Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 4th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, briefly, I congratulate the Government on bringing these amendments forward. They are a very welcome advance and I am extremely supportive of Amendments 12 and 13. All credit to the Minister and his colleagues for having the courage to grasp this nettle after so long and come forward with amendments. So it may seem a little churlish if I add a “but”. My “but” relates to Amendment 12B, which was so elegantly spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. I want to enter into the spirit of the way in which she spoke to it to probe the Government a little on the issue of age and the ability to withdraw children from this education.

We have to recognise that there is a need to make some of this compatible with some of the other aspects on which we judge children: for example, the age of criminal responsibility. It would be extremely strange to give people a chance to withdraw their children from this kind of educational opportunity at an age which is older than the age of criminal responsibility, which is based on the principle of doli incapax—children not understanding the implications of what they have done. There are other bits of our social system that need to be taken into account when we write guidance on these issues for children.

We also have to remember that the state does not give parents an absolute right to do whatever they want with their children. The state does step in. It withdraws children from their natural parents when it thinks that they are being abused or that it is not safe for them to stay in the care of their parents. That is based on another principle, well set out in the Children Act 1989: the best interests of the child. We need to balance the principles of the best interests of the child and the willingness of the state to intervene when it thinks a parent is behaving seriously unreasonably and damaging a child. We have to make the rules in this area consistent with rules operating in other areas, such as the age of criminal responsibility.

So I hope that, while the Minister and his department are framing the guidance, they will be able think about these wider issues, including the ability of parents to withdraw their children from this kind of education. It may be that we have to set some point in time where we cannot accept that parents can withdraw their children from this—whatever set of beliefs they happen to hold. At the end of the day it is their children, not they, who are going to have to cope with the world that they are moving into. We have an obligation to think about children and not just about the rights of their parents.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to lend my support to this important group of amendments. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, I think this is a historic occasion. Many people, including many distinguished noble Lords, have campaigned for this over many years. Like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough, I am very pleased that we are now talking about relationships and sex education in that order. It is something I spoke about in my maiden speech, and I am very pleased to see it introduced.

I shall make two quick points. The first is that, in the considerable number of debates we have recently had in your Lordships’ House on children’s mental health and during the passage of the Bill, we have heard about the strong link between relationship distress and poor mental health. It seems self-evident that supporting young people to develop relationships skills—conflict resolution, good communications, understanding about respectful relationships, the importance of friendship and family relationships, and expectations about what a healthy relationship looks like and what an abusive relationship looks like and what you need to do about it—is likely to lead to much better mental health and well-being for all young people, which is something I am sure we all want.

My second point is that good-quality relationships and sex education requires good-quality, competent and trained educators. At the moment, very few teachers have been given specific training in this area. On too many occasions the subject is picked up by rather reluctant teachers. Sometimes they are biology teachers, and sometimes they come from other disciplines. If we are to make a reality of this hugely welcome step forward, for which huge credit goes to the Government, it is vital that they look at the training and role of specialist teachers and, where appropriate, the role of specialist voluntary sector providers.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 12 presents us with significant changes in the law on sex and relationships education that were introduced in another place rather late and with very little scrutiny. The changes were accompanied by a policy statement from the Government. While the Government will no doubt cite many organisations in support, it is Parliament that scrutinises proposals and determines the law, and I find aspects of this particular policy change troubling.

In setting out my specific concerns, it is important to begin by being clear about what makes for good sex and relationships education. The evidence clearly suggests that parents have a key role to play and that we should be working hard to engage them more, not less. It is specifically in this regard that I find the Government’s proposals rather troubling.

Before looking at some of the relevant research, however, I want to say that I am not convinced that very much can be achieved by the proposed division between sex and relationships education. It seems to me that often the two subjects are mutually interdependent, and I am not at all convinced that they can really be separated in the way the Government suggest.

With that in mind, I turn to an important article from 2009 in the journal Paediatric Nursing, which concludes:

“there is an association between parental communication, parenting style, and adolescent sexual activity and contraception use. Maternal communication has been shown to delay sexual intercourse and increase contraceptive use. Maternal communication has rich potential as an intervention to impact positive adolescent sexual decision making and contraception use”.

If we are to engage seriously with parents on relationships and sex education, we need to do so on the basis of a relationship of trust that affords respect. The main message that comes from these proposals, however, is one in which the state seeks to tell parents what to do by removing the right of parental withdrawal from the relationships aspect of SRE. At the moment, parents can withdraw their child from any aspect of teaching under the sex and relationships education guidance. This includes all aspects of relationships education. Moreover, the freedom to withdraw a child from sex education will also be removed if puberty falls, as the departmental policy statement suggests it will, under the wider PSHE topic in primary schools, as there is no proposed parental right of withdrawal from PSHE.

I do not raise these concerns because I want parents to be withdrawing their children from SRE. I do not think the evidence suggests that many parents are using the right of withdrawal to withdraw their children. My concern is that, when we are engaging with SRE, we are engaging with a subject that, more than others, has to be seen as a joint project in which the research confirms that parents have a key role to play. Knowing what I do about human nature, I think the Government’s proposals are likely to be read by many parents as a statist land grab in which the underlying message from the state to parents is, “We don’t trust you”. I think this would be hugely damaging and could result in a big increase in home schooling. I hazard a guess that this will be a huge issue in responses to the Government’s consultation.

As a Member of your Lordships’ House who is committed to a smaller state, to localism and to choice, I find these proposals troubling. This is the kind of issue that should have been teased out in a proper debate, but it has not been properly debated because these far-reaching changes have been introduced at almost the 12th hour. Moreover, the proposal that everything should effectively be done through regulation means that we will be afforded only one solitary further opportunity for debate, with no amendment.

Social Mobility

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to the findings of the report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility The Class Ceiling: Increasing access to the leading professions, published on 17 January, that talented young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are facing significant barriers to accessing jobs in the top professions.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash)]

My Lords, we welcome this excellent report highlighting that, all too often, family background determines success in later life. The Secretary of State recently set out how education should be central to transforming social mobility by ensuring that all young people have access to the right knowledge and skills, high-quality advice and opportunities for challenging, life-shaping experiences to prepare them for career success. Employers also need to do more to attract and draw out the talents of employees from all backgrounds.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

I thank the Minister for his helpful Answer. The report of the All-Party Group on Social Mobility—I declare an interest as co-chair—vividly demonstrated that students from disadvantaged backgrounds were not gaining access to either the elite universities or the top professions, with the gulf between London and the rest of the country being particularly stark. The report contains important and wide-ranging recommendations to tackle this. Can the Minister say when the Government will be able to respond in writing to these recommendations, and will he agree to meet with me to discuss them?

[Lord Nash]

We will be responding in due course on the recommendations and will, of course, focus very much on opportunity areas—to take the noble Baroness’s point about the situation outside London. I agree entirely with the conclusions. The Sutton Trust tells us that the 7% of the population educated privately gets nearly 60% of the top jobs in this country. We have to do better than that. I will be delighted to meet with the noble Baroness.

Social Mobility Committee Report

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, for her excellent chairing of the Select Committee. It was a great pleasure to serve on it under her leadership. I also thank the superb committee staff—particularly Luke and Emily—who served us so well.

When it comes to the big debates on education, almost invariably the focus is on schools and universities. On the rare occasion that that is not the case, the focus is on apprenticeships. Of course those are very important things, but the attention that Governments of all hues have paid to these flagship policies has obscured one very important fact: that the majority of young people—53%, as we have already heard—do not follow the “traditional” academic route into work. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, I feel that the title of the Select Committee report—Overlooked and Left Behind: Improving the Transition from School to Work for the Majority of Young People—says it all. Those young people not pursuing either higher education or apprenticeships—around half of them—face a system beset by a lack of funding, esteem, guidance and co-ordination, and those are the issues on which I wish to focus.

The bald conclusion of the report is that young people not pursuing the traditional path are getting a raw deal. Let us consider the fact that as of 2014 there are some 3 million people in further education colleges on a government budget of £4 billion, while the 2 million people in higher education enjoy a budget of some £30 billion—nearly eight times as much.

The Select Committee had the privilege—and it was a real privilege—of hearing first hand from policymakers, educators, employers, civic organisations and, most importantly, from young people themselves about the challenges they face. The committee recognised the value of apprenticeships for young people and the economy but pointed out that less than 7% of 16 to 18 year-olds do one. The vast majority of apprenticeships are started by people aged 19 or over.

