Children and Families Bill

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords, sadly, I was not able to go to the gathering of young people. However, what one has seen and read is appalling. The most appalling aspect of it is that the children’s voices are not automatically heard in situations such as these on every occasion when they are of an age where their voices could be heard. Their rights should be protected, and if they do not wish to go home there is no question that they should be sent home under those circumstances. We have seen and read so much evidence from so many organisations that I hope the Minister will be able to give us a great deal of reassurance about the changes that are clearly needed.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I make the point that if you want to know what a child needs, you should ask the child. If you want to know what the child’s parents need, it is also often quite a good idea to ask the child. People who are addicted are not always totally candid with the social workers, but if a child goes home for visits or is sent home—apparently permanently but that turns not to be permanently—he or she knows exactly what is going on in that home and can help the services in assisting the parents so as to ensure that the child can eventually go home if the parent is genuinely rehabilitated.

I also add my support to what the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, said about special guardians. They perform an invaluable public service at very little cost. Some of them break down because of lack of support and help, and we ought to do something about that.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, this is Committee: I was rather carried away by reading the notes and I meant to ask the noble Earl a question on his drafting in Amendment 26. In proposed new subsection (1)(a), he provides for,

“any person who has contacted the authority to request information”.

I suspect that he does not quite mean “any person”. I can imagine circumstances where it would be entirely wrong for information to be given out. Perhaps he can give the Committee some assurances about that, particularly if he is going to come back with this at a later stage.

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[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I very much agree. As we have talked about the last three groups of amendments, it has occurred to me that we appear to be living in a parallel universe. Ministers stand up and, quite correctly, read out the situation as it should, theoretically, be. Although Ministers tell us in good faith what the situation is in theory, it is not happening.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, made a point which struck me as a little odd. She said that 60% of those siblings who are both in care and who are not together or seeing each other are in children’s homes. I understand that it might be quite difficult to get foster carers to take pairs of siblings because they might be prepared to take only one child, but it should not be that difficult to put sets of children together in children’s homes where there are multiple places. Might the Government consider doing some research to find out why that is? I would have thought that was the very place where you could keep groups of siblings. Could that be looked into?

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I support this very strongly. We should not have reached the position we have, but I have some understanding of how we have reached it.

I have talked to many young people over the years, and particularly remember two groups I saw, with the Children’s Rights Director, who talked about the way conflict in their families was relieved by the fact that they had siblings to share their sojourn and be a comfort when things were really grim. They were the people who were their in-group when all this was going on, so were even more important to them than their parents, who were often the enemy and doing the destructive things, while siblings were their protection. That is not always so: there are siblings who are damaging to each other. Professional decisions to separate siblings may be quite right, but they must be made properly, not by accident. I fear we have reached the position where it is by accident because of the way we arrange placements and the shortage of good ones. We have young people in adolescent groups because they are easier to manage with staff who can manage them and small units with small children, but many fewer family group homes than there were, so you do not have the mix of youngsters together. Managing a unit of very difficult young people is about training, and confidence.

I sincerely regret this, because I have heard heartfelt pleas, similar to the ones outlined by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, from young people—particularly in court—saying, “Whatever happens do not separate me from my siblings”. It is the siblings, not the parents, who mean everything to them.

It is a serious practice issue. I am not sure how legislation would make it right, but this amendment might be a step towards it. I hope the Minister will assure us that Ofsted might look at this when they look at the organisation of residential care in various authorities and how families are planned for. I am a social worker so I know how easy it is, under pressure, to delude yourself that it is the best answer for the child when it is actually the best solution for you.

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[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, Clause 8 is also about contact: contact post-adoption. Subsection (5) sets out the points which a court must consider when there is an application for an order for contact by any person who has obtained the court’s leave to make that application. The court must consider: any risk of the application disrupting the child’s life to the extent that he or she would be harmed; the applicant’s connection with the child; and representations made to the court by the child or any person who has applied for, or been granted, an adoption order. I am quite prepared to be told I have misread this, because the amendment comes out of my own head: it has not been raised by anyone else with me. If I have got it completely wrong, I apologise to my noble friend who has put her name to it.

There must be a place for considering the welfare of the child. Section 1 of the 1989 Act states that when the court determines any question with respect to a child’s upbringing, the child’s welfare is the paramount consideration. Is that the answer in the sense that it would apply in any event? If so, why do we have the new subsection (5)(a) about the risk of disruption to the child’s life, because welfare of the child would clearly cover that? It seems to me that the balance of the clause as drafted, the presumption, is that if the risk of disruption to the child’s life is slim, you should not take account of it. I am curious—to use a term used earlier in a different context—about what has and what has not gone into the clause. I beg to move.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I am happy to support my noble friend Lady Hamwee’s amendment, because it is never a bad thing to draw attention to the paramountcy principle in the 1989 Act and the fact that the welfare of the child must be pre-eminent. What she is suggesting is really nice, because it is positive. What we have in Clause 8(5)(a) is negative: that you should not do it if there is any risk. My noble friend is saying that you should do it if it is to the benefit of the child. I am a very positive person and I should like it that way round.

