Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Stedman-Scott Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, I support strongly this group of amendments.

Does the Minister agree that local authorities would very much welcome the positive effects of these constructive amendments? Thereby, local authority education success stories would become more visible and, as my noble friend Lord Lucas has already implied, that visibility in itself would clearly assist further improvement.

As indicated in Amendments 78, 79 and 80, this would apply to the educational achievements of children in need or in kinship care, as it also should to all previously looked-after children who were adopted.

As correctly advocated in Amendment 80, career and employment opportunities ought to be included as part of educational achievement.

Taking into account the increasing benefits from virtual education, I am sure that the Minister will concur as well that, in these and other respects, and as recommended in Amendment 83, the Secretary of State should equally now review the current and future role and remit of virtual education, so that it can become properly funded.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 80, which

“seeks to include career and employment opportunities as a part of educational achievement”.

I have spoken many times in this Chamber, and will probably do so again, about the need to ensure that we an educational system that prevents young people becoming NEET.

I will share some statistics with noble Lords. There are 354,000 young people who are unemployed and actually seeking work who are NEET, and 569,000 who are economically inactive and not seeking work. According to the Department for Education’s 2025 report, 41% of care leavers aged 19 to 21 were deemed to be NEET. I add to this that I discovered recently that 66% of young people in Feltham young offender institution and 25% of the adult prison population had been in care. I have no doubt that these figures will ring alarm bells for all of us, and so they should, so what can we do about them?

The main factors that contribute to these figures—the main reason why these young people are in the position they are and NEET—are educational disruption; poor mental health and emotional well-being; lack of stable housing; limited support networks; stigma and discrimination by employers for those young people who have been in care; and inadequate transition planning when they move from education to employment. It is this last point that I will focus on. I hope that all noble Lords, including the Minister, will agree that we must have a system that prepares all young people, in particular those who have been or continue to be in care, to make an effective transition from education to work.

My first question is: can the Minister tell us what tailored and individual careers advice and coaching the Bill will put in place, working with the DWP and all its great partners, to ensure that young people get the service they need? How will the Bill bring employers into the lives of young people at a much earlier stage and dispel the negative assessment they make which keeps these young people out of the workplace? Will she please ensure that every educational establishment publishes its NEET tables, so that we can see what is working, do more of it and help those who are not doing so well? Prevention is much more effective than cure. It costs less in financial terms and puts young people on the right path. It was explained to me that it is better to be a fence at the top of the cliff than the ambulance at the bottom, and I am sure that noble Lords will agree.

One of the most enjoyable experiences I have had in this House was to be a member of the Public Services Committee, which is so ably chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley. Before I left that committee, we produced a report entitled Think Work First: The Transition from Education to Employment for Young Disabled People, but its findings, although they concern specific help for disabled people, have resonance with all young people.

The second recommendation in that report says:

“The Government should work with local authorities to improve the availability of ‘ready to work’ programmes such as that provided by ThinkForward”.


Another happy moment in my career was to develop and deliver the prototype for ThinkForward. I can tell noble Lords that it works and it can be done. It can be done in schools, where the coaches are part of the school management team. Young people at risk of becoming NEET are identified very early and get a dedicated coach who is on the journey with them. The results are that 85% of the 14 to 16 year-olds involved showed significant improvements in attendance; 60% of the school leavers achieved at least five GCSEs at grades A to C; and 96% of the 17 to 18 year-olds were in education, employment or training. I know that ThinkForward and other organisations would be more than happy to work with the Government, and it was a private equity foundation that put the funding model in place to make sure that it worked, so not every penny came from the Government—I hope that that might excite the Minister. So, it can be done, it must be done, and I hope that the Minister will confirm that it will be done.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 79 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester. Following the statistical barrage from the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, I shall give some more. According to the Drive Forward Foundation, children in care on average achieve an Attainment 8 score that is less than half of the overall pupil population. Just 14% of care leavers go on to university, compared with 47% of all young people. Some 22% of care leavers say that they always or often feel lonely, compared with 10% of all young people, and 15% of care leavers report that they do not have a good friend, compared with 5% of all adults. One in three care leavers becomes homeless in the first two years after they leave care, and 52% of children in care have a criminal conviction by the age of 24, compared with 13% of non-care-experienced children. One line in the Bill could achieve so much.

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[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I support the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester’s Amendment 164 to introduce a national offer for child care leavers. This is strongly recommended by Barnardo’s because this amendment would end the postcode lottery of support for care leavers and help remove barriers to opportunity. Each year around 13,000 young people leave care without the support they need, and the outcomes of these young people remain much lower than those of their peers. That is why we at Barnardo’s—and I declare an interest as vice-president—believe that there should be a new minimum standard of support for care leavers: a national offer regardless of where they live. It should include measures recommended by Barnardo’s, which I hope the Government and the Minister will agree to.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 97 and 99 in the name of my noble friend Lord Farmer, who cannot be here today. His support for Amendment 99, and mine, is grounded in—

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Those are in the next group.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I apologise; I am just so keen.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and Amendment 164 in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester.