Many young people leave school or college and face a bewildering and incoherent set of options with little help or support to guide them through this morass, leading to high levels of drop-out. There is no centralised, UCAS-like system to guide these young people into jobs with the possibility of upward mobility. Instead, they, and indeed the employers who hire them, must face a constantly shifting, incoherent and poorly funded system of vocational qualifications that are constantly given short shrift in favour of A-levels and university degrees.

This issue was, I thought, reinforced very powerfully by the Social Mobility Commission’s State of the Nation report, published last month. It amply endorsed many of the committee’s findings, and its central conclusion is that:

“Britain has a deep social mobility problem”.

This is, it says, exacerbated by poor alternatives to academic education and leaves those from lower-income homes much more likely to end up in low-wage, dead-end jobs.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, I too found the Government’s response to the Select Committee’s report disappointing and lacking in urgency. Sadly, it provided no response to a number of the key recommendations. However, on the positive side, I welcome the bringing forward of the Government’s post-16 skills plan, prompted by the Sainsbury review, which was published in July this year. The Sainsbury review reaffirmed many of the committee’s conclusions, particularly on the importance of technical training and the incoherence of the smorgasbord of qualifications that young people currently face post-16. The aim of the post-16 skills plan, to establish a framework of qualifications which will cover both apprenticeships and college-based learning to provide a common core of knowledge, skills and behaviours as well as specialist training for specific areas, is admirable. However, there is for me one fundamental area where the plan falls down. Although it pays lip service to the idea of parity of esteem between technical and academic education and training, the plan offers no provision to reduce the gap in funding between the two routes.

It is notable that the Government found £200 million for grammar schools in the Autumn Statement but could not spare a penny, it seems, for technical training. It is hard to see how this underfunded, long-neglected part of the skills system will realise the Government’s own vision of becoming world class under current funding plans. Will the Minister tell us what progress has been made on implementing the recommendations of the Sainsbury review?

The Select Committee report made a raft of recommendations to government to help young people who do not go on to university or undertake an apprenticeship to make a successful transition to work. For me, key among them is the urgent need to reduce the unfairness in funding between academic and vocational routes into work. Most people in the sector agree that further education colleges have the potential to be real engines of social mobility and to help with much-needed local 16 to 19 co-ordination. But while government policy has ring-fenced schools and university funding from budget cuts, the same cannot be said for post-16 institutions which provide for young people moving into vocational education. In fact, the budget for provisions for 16 to 19 year-olds was cut by 13.6% in real terms from 2010 to 2015. The individuals most affected by these spending cuts are much more likely to come from low-income households, which further harms their possibility of upward mobility.

An underfunded and overworked system invariably leads to lower-quality education, and this has a cost as well. Drop-out in post-16 learning courses cost the public purse a whacking £814 million in 2012—the latest figures I could find—which is some 12% of the funding allocated to provisions for 16 to 18 year-olds that year.

Funding is not the only problem. The key insight from the Select Committee is that rather than the national curriculum stopping at the age of 16, it should instead end at 14 to enable a 14 to 19 transition stage to be developed. This would ensure that young people sliding down the wrong path are caught earlier. It would also allow young people to experience a mix of vocational and academic options more tailored to their interests and aptitude, which I think could help them make better informed choices later on. Far too many young people are demotivated by the over-academic GCSE curriculum, yet see scant opportunity in other directions. Importantly, this transition stage must include a gold standard in careers guidance—that is the term that we used on the Select Committee—which moves responsibility away from schools and colleges. This careers guidance must be independent, comprehensive and face to face to help young people through our current vocational system. It has to be said that our current system is some distance from this gold standard. The Careers and Enterprise Company has thus far made little impact, and although recent modest funding increases are welcome, they certainly do not outweigh the sums removed from the careers service in previous years.

Careers guidance is currently the responsibility of schools, which have a vested interest—not to mention an inbuilt financial incentive—for pupils to carry on in the academic route. Instead, careers guidance must adequately inform young people of all the options available to them.

We were not alone in our concerns. The recent House of Commons Sub-Committee on Education, Skills and the Economy concluded in July this year that careers guidance was inadequate and exacerbating skills shortages. Only last month, Ofsted published a report saying that the chaotic careers education in schools could jeopardise the UK’s future economic prosperity. We continue to await the Government’s careers guidance strategy, which has been promised for a year now. Can the Minister offer any news on this front today?

Taken together, the Select Committee’s recommendations support the development of a stable, coherent and navigable transition system for those aged 14 to 24. Ultimately, this needs to be underpinned by reliable publicly available data and owned by a single Minister who could monitor it and be accountable for its success.

The current system is not only unfair on individual young people, often leading to a lifetime of missed opportunities, it also damages the UK’s economy and limits our collective human capital. We are living in a period of profound change. Consider the fact that the richest 10% of the UK’s population now owns half of the country’s wealth, with the top 1% owning nearly a quarter. Consider that today only one in eight children from low-income backgrounds is likely to become a high earner as an adult. High inequality combined with low social mobility is a toxic mixture for our society.

The ladder to a better future is becoming longer and the rungs further apart. No wonder public dissatisfaction with our current system is growing. We have seen much evidence of declining social cohesion, of a country split between those who have been given a leg up and those left behind, in 2016. It does not augur well. Investing in our young people today has a significant long-term economic and social value tomorrow, but only if we get the system right for all. It is long overdue.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

1: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Duty to assess and promote physical and mental health and emotional well-being
(1) Section 22 of the Children Act 1989 is amended as follows.(2) After subsection (3)(b) insert —“(c) to assess and promote his physical and mental health and emotional well-being”.(3) After subsection (3C) insert —“(3D) Any assessment conducted under subsection (3)(c) of a child’s mental health and well-being shall be performed as soon as is reasonably possible after the child enters care and conducted by a health professional with sufficient mental health knowledge, skills and competence to conduct these assessments.(3E) Each clinical commissioning group must take steps to assist the local authority in its area in the exercise of its functions under subsection (3)(c).(3F) The clinical commissioning group for each area must appoint at least one registered medical practitioner and one nurse for the purpose of coordinating the discharge of the duty imposed by subsection (3E).””

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, as I have said throughout the passage of the Bill, my aim is to secure practical improvements in the care and support that children entering care receive. We have such a responsibility to help improve the life chances of that most vulnerable group of children, given their troubled start in life.

On Report, I was very grateful when the noble Lord, Lord Nash, agreed to meet me to discuss my concerns about why the current approach to identifying and responding to the emotional and mental health needs of children in care is simply not working—a point confirmed in the Care Quality Commission’s report Not Seen, Not Heard earlier this year. I found my meeting with the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and Edward Timpson extremely helpful and constructive, and I was particularly grateful for the opportunity to hear direct from the two co-chairs of the expert advisory group set up by Ministers to develop care pathways for children with mental health problems. I look forward to their report, which is due in October 2017.

It was clear from that meeting that there was much that we agreed on, but there is no time to be lost. The Bill presents an excellent and timely opportunity to make further progress, given that children in care are four times more likely than their peers to have a mental health difficulty and 45% of children entering care have a diagnosable mental health condition—such as anxiety and depression, hyperactivity or an autistic spectrum disorder—a figure that rises to a truly alarming 72% for children entering residential care.

I listened very carefully to what the Ministers said, most particularly to their wish for flexibility and the ability to test approaches to improving mental health support for children in care. I understand why they do not want legislation that is overly prescriptive. I reflected very carefully on this, and my new amendment is cast very much in that light. In short, my amendment today seeks to ensure that local authorities, supported by clinical commissioning groups, assess and promote the mental health and emotional well-being of children entering care. It does not prescribe the time, form or manner of any mental health assessment, and provides for the appointment of a designated health professional, a designated doctor or nurse, to help commissioners to fulfil their responsibilities to improve the health of children in care, including their mental health and emotional well-being.

I want to stress a few points to address some concerns that I know have been raised. First, in this amendment I have sought to avoid prescription in terms of the nature, the timing and the staff who undertake the assessment—the who, when, how and where, if you like. I recognise that the expert advisory group is well placed to advise on such matters. My amendment is very much about the “what” and offers an important opportunity to ensure that the commitments made in Future in Mind—to address fragmentation, to support co-ordination and to intervene early to promote good mental health and prevent escalation to significant mental health conditions later on—are delivered.

Secondly, a physical health assessment is already in place. My amendment would simply result in an extension of its scope so that an initial mental health assessment was undertaken as part of the existing health assessment—that is, its scope would be extended to include both physical and mental health. It would not mean the introduction of a brand-new process, with the inevitable burdens attached.

