A Failure of Implementation (Children and Families Act 2014 Committee Report)

Baroness Wyld Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Wyld (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my registered interest as a non-executive board member at Ofsted. I recused myself as appropriate from the committee when those issues came up.

I warmly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, for her characteristically thoughtful and comprehensive speech. As others have said, it very much reflected her chairmanship of the committee, on which I was privileged to serve. She is one of the most fair-minded Members of your Lordships’ House; I have never once seen her tempted by political point-scoring, but that should not lull anyone into thinking, as we have seen, that she will not fight hard for her chosen causes. Her commitment to the welfare of children knows no bounds and she brings great expertise from her wider career. I also thank the team who supported the committee and, in particular, a lot of the witnesses who came to see us, some of whom were very vulnerable and had experienced trauma. They were very brave and generous in what they shared with us, which was hugely helpful.

Although our report pulled no punches in holding departments to account, I often stressed to the committee that we should not underestimate the original initiative taken by the coalition Government back in 2014 with the passing of the Act. Although I worked in a different area during my time as a No. 10 adviser, there was a collective sense across that Government of the coalition partners’ priorities. Life chances were up there in lights. Anyone who has worked at or near the centre of government, including probably most people in this Room, knows that central political will is the only way that priorities are felt across Whitehall.

I regret as much as anyone else the subsequent political instability and Whitehall churn that has, I have no doubt, resulted in patchy implementation and not good enough measurement of outcomes. That is entirely fair. However, we should recognise that the intentions were right. I think this Prime Minister and this Minister in particular are deeply committed to ensuring the best outcomes for the most vulnerable children and their families. We have had great stability with my noble friend Lady Barran, who has bravely held the fort—when I was speaking last summer, things were not great.

I am being a bit flippant but there is a serious point around responsibility. I accept that politics is politics and we all do it, but when you talk to children and young people about how the system works and where the levers are on what government can deliver, it is irresponsible to overstate failure. We can be robust about failure, but we must accept that there is will and good people working on these issues and that some progress has been made, which I will come to.

For once, the title of the Act is admirably simple: the Children and Families Act. It has often struck me how often in politics we talk about children with very little reference to families or parents. It is understandable that we devote much of our time to discussing, for example, curriculum content, online harms or, in the case of a Private Member’s Bill that I sponsored, Botox and body image, but too often as policymakers we all forget the most important thing in the world for a child: who is the person, or people, who looks after them? Are they kind to them or do they harm them? Are they safe or dangerous?

I am glad that the Government have spelled this out in Stable Homes, Built on Love and that, for example, kinship care is at last recognised. That was an astonishing omission from the original Act. I know the Minister will underline the importance of the pilot schemes and taking time to get the strategy right, but I add my voice to the calls for pace. I go back to my opening point—when political will is there, Governments can cut through complexities and deliver.

Looking more generally at adoption, the committee observed that, in England, between 2,500 and 3,000 children are adopted from care each year—about 3% of the total care population. Most of these children, some 76%, first became looked after because of parental abuse or neglect. Adoption is the most stable of all placement types: approximately 3% of those adopted return to care over a 12-year period. It thus provides a family life for most children. However, the effects of children’s pre-adoption adversities and maltreatment can be long lasting, and support for these young people and their families might be needed throughout the lifespan.

It is one thing to see the statistics but, like many others here I am sure, I had not fully appreciated the breadth and depth of support that many adopted children and their families need until I started to see it directly when friends adopted. Clearly, I am not going to share specific private stories as that would be inappropriate, but I have no hesitation in arguing that, where difficult funding decisions have to be taken, expert support for children who have experienced trauma has to be at the top of the priority list.

Across the parts of the Act on which the committee focused, two worrying themes emerged. One was crisis, which others have alluded to. Why is it the case that too many children and families cannot access support until things have escalated, whether that be into mental health crises, which I will talk about, or relationship breakdown? The second was the voice of the child. Too often it is lost. We heard this when it came to court proceedings for separating parents and made recommendations accordingly; others have focused on those so I will not run through them.

Although this Act was well intentioned and necessarily had to deal with the reality of separation, I do not believe that, as a society, we have done enough to address the causes of family breakdown. As legislators, we of course have to use parliamentary time to deal with the reality of divorce and make sure that the law works as effectively as possible. However, as I said during the passage of the divorce Bill, I believe that all those in a position of leadership—including, of course, the Church—should talk more about families sticking together wherever possible. The Minister will be pleased to know that I am not asking her to become the nation’s marriage guidance counsellor—she has a lot on her plate—but, as my noble friend Lord Farmer powerfully said, family hubs can play a role in relationship support at pressure points for families.

I hesitated about the next section of my speech, because I thought that people would say, “You’re saying you should stick together if you’re being abused or desperately unhappy”. Of course I am not saying that, but we have national conversations about all sorts of issues—identity, beliefs, Brexit—but we shy away from conversations about, for example, the reality of marriage once the honeymoon is over, the huge responsibility involved in bringing up children and the fact that individuals have responsibilities for others beyond themselves.

I turn to mental health, which was not included within the Bill but the evidence the committee took was so powerful across nearly all areas of the inquiry that we felt we had a duty to include it as a significant part of the report. We took evidence from experts, and from children and their parents or carers. We were careful to consider the danger of medicalising normal reactions to difficult experiences—somebody mentioned the Chief Medical Officer, who talked about cases of mild anxiety and the importance of being in school—but, for more severe cases, the impact of lockdown in particular was stark.

Increased prevalence of mental ill-health has put strain on services. Between April and June 2021, 190,271 under-18s were referred to children and young people’s mental health services. This compares with 81,170 in the same period in 2020. Responses to our online survey included:

“Appalling. We’ve been waiting for CAMHS for 9 months so far, and no indication how much longer”,


and

“My teenage son attempted suicide THREE times CAHMS did not help”.


Al Coates, the founder of the Adoption and Fostering Podcast and an adoptive parent, told us:

“I have a friend whose child made a viable attempt at suicide. They were put on an emergency referral to CAMHS—six months. That is an emergency referral”.


We heard that there are long waiting lists for post-adoption trauma support and that post-adoption teams are asking untrained school counsellors to do life story work with children, which they do not feel qualified to do. Looked-after children are four times more likely to experience mental health issues than their peers.

I and others have brought this issue to the Minister many times before. I am willing to acknowledge that the Government have recognised the scale of the problem and supported initiatives such as counsellors in schools, but my concern is whether the strategy is tightly focused enough and adequately resourced. Perhaps the Minister could set out for us—in writing, if there is not time today—how she sees the pathway working for children and young people. I acknowledge that there is no one-size-fits-all approach but there should be clarity for parents and carers on who to go to at different points in a mental health journey, according to severity, and assurance that the provision will be adequate when they get there.

I just have time to make a few points on flexible working. We debated at length how far we wanted to go on this, to strike the right balance between the needs of employers, and the desire among many to address gender imbalances in the workplace, and domestic duties, which has been a topical issue in my household for 13 years since my first daughter was born. My view is that parental leave is very generous in comparison with many other countries, but it was right to set an ambition for paternity leave. I also put on record again my thanks to the Government, who supported the Private Member’s Bill for additional leave for parents whose children are in neonatal care. We have to be nimble on this and recognise where the need is greatest.

In conclusion, it was an absolute pleasure to serve on this committee. I end by praising the resilience of the children and young people we heard from, and many more around the country from whom we did not hear. They are the leaders of tomorrow, and we must give them the chance to get there.