I am a retread, a hereditary Peer who originally came here not very long ago, in 1981, left in 1999 and was recycled, like an old tyre, in 2014. I made my first maiden speech in 1982 and my second in 2015, on the subject of Staying Put. At that time the Minister for Children was the rather wonderful Edward Timpson, the younger brother of the Department of Justice Minister here. He had grown up in an extraordinary family. Apart from having full-blood siblings, while he was growing up his amazing parents fostered more than 90 children. So Staying Put was put in place by an individual who had a deep understanding of the issues faced by young people unfortunate enough not to be able to live with their natural or even unnatural parents. Staying Put was a result of that. The debate in 2015 was to welcome the fact that it had been extended, having been deemed such a success.

It is very fitting that now we have another Timpson in government, albeit in a different department, we again look at this and recognise how successful it has been. What we are asking for in this amendment will not involve a vast number of children or a vast amount of money. It will, however, be transformative for that small number of children. In economic terms, the benefits of giving them support up to the age of 25, if they need it, will be more than repaid by some of the problems that might cost rather more if they have to leave earlier. For all those reasons, I request that the Government look at this sympathetically and see how it can be fitted in.

On the amendment from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, in so many parts of our society there is a postcode lottery. That is not surprising given how the highly centralised country of England, with all roads leading to London, coexists with a piebald mosaic of different local authorities and different organisations of all kinds, which to some extent relish the English creative impulse to reinvent the wheel in your own image. As a result, there is considerable variation. If you asked a variety of organisations providing support for those in care or coming out of care to define succinctly, in two or three minutes, exactly what their care offer was, you would get rather different answers.

For those reasons, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, said, it would be very beneficial to have clarity about the core elements of the offer and to do everything one can to make sure it is understood and, as far as possible, complied with across the country.

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[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 95 and 130 in my name, and in doing so I draw attention to my interest in the register as a member of the Financial Inclusion Commission. I think the amendments in this group are very important. They look in broad terms at the support that is available to care leavers—an issue which we all understand is incredibly important. I am supportive of pretty much all the amendments in this group, in particular Amendment 99 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, which is about a national offer to care leavers and how that relates to local offers. No doubt we will come back to that.

I had the privilege of attending an all-party group meeting recently where we spoke to a large number of care leavers. I think the noble Lord, Lord Watson, was there as well. I was very impressed with the presentations that these care leavers gave. One of them made the key point that they would like to see a national offer for all care leavers to ensure consistency. I asked them to send me some more details about what exactly it would entail, because this is a critical issue.

My Amendment 95 is a bit more specific. It would require local authorities to provide more clarity on the services they provide to care leavers to help them develop their financial literacy and thus access their financial entitlements. As we have heard, young people leaving care are much more likely to leave home at an earlier age than other young people and be forced to live independently, often before they are ready. That means managing bills, a tenancy and other financial responsibilities, and juggling that with education or starting employment, often without having any financial safety net to fall back on, which so many parents provide for their children. I know it is stating the obvious, but there is no bank of mum and dad for this group of youngsters to fall back on.

Too often, care leavers are not aware of the financial entitlements and supports available to them from the local authority, such as council tax discounts, higher education bursaries or, more broadly, welfare benefits. This lack of information can lead to them facing unnecessary financial hardship or falling into rent arrears or debt. We all know that, once you start falling into debt, it is a vicious cycle and so hard to get out. All of this has a huge impact on their well-being and security. Care-experienced young people often report that they feel unequipped, unprepared and unsupported to manage the financial responsibilities that come from living independently from such a young age, primarily owing to the lack of support or opportunity to develop the skills and knowledge they need on such basic things as budgeting, money management and broader financial understanding.

That is why the amendment, which would introduce a requirement on local authorities to publish information about the services they provide to support care leavers to develop their financial literacy as part of their local offer for care leavers—we can come back later to whether that should be part of a national offer—is vital and could make such a difference to their life chances. Such a change would create more transparency for care-experienced young people about the financial support available to them and would help to address one of the main challenges they face when moving into independent living.

Amendment 130, as I said in the previous group, is basically about extending Staying Put to the age of 25. We have already had that discussion; I never quite understand some of the mysteries of grouping, so quite why we are having it in a separate group as well I do not know. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, set out the case very well. I shall just add that, as we heard in some of our earlier debates, young people leaving care often face a disproportionate risk of experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity. Care-experienced young people are nine times more likely to experience homelessness than other young people, and statutory homelessness rates for care leavers have increased by over 50% in the past five years, which underlines why I think extending Staying Put to the age of 25 is so important. As we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, on the previous group, it involves a pretty small number of care leavers. The costs of doing this would be fairly modest and I hope, from what we have heard in the spending review yesterday and today, that some space is opening up. So, really, I am asking Ministers whether they will think again.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for my earlier early intervention. Noble Lords know how passionate I am about early intervention and it got the better of me.