Thirdly, the integrated approach that I am proposing would also avoid concerns that a separate mental health assessment might be stigmatising. It recognises the close links and interactions between physical and mental health—all part of parity of esteem, of course.

Fourthly, given the nature of the trauma that many children will have experienced before entering care, the initial assessment could be undertaken by a range of health professionals, including nurses, with appropriate training and knowledge of the emotional and mental health needs of this group of children, particularly such issues as attachment style. Of course, any more serious needs identified in the initial assessment could be referred to a more specialist clinician in the normal way.

Fifthly, there is no presumption that every child assessed will need a specific clinical intervention. For some it will be about emotional support, which may come from a teacher responsible for pastoral care, a social worker, some other form of therapeutic support, peer support, group work, school counselling and other ways of supporting emotional well-being and building good relationships. Of course, those assessed with higher levels of clinical needs may well need a clinical intervention and, indeed, should receive it as soon as possible to prevent further escalation.

I remain convinced that this approach would assist greatly with finding appropriate placements for young people, with the right support built in both for them and for foster carers and other support workers, and would therefore lead to greater placement stability, which is so critical to a good-quality experience in care. I am aware from my researches that a range of integrated assessment models are already being used in other settings, such as the CHAT model in the youth justice system, where all young people aged 10 to 18 entering secure accommodation are assessed for their mental health needs, or what is called the DAWBA model, which I will not spell out in detail but which can be used for a younger age group. I certainly would not wish to prescribe the appropriate model myself, but it must be child-centred and age-appropriate. Implementing this amendment would provide an ideal opportunity to test out such approaches.

In conclusion, the amendment, which has strong support from the children’s sector and three royal colleges, would ensure that the emotional and mental health needs of children in care are identified early and that they and those caring for them can receive the support required to meet their needs and prevent the current unacceptably high rate of escalation to mental health conditions, which can affect children long into adulthood.

I look forward to the Minister’s response and know that he shares my wish for further practical progress. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for his response, which I thought was very positive and constructive. I know that he has listened very carefully to the arguments that have been put forward, both inside this Chamber and outside it—there have been, as others have said, a lot of people in the sector campaigning hard for further progress in this area. I was encouraged by quite a few of the things that the noble Lord said. I will not run through them all, but I noted in particular what he said about the further work to be done to guidance and regulations to more fully underline the importance of integrated assessments and of giving really good consideration to mental health and emotional well-being issues.

I am very encouraged by and was grateful to hear the commitment that he made today at the Dispatch Box, announcing that there will be, I think he said, between six and 10 pilots starting in April or May next year, to test out new approaches to mental health assessments for children in care. As he said, this will happen in parallel to the valuable and important work of the expert working group. I consider this to be a really important step forward, so I am very grateful to him and I look forward to making any contribution that I can to the development and implementation of these pilots. I thank him and all noble Lords who have participated in this discussion and I will say again how pleased I am by this progress. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for his work and persistence in this area. I recall a 28 year-old woman with experience of the care system who recently married a lovely man, an accountant. She had had the most terrible start in life and never met her father until she was 16. She talked in public about her experience at university and the relationships she had with the women with whom she shared a house while at university, who visited her and comforted her when she often fell into depression and withdrew to her room and isolated herself. I commend the noble Lord for his perseverance on this matter. I am very grateful to the Minister for listening to him and bringing forward this amendment today.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I welcome and support this government amendment. I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for pursuing this matter so very vigorously in Committee and on Report. “Relationships” is just one word but in my view it makes such a difference. If this amendment is accepted, as I hope it will be, it will enrich the Bill and make an immense difference to the lives of troubled children entering and leaving care respectively, if the measure is implemented in the way so many of us have argued for. It sends an important message to local authorities, professionals, social workers and others about the importance of relationships in children’s lives and what an important part of their practice it is.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, I too welcome the amendment. The local offer for care leavers and the corporate parenting principles are two of the most valuable aspects of the Bill to emerge. Of course, they were originally in the Bill and we have sought to improve them. The inclusion of the term “relationships” is certainly one of those improvements. I will add just one thing to what the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, said. The question of relationships is not just about having someone to whom the child or young person can relate but about having the ability and the knowledge to build relationships in his or her adult life so that, we hope, that can confirm stable relationships for them and their own children. I support Amendment 2 and the somewhat impenetrable Amendment 12, which is consequential, and the other consequential amendments which the Minister has put forward in his name.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Tuesday 18th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 4. I am very glad that the Government have tabled Amendment 1, which is the burden of much of the intention behind my Amendment 4, although my amendments spell out some of the mental health descriptions, which, under the heading of mental health needs, are not always apparent.

Perhaps I may start with a plea to the Minister that in future, Bills be handled differently from the way in which this one has been. We got extremely short notice of Second Reading immediately after the Queen’s Speech and then, immediately before Grand Committee, we were bombarded with documents, papers and briefings. Those of us who have no research or clerical support, for example, have to spend a considerable amount of time perusing those in order to understand what is being said so that we can play our part in the purpose of this House, which is to revise and scrutinise legislation.

We complained about that in Grand Committee but, lo and behold, during the short return between the two recesses we again received a number of briefings and letters, and this past week has been absolutely mad. Ministers gave three government briefings last Wednesday. I am not complaining about that, but I ask Ministers to remember that others have diaries and that it is not always possible to change with the rapidity that is expected. Also, there has again been a deluge of government amendments, government briefings and government papers, which suggests to me two things: first, that the Bill was not properly thought through before it was introduced; and, secondly, bearing in mind what was said in Grand Committee, that no impact assessment of any of the measures was carried out—a complaint we have made several times before. An impact assessment does not just say that you either do it or not. It should consist of an analysis of the outcomes of doing it or not, so that those of us not coming at it from a party-political angle can make judgments based on the facts as they are given.

What has also disturbed me during the passage of the Bill is the number of practitioners, including organisations such as the Association of Directors of Social Services, and others working in children’s services, who have tabled amendments and made appeals because they do not feel that they have been consulted, or, if they have, that any of their advice or experience has been listened to. That is really not a healthy basis for important legislation about vulnerable children.

The other thing that has come through strongly—I am very glad that the Government have tabled Amendment 1, because it reinforces the point—is that unfortunately, since the demise of the Social Services Inspectorate, responsibility for children’s social care has passed to the Department for Education. Yet when you talk to the people working in the delivery of children’s services, you find that most of the problems they face are more to do with health, emotion, behaviour and well-being than education. Indeed, preparing children so that they are in a fit state to be educated—mentally as well as in every other way—occupies a great deal of their attention. I am worried that more emphasis is placed on the educational direction of social work and that there is not a more apparent cross-government approach, working with the health industry in particular.

Amendment 4 is designed to spell out in more detail the conditions that children in care and other vulnerable children present. It is based on a paper published by the British Psychological Society in 1915 called, Children and Young People with Neuro-Disabilities in the Criminal Justice System. Unfortunately, we have become used to using the phrase “learning disability”, which carries an understanding of a more serious lack of ability to comprehend than some of the conditions in the amendment. The reasons for this go back to the marvellous paper prepared by Baroness Warnock way back in the 1970s in which she spelled out conditions warranting special educational needs status and therefore special treatment. That list was by no means exhaustive but since her paper there has been a great deal more research, and there is now a great deal more understanding of the various conditions grouped together under the phrase “neurodisability”, such as ADHD, dyslexia, and autism. I am strongly of the belief that all of these conditions—which have now been listed by the British Psychological Society—should be better understood. You need only go and talk to the director of a children’s home to find that it is those conditions that give them greatest trouble.

I am very glad that since Grand Committee, there has been a meeting between officials in the Department for Education and the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. In Grand Committee, I spelled out the need for the assessment of speech, language and communication difficulties on the grounds that inability to communicate is the scourge of the 21st century and means that too many of our children are unable to communicate with their teachers and therefore engage with education. There is now an assessment programme, carried out, I hope, for all children in this country before the age of two by health visitors who have been trained by speech and language therapists. The aim is to ensure that a plan can be made to introduce treatment that will enable that child to engage with education in five years’ time, when they start primary school.

Officials from the department have also spoken with the National Association of Virtual School Heads, which I must admit I had not heard of—I was slightly worried when I saw the word “virtual”, because I thought that either you are a school head or you are not. Apparently, however, the virtual school heads have a very valuable role in this area, as does the expert working group on mental health.

