-being principle to be enshrined in legislation for parent carers as it has been for other carers.

We are given to understand that nothing so pleases the Almighty as a sinner that repenteth. While I would not for a moment wish to accuse the noble Lord of being a sinner, he and his officials were certainly a bit resistant to these ideas at the beginning, but—no matter—the important thing is where we have ended up. This amendment sends a strong message to parent carers that their well-being really matters. I pay warm tribute to the Minister and his officials for being willing to listen, to meet parent carers and to bring this elegant and wide-ranging solution to the problems which those parent carers so graphically illustrated in his meeting with them.