[Baroness Northover]

My Lords, I hope that I can reassure my noble friends Lady Hamwee and Lady Walmsley on this point. We are very concerned to ensure that when the child has contact, it benefits the child. There is both the positive side, when contact benefits the child; and the negative side, to protect the child where such contact is not regarded as being in their interest. It is striking that research has shown that the proportion of children suffering negative consequences from contact after adoption is twice the proportion for those for whom contact had a positive effect. In the light of that, this must obviously be weighed up extremely carefully.

My noble friends are clearly well aware that the paramount consideration of the court must be the welfare of the child throughout his or her life. Section 1(2) of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 states that the paramount consideration of the court when coming to a decision relating to the adoption of a child must be the welfare of the child throughout his life. I hope that that gives the reassurance that my noble friend is looking for. If it does not, I am more than happy to write to clarify, but I hope that she can be reassured that the balance is right and that the protections that she wants are indeed here in both directions, as it were.

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[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, the meeting arranged by the noble Earl brought a number of comments about Staying Put. It was clear that there is a shortage of accessible information—particularly because not all authorities are operating the system—and that there are real complications when there are cross-boundary considerations. That follows on from the point made by the noble and learned Baroness.

Some things were mentioned which really took me aback. When a young person becomes 18, if he or she does stay with the foster parents a tenancy agreement has to be signed. As a couple of the young people we met said, “This does not reflect our relationship. They are our foster parents; they are not our landlords”. It is necessary, I understand, to have a tenancy agreement in order to qualify for housing benefit and income support. I asked how the total income compared to fostering allowances and I was told by the foster carer we met that the total income had reduced by about 50%. He was very enthusiastic about his foster daughter remaining with him. That foster daughter also said—she was part of a sibling group—that she had to be CRB checked in order to stay with her sisters. Something has gone wrong with the system.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I, too, have my name on the amendment and support it wholeheartedly. The noble Earl, in his introduction, used the word “normalising”. We are trying to normalise the relationship between the young people and their foster carers because, as my noble friend Lord Storey pointed out, most young people who grow up in their birth family do not leave home at 18. They stay on.

I was interested in what the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said about the pilots. It did not have an adverse effect on the recruitment of foster carers; indeed, it had a beneficial effect. It occurs to me that the Government might be a little concerned that if we make it a right for young people, if they and their foster carers wish it, to stay on until 21, it will take away foster parenting places for other children coming into the system. Frankly, I think that we should be putting more effort into turning the tap off and giving more support to families so that children can safely stay with their birth parents, but that is an argument for another day. That might be the case, but I have a suggestion that might fulfil some of the need without the problem of taking away a foster-caring place for some other child. I have promoted this idea to successive Children’s Ministers over the past few years, who all say, “That sounds like a good idea”, but nothing ever gets done.

Many children go off to university or college, or to work somewhere else when they are 18, but they maintain a close and supportive relationship with their birth families. Why not allow foster parents, if they so wish, and the young person wishes, to have a sort of little stipend or retainer to act as a supporter and adviser to the care leaver for the next few years when they have left the bedroom in the house? That bedroom would then be freed up. A lot of young people who get on very well with their foster parents go back and visit them and ask for advice anyway. But many of them, knowing that the parents may have taken on another foster child and will be busy, would be hesitant to go back to the foster parent and ask for help and advice when things go pear-shaped, such as their accommodation or education plans going wrong, or they have trouble with their employment. Whatever it is, they would have somebody officially who was being paid a little bit by the state to help them and stop new arrangements breaking down. It is when they break down that the state has a great deal more cost liability to try to put things right. There is an existing relationship of trust, understanding, knowledge and emotion. If the Government cannot accept the noble Earl’s amendment—I very much hope that they will—perhaps the Minister will consider my suggestion of a sort of halfway house. The parent could retain that relationship formally and, one hopes, the care leaver would have no hesitation in going back to that person for advice if things went wrong.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I strongly support this amendment. I have heard the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, talk about this halfway house before. It is not a bad idea, but I hope that we can go the full way, for two reasons. First, there is the cost-effectiveness, which one or two people have mentioned. We sometimes forget that early intervention can actually save money in the long run; we should not forget that. Early intervention is not just about babies or children but older people. This example applies and it can be effective in this case. Cost-effectiveness was the first thing that I wanted to mention.

The second thing is the incredible importance of education, which has also been mentioned. Young people in education tend not to get pregnant when they are 15 or 16, they tend not to misuse drugs or alcohol, and they tend to do better if they are encouraged in that education. Like the noble Lord, Lord Storey, I was very impressed by the young woman at the meeting we had last week, who talked about the importance of education to her. As we know, education is such a key thing for all children, but particularly for these children. Therefore for me, cost effects on education swing this towards the Minister accepting this amendment.