I am glad that the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists has been brought in. They are the best people to advise on looking after children and to advise the Government on how to ensure that children, and those working with them, have access to the communication services they so badly need, particularly children suffering from neurodisability orders. Therefore, I am seeking in this amendment the Minister’s undertaking that, in addition to the bald statement in Amendment 1 about improving access to mental and physical health treatment, he will agree to spell out the conditions that so dominate the lives of those responsible for delivering children’s services and ensure that local good practice—which I know his officials are aware of, because it has been listed to them by the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists—is turned into national good practice, so that all children can take advantage of what has been done in some parts of the country.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 8 in my name and indicate my support for Amendments 4 and 5, also in this group. In addition, I warmly welcome Amendment 1, which the Government have tabled in response to discussions in Committee. The addition of mental health to the corporate parenting principles is an important step forward towards ensuring that mental and physical health are treated with equal importance by local authorities when they are making decisions about the services and support available to children in care. The Minister’s amendment, therefore, is an important signal of principle—but principles alone will not improve the outcomes for children in care.

My amendment is designed to ensure that we can achieve some practical improvements to the care that children receive. It introduces mechanisms that will ensure that the mental health needs of children entering care are properly assessed and that they have access to specialist support if this is needed. Basically, the amendment has two elements: first, a mental health assessment for children entering care, carried out by a qualified professional; and, secondly, a designated health professional in each local authority who has strategic oversight of the outcomes of the assessments and matches those with the services that are available for children in care to support their needs.

In short, this amendment seeks to establish a mechanism that will identify children’s needs early on, refer the children to the right services and ensure that services exist that children in care are able to access—and access easily. This joined-up approach is supported by the Alliance for Children in Care, a coalition of leading children’s charities, as well as the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

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Tabled by

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

8: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Duty to promote physical and mental health and emotional well-being
(1) The Children Act 1989 is amended as follows.(2) In section 22 (general duty of local authority in relation to children looked after by them), after subsection (3C) insert—“(3D) The duty of a local authority under subsection (3)(a) to safeguard and promote the welfare of a looked after child includes a particular duty to promote the child’s physical and mental health and emotional well-being.(3E) A local authority must develop a local care pathway to ensure that the needs of looked after children, relevant children and former relevant children are addressed through the provision of—(a) a mental health assessment at the time the child enters care;(b) regular monitoring of the child’s on-going need for mental health support;(c) a mental health assessment at the time the child becomes a relevant child or former relevant child;(d) provision of the necessary support to meet the needs of the child, relevant child or former relevant child as identified by the assessment and monitoring conducted under paragraphs (a) and (b), for as long as is necessary until the former relevant child reaches the age of twenty-five.(3F) Each clinical commissioning group for an area, any part of which falls within the area of the local authority, must take steps to assist the local authority in the exercise of its functions under subsections (3D) and (3E).(3G) Each clinical commissioning group must appoint at least one registered medical practitioner and at least one registered nurse for the purpose of discharging the duty under subsection (3F).””

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

Will the Minister clarify that he will meet me before Third Reading to consider the issues I have raised?

[Lord Nash]

I should be delighted to clarify that and I will do so.

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[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 11, tabled in my name and those of my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. To begin with, I must confess that I was not giving the Minister my full attention when he referred to this amendment earlier in speaking to Amendments 2 and 9. However, I think I heard encouraging words, so I will be speaking with an optimistic heart.

As I said in Committee about an identical amendment, including the word “relationships” would remedy an omission in the list of the areas of support that councils are required to include in their local offer. It stipulates that information and services to help young people develop and maintain healthy and supportive relationships should be available alongside the other five areas of health and wellbeing, education and training, employment, accommodation, and participation in society. I explained then how, when children and young people are taken into the care of the local authority, first and foremost these circumstances typically create a relationship problem. There are profound long-term effects of losing parental attachments and bonds with siblings and others in the extended family. Ministerial architects of the Bill had the best of intentions in this area but the wording acknowledges relationships only scantily and, as a consequence, ineffectively—as I hope to show here today. If the goal is to change the culture in local authorities so that relationships become of central importance, as the Government intend, legislation has to provide a stronger lead.

Clause 1 provides seven corporate parenting principles, including that children should have stability in their home lives and relationships. The local offer provided for in Clause 2 will, according to the note for Peers we received at the recent meeting with the Minister, be one of the main ways in which the corporate parenting principles are brought to life in relation to care leavers.

However, the draft local offer that was recently circulated to Peers was devoid of any reference to relationships, so how can this document claim to bring to life the corporate parenting principle about relationship stability? Yet this omission could have been anticipated, given that Clause 2, which guided the guidance, as it were, did not specify that information on relationships would form part of the service offering, hence this amendment.

The draft statutory guidance for applying corporate parenting principles for care and pathway planning does mention, on page 19, the need for looked-after children and care leavers to build resilience by forging strong relationships if they are to thrive. It goes on to say that this will mean local authorities having regard to the need to maintain, as far as possible, consistency in the home environment, relationships with carers and professionals and school placement. It then goes on to make important points about stability of housing tenure and provide good practice examples of financial and practical help.

However, there is nothing in either the guidance or the local offer about how to maintain stable relationships, and nothing about helping young people to form networks of supportive relationships beyond those with paid professionals and those formally designated as carers.

We withdrew this amendment earlier after reassurances from the Government that,

“the whole thrust of what we seek to achieve through the Bill is the reinforcement of the importance of relationships and helping children and young people to recover from their pre-care experiences to make a successful transition to independence. The importance of relationships is central to the corporate parenting principles … We will publish guidance for local authorities and I would fully expect it to say that they should include in their offers information about relationship education among the services available for care leavers. Our forthcoming care leavers strategy will set out our plans to ensure that care leavers are better supported to develop and sustain the social networks that support them in their transition to adulthood and beyond”.—[Official Report, 4/7/16; cols.114-115.]

So the Government understand that care leavers need not just continuity of care, but support networks and relationship education.

Support networks do not just spring up but typically need the encouragement and facilitation of adults. In Committee I mentioned family finding projects, such as those taking place in Orange County in California. Family finding is an intensive search method to find family members and other adults who would like to step in and care for children and young people in, or about to leave, foster care who lack permanent relationships. The goal is to locate long-term, caring, permanent connections and relationships for them and to establish a long-term emotional support network with family members and other adults. They may not be able to take the child into their home but still want to stay connected with them and to journey with them through life. In Orange County, 97% of the young people who took part increased family contact, and 89% have lifelong connections. Edinburgh City Council has already adopted this approach. Encouragingly, in Grand Committee the Government stated their interest in this approach for their care leavers strategy, which the Family Rights Group is now testing in a number of local authorities.

Yet however many family members and caring adults we try to cluster around young people, these connections will be insufficiently sticky if young people are pre-programmed to reject the relationships that are on offer because of past experiences, or have no understanding of what a good relationship looks like. This is where relationship education comes in. It can be delivered informally when a young person finds it very hard to maintain a relationship with a key figure in their life. They mention it, say, to their personal adviser, and that person purposefully helps them to navigate through difficulties or misunderstandings in exactly the same way that a loving parent would. I am sure this already happens but it needs to be an important part of every personal adviser’s job description and skill set. Alternatively, it can be more formally delivered through the work of services like Love for Life, which is part of TwentyTwenty, the award-winning mentoring organisation with which the Government have contracted to work in the recently announced Derby social mobility hub. The ethos running through this and many other third sector organisations is that the skills to build good relationships can be taught and caught.

I have met the Minister, Edward Timpson, and am in no doubt that he is alive to the importance of relationships, but the Bill simply does not yet reflect how quintessential they are, as stated by the Government. Instead of trying to get this in the Bill, I could be arguing for better recognition in the draft guidance, the draft local offer and the forthcoming care leavers strategy. However, it is not a question of either/or; it is both/and. It could sensibly be surmised that the Government overlooked the need to make explicit reference to relationships in their draft local offer, despite what they say about its importance to the corporate parenting principles, because it was not included in the legally binding list provided in Clause 2. This suggests that it would be to all too easy for local authorities to do the same, thereby undermining the opportunity presented by the local offer to drive much-needed cultural change in this area. I beg to move.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I support Amendment 11, to which my name is attached, as it was in Committee. To reiterate what I said then, and despite the very good debate we have already had today on Amendment 2, the Bill itself is currently almost devoid of references to relationships; indeed, you might almost say it is a bit of a relationship-free zone. That is ironic when what we are all trying to do here is improve the lot of the very vulnerable children and young people who most need love, warmth, emotional security and human empathy to help them on their journey through life, given their very troubled start. It is a statement of the blindingly obvious that good relationships are utterly indispensable to that end.