Amendments 97 and 99 are in the name of my noble friend Lord Farmer, who cannot be here today. My support for my noble friend in his amendments is grounded in a desire, which I am sure all noble Lords share, to see high national standards of support, not just pockets of excellent practice in some local authorities. Having said that, the requirement in the Children and Social Work Act 2017 for local authorities to publish their own offer for care leavers, which this would amend, is an important one. But it needs to be built on. A higher standard at a national level would not prevent innovative and exemplary councils doing even better, but it would force any that were lagging behind to improve. I suspect that those who are dedicated to their local care leavers’ cause and are working hard on the ground would welcome high national standards, as those would help them argue successfully for the enhanced leadership and financial support required to lift their offering.

Another reason why the local offer is an important part of primary legislation is that it includes services relating to relationships—a primary need for children coming into care, while they are in care and when they exit. My noble friend Lord Farmer, the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and Lord Mackay, now sadly retired, tabled an amendment to the Children and Social Work Act 2017 that was eventually accepted by the Government, which included the important word “relationships”.

On Amendment 97, the Bill presents an important and timely opportunity to embed relationships more deeply into councils’ arrangements to support and assist care leavers in their transition to adulthood and independent living. We should do all we can to enable care leavers to maintain, strengthen and build family and social relationships. Family group decision-making provisions in the Bill need to be built on. Having gone to all the effort to bring together families and friends who are committed to a child potentially leaving their parents’ care, we cannot allow those relationships to fall through the cracks in their care pathway.

The Family Rights Group, which forged Māori-born family group conferencing into a British model over many years by working with families and children with relevant experience, has similarly refined the lifelong links model, which started as the family finding model in Orange County, California. Lifelong links ensure that children in care have a lasting support network of relatives and others who care about them. A trained co-ordinator works with the child or young person to identify and safely reconnect with important people in their lives, such as relatives they may have lost contact with, former foster carers, teachers or sports coaches. With family group decision-making becoming standard practice, many such people will, or should, have been involved in that process. Keeping these contacts going is a sensible and straightforward next step. The lifelong links approach has demonstrated significant benefits, including more positive and healthy connections in the child’s life and better mental health, instead of isolation and depression, or worse.

Knowing that they matter as an individual to people who are not the professionals paid to look after them gives a child a much better sense of identity. The practical wisdom and guidance that family and friends give often makes the care leaver far more emotionally stable, with a knock-on effect on their ability to hold down accommodation and training or education courses. This reduces the risk of homelessness and of a child trying to make their way without a goal or purpose. Without the motivation that positive relationships provide, it can be very hard to persevere. If you do not matter to anyone, it is easy to wonder what the point of bothering is.

The lifelong links model is currently available in over 40 local authorities across the UK, with 22 receiving Department for Education funding. Lifelong links is not named in this amendment, but, given all of the investment the Government have already made in evidence-building, it should be included in regulations and guidance as an offer to all children in care and care leavers.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I am going to be slightly unconventional and start with the last amendment in this group, Amendment 183A, in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester. I think it is so important that it does not get buried in this rather large and diverse group. This amendment seeks to deliver what was, in essence, in the right reverend Prelate’s Private Member’s Bill, which we debated a few months ago, and which I spoke in favour of. It sought to ensure that the universal credit regulations are amended so that care leavers turning 18 receive the same level of universal credit as anyone receives at the age of 25.

I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, who said that these are young people who have no access to the bank of mum and dad and no cushion. We are expecting them to live on a level of universal credit that is not reflective of what other people who have more support—not necessarily, but probably—live on. This is a modest measure. As I said at Second Reading, it is a humane, constructive and practical step. Although this should not be the reason for it, it is very clear that it would end up saving the state money by ensuring people have a little more support and do not fall a very long way through the cracks, as the statistics show they very often do.

At the Second Reading of that Bill, I spoke about the wonderful scheme in Wales that has been trialling universal basic income for care leaves, set at a quite decent level. One of the interesting things was that the only condition put on those care leavers was that they had to take one session of financial education. This is where I come back to Amendment 95, from the noble Baroness Tyler, to which I have attached my name. I have heard anecdotal reports—we have not had the written reports from the UBI trials yet—that one of the offers was that care leavers could take more financial education sessions, in acknowledgement that they had a significant amount of money available to them. Virtually every person in the scheme took the extra financial education. It might seem a bit specialised to have this in an amendment, but it is such an important factor.

I point to the fact that this is a broader issue. Care leavers are obviously people who particularly need financial education, but I note that, last year, the Financial Times Christmas appeal was to raise money to give British young people financial education. That is an indictment of the failure across the whole system to educate young people. It is very clear that care leavers are people who particularly need it, deserve to get it and can hugely benefit from it.