The noble Lord, Lord Farmer, who is such a passionate advocate in this field, has already referred to the need for a change in the culture of many local authorities so that they also make promoting relationships central to their work. I know that there are some very good examples of good practice here, but I want to talk very briefly about what cultural change requires and why it is important. It could be assumed that good-quality relationships, particularly the support of peers and adults who are not paid to take an interest, are somehow nice to have but out of the reach of many young people in, or coming into, the care system. If so, that assumption will shape a local authority’s response. It will focus almost exclusively on ensuring that a young person has the material, financial and practical support that they need in the absence of the family ties through which these things typically come. It will also put a greater load on the social worker and personal adviser role.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, we are fiddling while Rome burns. I have spoken this week to a social worker, a director of children’s services, an academic and a head of a voluntary organisation, all of whom are in total despair about the state of social care. I know it is the Government’s wish to improve that. I am sure that that is where the heart of the Minister in the other place and the heart of the Minister here are. However, I am not sure that they have found the right route forward.

Certainly, the Local Government Association—I declare an interest as a vice-president—feels that there needs to be a balance between greater regulation and encouraging experienced social workers to remain in or return to the profession. I have not yet seen the report from the other place about the movement of social workers but I have read the press report, as I am sure everyone here has. That shows a huge movement. I know that there are vast vacancies and that inexperienced agency workers are taking on these roles with dire consequences.

We know that good social work can transform people’s lives and protect children, and I know that that is the aim of the Government. My concern about what the Government are trying to do at the moment is that this will divert resources and energy. We have got to focus both of those directly on the front line of social work so that we do not leave social workers in local authorities, and sometimes in voluntary organisations, taking the responsibility for the failure of the Government and their authorities to get regulation and professional development right.

We have all been concerned because of Ofsted reports. I have been looking closely at the way that Ofsted works, and I support it in many ways. However, it never takes into consideration the amount of resource that an organisation has. We have occasionally had examples of local authorities that are able to produce more on less resources. However, it is only a handful of authorities. A vast number of authorities are struggling and therefore worrying about what they are going to do. This is about making sure that we have a really good regulator who can assess whether the social worker or the structure in which they are working is at fault.

I have looked closely at how those resources are used. The director of social services to whom I spoke this week simply said, “All I am going to do, because I care about my services, is raise the bar on Section 17”. So we will have more children with greater difficulties going to a higher level of need, and more children below that bar—but again with a higher level of need —who will not get a service.

Unlike some of my colleagues, I do not feel that I have the answer. We all care desperately about social work as a means of helping families in need and we have to find the right answer. However, it is clear that many people feel that we have not reached that point yet.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I add my support to the amendments in this group, and I wish to make two points.

First, I endorse the sentiments of the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, about whether it should be a priority at the moment to put so much time and energy into setting up a new regulator when the profession, and the front line in particular, is so stretched. I was taken with the report that I saw on the BBC this morning about the Commons Education Committee which said that urgent action is needed regarding social workers’ case loads. It drew attention to high drop-out rates leading to increased workloads. It said that these problems must be tackled, particularly the endemic retention problems in the profession. These are the issues that are crying out for urgent attention, and that is my first concern about diverting our attention from them.

However, when it comes to the proposals that the Government have set out to bring social worker regulation under government control, I very much share the concerns that have already been voiced about the lack of independence in these proposals, which is extremely problematic. As I said, I support the broad concept of a bespoke registration body for social work and of social work having its own regulator, but a regulator needs to do a delicate balancing act and being government controlled makes that very difficult. It needs to balance the need of the public for accountability, the requirements set, quite legitimately, by government, the interests of the profession and the organisational requirements of employers, and any regulator needs to be independent in carrying out that balancing act.

Therefore, my concerns are the ones that have already been voiced. This proposal has come without any prior consultation or dialogue with the social work sector so far. It has not had an opportunity to feed in. As my noble friend Lady Walmsley said, it would leave social workers in a very different position—unique indeed—among health and social care professionals when we should be doing all we can to enhance the status of the social work profession and put it on an equal footing with other health professions.

I also share my noble friend’s view that this proposal will further weaken trust between the profession and Whitehall. In addition, it could well have a negative impact on the extent to which social workers feel real ownership of the very necessary and important improvement initiatives that are around. Indeed, it could also stifle innovation—something that we have discussed very thoroughly. It is very important that we have innovation. Finally, it could well lead to further demoralisation of social workers when, as I said at the beginning, there are currently well-documented problems with recruitment and retention in parts of the workforce. This is simply not the time to go about these reforms.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, could I ask a number of questions, particularly in relation to Amendment 116, on information? Before doing so, I will leave the noble Lord with a thought about my experience of local safeguarding boards in Birmingham, when I was the Children’s Commissioner there. A common feature of that board, which covers a very big area—I suspect it is a common feature of many other of those boards—was that often there was no consistency in who turned up for the meetings between the different agencies. There is a moving cast of characters turning up at these boards on behalf of particular agencies. Unless we can ensure greater consistency, we will not make those boards more effective.

On Amendment 116, I am not sure whether the Minister knows that some of us have been involved for a very long time—it seems as though it is since Adam and Eve—in trying to get the public agencies to accept a common identifier for children. If we want information to flow smoothly and quickly between agencies for children, particularly those who are at risk and in the child protection system, we need to listen to some of the people who have been working on this, such as Sir Cyril Chantler, an eminent paediatrician often used by the Government to undertake inquiries, to progress that. If you talk to paediatricians who have been involved in this area, the common villain of the piece—I use the term loosely—is the Department for Education, which simply will not accept that the NHS identifier is the best one to use because all children have one. Will the Minister take this back to his department and have another go? If he wants information to flow smoothly in child protection cases between the agencies, let us move towards using the NHS number as a common identifier. I assure him that that will get the information moving much faster through all the agencies concerned.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

I shall add one more question to those posed by this very important set of amendments about how to improve local arrangements and have more effective multiagency safeguarding. I can think of nothing more important than that this works.

When I looked again at Alan Wood’s very interesting report, I saw two sentences that so far have not been picked up in this debate. They read:

“I would also add that national government departments do not do enough to model effective partnership working between themselves for local agencies. The join up demanded of local partners is not particularly evident at national level”.

For the new arrangements to work, and it is critical that they do, it is vital that government departments are modelling more effective collaboration in the area of safeguarding. I would be grateful to the Minister if, when he responds, he could tell us what steps government departments are taking nationally to model this behaviour.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I am grateful for this debate. On the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, local arrangements may include elected representatives but this is a matter for local determination. On her second point, Amendment 113 gives the safeguarding partners flexibility to determine who the other relevant agencies are but, having determined that, those relevant agencies have to co-operate.

On the publication of annual reports, my answer says that this enables public scrutiny as it is transparent. As for the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about how local areas organise themselves—the noble Baroness also asked about flexibility on the areas to align operational reach—I can confirm that the local authority area will be the key area and accountability will be to the local authority. It is designed to ensure flexibility within that structure but, to answer the noble Lord’s point, there is no hidden agenda. We are concerned here purely with the matter of improving child safeguarding.

The noble Baroness asked about monitoring progress and reviews. I already covered some of that in my answers about the What Works centre for children’s social care. The duty remains for local arrangements to report on their practice and action taken in response. The second question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, was who the safeguarding partner will designate as a relevant agency so that it can keep track of what is going on. I will certainly look at that. His third question was about Amendment 119 and whether the guidance will be statutory. It will.

The noble Lord, Lord Warner, made a point about Amendment 116 and a common identifier and whether we could not use the NHS identifier. Obviously, we want this to work well. That is an entirely new point to me; I will take it back and look at it in some detail.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Grand Committee

If it is possible for the adoptive parents to get proper help at an early enough stage to be told how to cope, you can stop that disaster of the child going back into care. We got such a lot of evidence—and I have heard it from elsewhere, as many other noble Lords in this Room have—of how adoptive parents have sought help and not received it, or have not known how to seek it. It is the local authority or adoption agency that has the responsibility to put them in the right place to get the help. So I support what the noble Baroness, Lady King, suggested.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I add my support to this group of amendments, which are all extremely important, and I want to make two points. I support what has already been said about adoption. For some children, it works very well indeed, and it is absolutely right that we are supporting prospective adopters and giving all the support and help that children who are being adopted need, but it is not right for everyone. In particular, it is not easy for children over the age of five. We need to understand how it becomes progressively a lot more difficult to adopt children as they become older.

Secondly, I want to add to the wise remarks of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, about local authorities being required to take children’s wishes and feelings into account. I say that as the chair of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, as in my declared interests. Our role, as noble Lords may be aware, is to assist the courts and provide reports to the family courts so that judges know what children’s wishes and feelings are and can make their decisions accordingly. The work that we do there is very important, but it is absolutely vital that all parts of the family justice system—and I include local authorities as a key part of that system—have that first and foremost in their minds, so that children’s wishes and feelings really are what drives the whole process.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, want wishes and feelings to be included in the Bill. As noble Lords know, I am not really very keen on having additions to the Bill. I have taken part in a series of legislative debates that involved discussion of the inclusion of wishes and feelings, but I cannot remember exactly where they are and are not omitted. I have been chair of CAFCASS, and I know that judges have to take wishes and feelings into account. If local authorities had to do that before the report stage, it would save time because, often, judges have to send reports back because local authorities have not carried out the proper work on wishes and feelings. The present chair of CAFCASS, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, is nodding. If such a provision were in the Bill, that work would be more likely to be undertaken.

My other point is about adoption and fostering. At the moment, there is a groundswell among a group of women who feel that they have had their children prised from them into adoption—I hope that officials have picked that up—and a campaign to look more closely at preventive work, with children being kept in their own homes. However, I have to say that, often, these children should be removed from home. Whether they should then be adopted is the question. I raise that issue because good work with the parents might mean the child could return home. However, they are often very difficult children whose parents are on drugs or have alcohol problems, and who are seeking help for themselves but not making it, and the children are in real difficulties. These are the children whom fostering would help. Fostering would maintain the situation until there is more stability. These are the children who in some situations have been placed for adoption, when we have not given the kind of support the Government previously discussed—ongoing care for adopters, adoption allowances and adoption support through the local authority, to ensure no further breakdown. Where is such a programme? There had been very positive thinking about adoption.

The Government have for a long time resisted proper research on adoption breakdown in order to understand why these children are sometimes being placed several times over. Sometimes adoption does not break down just once; it may break down more than once, and that is a total disaster. I have met young people who have been in that situation. The sooner we gain a greater understanding, either through government research or through gathering the research of others, the sooner we can intervene better by preventing breakdown or not placing these children in such situations in the first instance.

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[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I support Amendment 91, to which my name is attached. In doing so, as in the previous group I want once again to draw on my experience as the chair of CAFCASS. From our work at CAFCASS, we have found that children in care who have regular contact with their siblings tend to do better in terms of outcomes. It is absolutely the case that relationships with siblings are often the most enduring that those children have. Indeed, as we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Warner, they can be as important to children as the relationship with their parents, particularly if they have supported each other through difficult times.

The reason why I most wanted to add my name to the amendment was that I attended a meeting last October of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Looked After Children and Care Leavers. Indeed, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, was there as well. It was a very moving meeting; we heard from a large number of children in care and who had recently left care about their experiences, in particular about the barriers that they had encountered in terms of having sibling contact. Perhaps I may mention some examples. A young person said that he had asked for contact with his siblings, but the local social services said no, because the siblings were in the care of a different local authority. That young person had not seen his siblings for 10 years. Another young person told us that he was the oldest of 13 siblings and had been allowed to see only two of them. He said that his adoptive parents were actively preventing him from seeing his brothers and sisters. We heard about other barriers, such as the issue not being high on the agenda for the local authority; we heard of young people who could not even get together the travel costs to see their siblings. We heard about a lot of things like that—but we also heard, more encouragingly, about some good practice, including young people being able to use Skype to make contact, and memory boxes for their siblings being put together.

I came away from that meeting feeling profoundly shocked and moved by those issues. It would seem so easy to do something about them, so why were we not? Along with the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, in November last year I signed a letter to Edward Timpson, the Minister responsible, setting out what had happened at the meeting and asking him what could be done to make it the norm for sibling contact to happen.

This Bill provides the ideal opportunity to add a provision like that set out in Amendment 91, which would make it much easier for young people like the ones I met to maintain sibling contact. I think that the impact on the rest of their lives could be really profound.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I would like to support what the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, has just said. The Select Committee responsible for the post-adoption legislative inquiry came to the conclusion that I and one or two other Peers who served on the committee ought to meet children. We met a group of around a dozen adopted children to ask about their experiences. We then thought that it would only be fair to meet children who are in care, and again we spoke to about a dozen of those children. Everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, has just said we experienced, and it was very moving. I was the only Peer actually to talk to those children and their enablers. They told me frankly how they felt, and nearly everything they talked about was in relation to their brothers and sisters. One young person who was just about to leave care had been the father figure to three or four younger children. They were taken away and all divided up between different families. He said, “I was responsible for them. No one will even tell me how they are getting on. I think of them every night”. It was really terrible. The idea that siblings are taken into account should not be part of the actual law of the land seems utterly wrong.

We know that local authorities are in difficulties, and I am not suggesting that every sibling, perhaps particularly the eldest of 13, should be able to see every one of their brothers and sisters once a week; that would be silly. The use of Skype, Facebook and so on provides an opportunity to be in touch but, unless it is a requirement, it is extremely easy to overlook. That is why it needs to be in primary legislation.

I am a grandmother, six times over I am glad to say, but I am also a not-particularly effective president of the Grandparents’ Association and, on its behalf, I would like to say how important grandparents are—and the stories I have heard of how grandparents are taken for granted. If they are able to look after the children, that is great, but when they come in asking to take over the care of children, who basically they have been looking after for years and years, they are utterly disregarded. In the best of local authorities and, I have to say, the best of CAFCASS, they are taken into account, but many times they are not. It is about time that also was on the face of primary legislation. I should add, of course, that not every grandparent is a good one—one has to recognise this. The fact they are on primary legislation does not mean the local authority has to deal with thoroughly obstructive, unhelpful grandparents, who are trying to destroy whatever the situation is. Speaking now as a former judge, I had that sort of grandparent too, so one has to be realistic. But the majority of grandparents love their grandchildren and work incredibly hard for them, and they really should be recognised.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 39 in this group, tabled in my name and those of my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. Our amendment remedies a serious omission in the list of the areas of support that councils are required to include in their local offer. It stipulates that information and services that will help young people to develop and maintain healthy and supportive relationships should be available alongside the other five areas of health and well-being, education and training, employment, accommodation, and participation in society.

When parental care fails, for whatever reason, and children and young people are taken into the care of the local authority, it is easy for us as legislators to treat this primarily as a legal problem. Obviously, it is essential that a minor’s legal status be clear and established. However, first and foremost, we should be aware that these circumstances typically create a relationship problem because of the profound long-term effects of losing parental attachments and the often taken-for-granted bonds with siblings and others in the extended family.

At birth, every child comes into that little unit, their family, where relationships are, ideally, formed and nurtured. Relationships are foundational to all human societies and what human existence is all about; without them, that existence can feel precarious, fraught with fear and difficulties and even fundamentally unwelcome. This is especially the case when making the transition from dependence into independent adulthood, a difficult and protracted shift for every human being, even when they have the back-up of good enough parents.

Although I welcome the inclusion in Clause 1 of the corporate parenting principle that children should have stability in their home lives and relationships, this is the only place where the word “relationship” is mentioned in relation to care leavers. Others noted this infrequency at Second Reading, such as my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, who mentioned a lack in this area. Three-quarters of young people leaving care admit to difficulties due to loneliness and isolation. Almost half found these very difficult to cope with, and those numbers could easily be higher, as admitting to such feelings is still stigmatised in our society.

Information about and provision to assist young people to build relationships should be included in the local offer laid out in the clause because it is highly likely to be another area of lack, given that they have not been able to learn such “habits of the heart” in their birth home. The Government might consider that this is covered by subsection (2)(a), on health and well-being, but we simply cannot take that for granted. Relationships are not yet embedded as a priority for public bodies. The best example of that is found in Public Health England, whose mission statement says:

“We protect and improve the nation’s health and wellbeing and reduce health inequalities”.

However, both its annual plan and the public health outcomes framework are relationship-free zones, something that the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships and others have been challenging for several years on the grounds that at least three-quarters of the indicators contained in the public health outcomes framework are directly or indirectly influenced by the quality of people’s couple relationships. It is stated rather narrowly, but noble Lords will take the point.

The inability to form and maintain relationships is a root cause behind poor health and well-being. It undermines educational attainment, employment prospects, the ability to maintain a tenancy and have otherwise stable accommodation, societal participation, and all the other itemised aspects of the local offer. This is not just because of the lack of self-esteem, self-confidence and other internal factors that can put lonely and rootless young people at such a disadvantage. Relationships have instrumental value. The deficit in social capital, when a young person has no family members to open their contact books to get them work experience and almost no settings in which they can acquire soft skills, can have devastating effects. Services do exist for young people to help address these relational difficulties. I have talked before about Love4Life in Loughborough, and Oasis College was recently established to ensure excellence in the many organisations that work in this and other related areas. They will not, however, be automatically commissioned without some indication from the Government that they are indispensable to a comprehensive and effective local offer.

I also gave concrete examples at Second Reading of the kind of services that local authorities can provide and commission. Northern Ireland’s model of person-specific personal advisers enables local authorities to draft in people who already get on with and are trusted by the young person leaving care. At present, care leavers are matched up with someone they may never have met before who usually has a couple of dozen or more vulnerable youngsters on their books. There is also a lot of staff churn, which makes a mockery of relationship stability.

I also recommended consideration of the family finding and engagement model in California and other parts of the United States. That name is slightly misleading in our system and not to be confused with the family-finding process to locate good potential adoptive parents. US family finding makes the most of blood connections with extended family and other supportive relationships that children entering or in the care system have already developed with adults, such as teachers, youth workers or the parents of friends. Instead of allowing them to lapse, local authorities treat these relationships as potential lifelong links and draw on this resource to build intentionally a network of support around young people before they leave care. What they are looking for is a small number of adults who are reliable and willing to be involved in the young person’s life and will keep in touch with them whatever happens, inviting them for Sunday lunch or to spend Christmas Day with them, for example. As I said, a highly suitable personal adviser could emerge from that process. If the Department for Education were able to furnish local authorities with model contracts, this would help them greatly.

I conclude by saying that this is a probing amendment. If my noble friend does not feel that this clause is the right one in which to place the necessary emphasis on relationships, I am open to the legislation being strengthened in this way elsewhere. Otherwise, the legislation will not, I fear, boost vulnerable young people’s life chances as much as might otherwise have been possible.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I add my support to Amendment 39, to which my name has been added. It says it all that we are discussing this important issue about relationships in a hugely important group with some hugely important amendments but, frankly, the two do not sit very happily together.

At Second Reading and last week I talked about mental and emotional health, including how the love and support of foster parents can make all the difference. That is because of the relationship involved. I also stated that very little notice appears to have been taken in the family test, which was part of the impact assessment accompanying the Bill, of children’s wishes and feelings, particularly about relationships that they value or may want to preserve. It is not an exaggeration to say, as the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, did, that the Bill at the moment is almost devoid of reference to relationships. I am very pleased to see that other noble Lords are trying to ensure that this emphasis comes through more strongly in other amendments in other groups. I fear that that this lack of emphasis on relationships threatens to undermine the admirable intent of a good chunk of the Bill, which is obviously to ensure that we improve outcomes for care leavers.

There is an absolute wealth of research reports, including those from the Centre for Social Justice, concluding that if we do not put strong, healthy relationships at the heart of the care system, we will never see the improvement in life chances that we are all ambitious for. At Second Reading, I talked about the need for ambition—for setting ourselves a higher standard. We simply cannot treat the presence of strong relationships in the lives of children who have been in care and are leaving care as a “nice to have”. That is just not good enough. Strong relationships are of fundamental importance to any young person in their transition to adulthood. Without someone who will provide unconditional love and acceptance, the challenges that the world presents can sometimes seem insurmountable. Such relationships must be a fundamental element of young people’s care-leaving packages. Those young people need to know how to draw on the resources inherent in good-quality relationships; for example, how to handle misunderstandings and perceived slights, and the constant need for compromise—give and take, if you like.

Finally, there are good relationship support services available for young people. Indeed, there is evidence of their effectiveness—they work. They are provided by a broad range of providers, mainly in the voluntary sector. I draw noble Lords’ attention to my declared interest as vice-president of the charity Relate. If local authorities were required to provide information—not the service itself, just information—about relationships and these services, we would begin to see far greater take-up of what is on offer. Those benefits would then go into adult life and adult family relationships.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, spoke effectively about the fundamental importance of relationships to us all but particularly to young people whose first relationship is often so flawed and damaging. That made me think of the example that some of our senior politicians currently set about what a good relationship is. One lesson we might learn from current experience is that our political culture needs some reform. We need to think about how we make our culture one where the best rise to the top, and where we have confidence that they are shining examples to us all of how one should behave. I say that with all my own faults and probably hubristically; I apologise for that.

I shall concentrate on two amendments in this group. The first is Amendment 30 from my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham, which is on screening. As a child, I had a speech impediment. I was teased by other boys because of it. I saw a speech therapist, did some exercises and no longer have my speech impediment. I was no longer teased by the other boys and I felt better about myself for that. We know that many young people in care can feel stigmatised, different or abnormal, as was mentioned earlier, so to provide them with these services and enable them to recover—to speak normally, as others do—is particularly important from that aspect.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendments 3, 31A, 36 and 37 in this group. They would all have the effect of extending duties to government departments, going beyond local authorities, in recognition of the role they play in the lives of looked-after children and care leavers. I should like to advance this by creating a comprehensive and tangible national offer for care leavers to lay the strongest foundation for their transition to adulthood.

With all the uncertainty in this country, in Europe and in the world at this time, there may be a silver lining; it may help us to gain some insight into the uncertainties experienced by these children. Their Chancellor and Prime Minister are either absent or unable to function. They have no idea from one day to the next where they are going to be. So when we feel uncertain about the leadership of our parties in this country and of our future, or if we fear that we have alienated our friends and neighbours, it may give us some understanding of what it feels like for a three, five or 10 year-old who is in a family in which the parents simply do not function; there is no leadership or guidance and tomorrow they may be we know not where. Perhaps we know to some extent the fear and anxiety that these children feel. If we do not intervene effectively by giving them guidance, leadership and a clear structure to their lives, they may go through their whole lives experiencing fear on a daily basis, unable to form relationships and function in the world. To some degree we are experiencing a lack of structure at the moment.

I welcome the commitment of the Government to putting for the first time corporate parenting principles into law. I see it as an important step in making sure that children’s best interests, life chances and future prospects are put at the core of decision-making processes. The Minister will be aware, however, that the corporate parenting role does not stop with local authorities, because all levels of government are corporate parents to children in the care system. My first amendment seeks to extend the scope of corporate parenting responsibilities to include central government departments. I heard what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, said about corporate parenting responsibilities, and perhaps it is unfortunate that I am using these terms. But I go back to what he said earlier in the debate today. What I am seeking, and I think what we all want, is to extend the duties more widely than just to local authorities. That will ensure that we all work together to get the best outcomes for these children.

Welcome steps were taken in the 2013 cross-departmental Care Leaver Strategy, which brought together for the first time government departments to consider the impact of their policies on care leavers. For instance, care leavers in the employment system are now flagged up to workers in jobcentres and employment agencies so that the staff know that they are dealing with a care leaver and need to exercise particular care. I pay tribute to the Government for that. The amendment provides us with an opportunity to further advance that progress.

My noble friend Lord Ramsbotham spoke of the need to work across different agencies. I would like very briefly to quote from my noble friend Lord Laming’s recent report on preventing the criminalisation of young people in care, In Care, Out of Trouble. He takes forward the theme of how we must work better together to improve outcomes. For instance, he says:

“The work must be driven by strong and determined leadership at national and local levels, taking a strategic multi-agency approach to protecting children in care against criminalisation”.

His first recommendation is that,

“commissioning and disseminating a cross-departmental concordat on protecting looked after children”,

is vital. So he very much embraces the principle of ensuring that all departments work together to protect and promote the welfare of these children.

Noble Lords engaged in this debate will be aware that more than 10,000 children aged over 16 left the care of a local authority last year to begin the difficult transition into adulthood. Not only are these young people beginning this journey but they are also finding themselves independent and often without the support network afforded by a family. This rapid accession into independence, coupled with a lack of a close support network, means that many care leavers are at particular risk of debt and financial hardship—two things that no parent would wish on their child.

In subsequent groupings my noble friend Lady Howarth of Breckland and I will discuss a national offer so that these children get better support as they move forward from care and face fewer financial worries. In the meantime, I commend these amendments to your Lordships and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 5 in this group and lend my support to Amendments 4 and 31, which are in very similar territory. The purpose of my amendment is simple and has already been alluded to—the new corporate parenting principles should apply also to commissioners of physical and mental health services for children in care and care leavers.

As we have already heard, Clause 1 introduces a set of principles to which all local authorities must “have regard” when carrying out their responsibilities in relation to children in care and care leavers. Like other noble Lords today, I very much welcome the introduction of these principles. They should help to ensure that, when local authorities make decisions about services and what is best for children, they have the children’s best interests—their health and well-being, their wishes, feelings and aspirations—at the forefront of their mind.

It was argued very strongly at Second Reading and has already been mentioned today that parents will always seek the best for their children and that the state should be no different. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that most parents would move heaven and earth to ensure that their child is either in good health or receiving the treatment they need if they are physically ill or in mental distress. I believe that the corporate parenting principles should be extended to health commissioners, reflecting the vital role that these bodies play in shaping the lives and outcomes of children in care and care leavers. As we know, these children are much more likely than their peers to have poor physical, mental and emotional health. To give one example, children in care in England are four times more likely than the average child to have an emotional or mental health problem. That is an issue we will return to in a subsequent group.

As the Education Select Committee identified in its recent inquiry, health services are often not organised in a way that makes it easy for children in care to access. There is already evidence of targeted support being decommissioned because of financial pressures. Child and adolescent mental health services tend to be reluctant to assess or treat a young person until they believe that they are stable in their placement and that there is little risk of them being moved to another area. It is a similar problem, I have heard, with GP registrations. It very much affects access to the services that these children need. It is a vicious circle. Placement instability leads to poor access to services, higher levels of unmet need and poorer outcomes. We simply have to do something to break this vicious cycle. That is the purpose of this amendment.

I will finish by saying that I have listened very carefully, both at Second Reading and, indeed, to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, today about the need to ensure that the local authority responsibility as corporate parent is sharp, clear and undiluted, and is not made too complicated. I will not mind at all being told that I do not have the wording of my amendment right or that it is not in the right place and should be in a different part of the Bill; I just want these principles to apply to health commissioners, without in any way diluting the core, central responsibility and accountability of local authorities.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I support Amendments 3, 31A and 36, which, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said, seek to extend corporate parenting principles to central government departments in recognition of the role that they play in the lives of looked-after children and care leavers. I am grateful to the Children’s Society for its briefing on this.

Like other noble Lords, I welcome the Government’s commitment to placing corporate parenting principles into law for the first time, and see this as an important step in making sure that children’s best interests—a key principle—life chances and future prospects are put at the core of decision-making processes. Statistics for looked-after children highlight a situation requiring leadership from central government to improve life chances through accepting their responsibility as corporate parent. The Prime Minister has emphasised this a lot recently. I think that we were going to have a life chances strategy announced tomorrow, but that has been rather derailed now. For instance, we know that at least 38% of care leavers aged 19 to 21 are not in education, employment or training. Research by the Centre for Social Justice showed that 59% of care leavers found coping with the mental health problems referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, very or quite difficult. The same survey by the Centre for Social Justice found that 57% of care leavers found managing money and avoiding debt difficult.

This cocktail of poor educational attainment mixed with mental health difficulties, low-paid work and difficulty with managing money should alarm us all. More importantly, it should compel us to do better for these young people by ensuring that all levels of government which make decisions about their lives should be required to consider their responsibilities as corporate parents.

Welcome steps were made in the 2013 cross-departmental Care Leavers Strategy, which for the first time brought together government departments to consider the impact of their policies on care leavers—so in a sense the principle has been established. Extending corporate parenting principles to central government is, I would suggest, the next logical step. I hope that the Minister will agree that there is no argument against this in principle. We might question the practical ways of doing it, but this is an opportunity which we must seize for central government to do its bit for care leavers by adopting the very corporate parenting principles that it is now rightly laying down for local government in recognition of the pivotal role that central government policies play in the everyday lives of care leavers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

Amendment 33 in this group is mine. In the natural parent system there are normally one or two people who are linked to the child, and that link continues. When children go into care, the difficulty is that the staff looking after the children are apt to be different from day to day and week to week, and certainly from month to month. My proposal is that when a child comes into care, a member of the local authority care staff should be appointed with a responsibility for the well-being of that child. When I use the phrase “well-being”, I am thinking of course of the Care Act and the wonderfully large coverage that that phrase embraces. It is extremely important that this should happen.

Inevitably, there will be a need for change from time to time. I have therefore proposed that where it has to be changed, a new appointment is made so that there is always some individual responsible for the well-being of that child. An example of where this can happen and be important is in relation to the provision for the child. If a child is being provided for in a certain situation and it appears that a more inexpensive arrangement can be made for that child’s care, the idea might be to move that child from the more expensive arrangement to the less expensive. It is important that someone with responsibility for the well-being of that child should have an opportunity to be involved in that kind of decision. That seems to be well worth while.

The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, in his report on deaths in custody, suggested that where a vulnerable person came into the custody system it was important that a single person should have responsibility for looking after the well-being of that vulnerable person. I do not think the Government have actually refused to accept that particular proposal but they have not accepted it as yet. What lies behind that proposal is very much the same as what lies behind mine and I hope the Government will accept both.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I have Amendments 34 and 87 in this grouping. I shall deal with Amendment 87 first, for reasons that I hope will become obvious. Both amendments are to do with the mental health and emotional well-being of children in care. I support much of what has been said and proposed in this very wide-ranging grouping; there are many very important issues being dealt with here.

At Second Reading I argued that the bedrock of promoting the mental health and emotional well-being of children in care should be the introduction of an improved system of mental health assessments for children entering care, throughout their time in care and indeed when leaving care. I acknowledge the work that is going on. The Minister has already referred to the current pathway that is being developed by the Department for Education’s expert group. It is indeed promising. However, that does not negate the need for a statutory strengthening of current mental health assessments.

Current statutory guidance states that children must receive a physical health assessment when entering care, whereas it is recommended that their emotional well-being should be evaluated by what is called a strengths and difficulties questionnaire. That is widely regarded as inadequate. The latest figures I saw suggested that around only 70% of children in England entering care had these questionnaires completed for them. As we have already heard this afternoon, children entering care often exhibit challenging behaviour resulting from their experiences before entering care, usually to do with abuse and neglect. Moreover, these questionnaires are completed by foster carers, who I am sure are doing their absolute best but who may have little or no training in mental health.

The point of my amendment is that these assessments really should be conducted by professionals with specialist knowledge of the therapeutic needs of children in the care system and how they should be met. The point I most want to emphasise is that the introduction of these mental health assessments for children in care is the first and most basic step towards improving their mental health. However, it is only that. They are a mechanism and not an end in itself. We want to see that these assessments ensure that children in care receive the right support and interventions to deal with their mental health and emotional needs.

This could include a range of things, such as peer support, group working, play or art therapy, counselling or a referral to CAMHS. I was encouraged to hear the Minister say earlier in the debate that access to CAMHS should be based on clinical need. That is absolutely right. However, at the moment, there is precious little evidence that that is happening.

The Minister also quite rightly raised Future in Mind, an excellent report that holds much promise if it is implemented properly. However, recent research by the NSPCC about the local transformation plans, which are the mechanism for implementing Future in Mind, reveals that just 14% of plans contained an adequate needs assessment for children who had been abused or neglected. There is a lot more to do.

As to Amendment 34, much of what I have already said applies. The amendment would introduce a duty to promote children’s physical and mental health and emotional well-being, including a requirement for a designated health professional. Currently, clinical commissioning groups are required to have access to the expertise of a designated doctor and nurse for children in care, whose role is to assist commissioners in fulfilling their responsibility to improve the health of children in care. However, this is not underpinned by primary legislation.

The duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in care should also include a particular duty to promote that child’s physical and mental health and their emotional well-being in line with the existing requirement to promote the child’s educational achievement. The two are inextricably linked; a point that was made very clearly by the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy. All the research tells us that levels of well-being impact on educational attainment and can predict future health, mortality, productivity and income outcomes. There is an awful lot at stake here.

The effect of this amendment would be that all clinical commissioning groups must appoint at least one person who is a registered medical practitioner or registered nurse who will be required to discharge this duty, building on the existing role of the designated doctor. This would put the requirement for the appointment of a designated health professional on the same statutory footing as the requirement for local authorities to appoint a virtual school head and a designated teacher. I see this as another piece of parity of esteem.

--- Later in debate ---

We have covered a lot of issues in this group of amendments. In the light of my comments and those made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, about how putting all these things on the face of the Bill would restrict local authorities’ ability to think through where there is greatest need and how we should share good practice, I hope that noble Lords will be prepared to withdraw their amendments.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

Given the strength of feeling that has been expressed on all sides about the mental health amendments in particular, would the Minister be prepared to agree to a meeting for those of us who tabled those amendments, and other Peers who have spoken with such passion on the subject, between now and Report?

[Lord Nash]

With pleasure.