Children in Care

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

I support the motion wholeheartedly because one of the best things we can possibly do is to improve the prospects for children to be able to stay at home successfully with their birth parents. However, many things need to be done in order to achieve that, not least of which is to address the availability of support for parents who would otherwise be in a situation in which their children might be at risk. Some Members have already commented on the cuts to public services and the contribution they have made to undermining the ability of parents to provide good parenting. That is an important point, and this is one of the big areas in which the Government need to take a long, hard look at the support and resources available, not least in local government and the NHS.

Equally, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) said, the Government need to take a wider look at all the options available. A certain option might be right for many children, but it will not always be the right option for all children. This must be about putting the child at the centre of all the decisions that are taken. My right hon. Friend is right to say that kinship care is often not considered, but it should always be an option if members of an extended family are available. The motion makes it clear that we are trying to discuss that matter today.

We should do all that we can to avoid having such high numbers of children in care. The figure was 86,000 last year, and we should be trying to reduce it at all costs, but that involves significant early intervention and prevention work. It involves working with families whose children might be at risk and preventing the kind of neglect and abuse that leads to children being taken into care in the first place.

I am sorry, Mr Speaker, I should have mentioned at the outset my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am no longer a foster carer but I was one briefly recently.

One of the challenges is to ensure that we have the workforce to deliver the necessary services. We must support, encourage and celebrate the work of social workers and all those who work with children and with families in supporting them and trying to prevent the kind of breakdown that leads to children going into care. We should be supporting, encouraging, recruiting and training the very best people to become foster carers or to work in residential children’s care. We also need to support kinship carers and parents to enable them to provide the very best quality of care in these circumstances.

As has been said, we should look at children in care as though they were our own. The concept of corporate parenting is another fine example of something the Labour Government introduced, but I do not believe that it is practised to the extent that it should be in this country. We all have a responsibility to ensure that every child in the public care system gets the support, encouragement and opportunities that they would get if they were our own children, and that includes the extension of staying put to 21 and beyond, not just in foster care but in residential care as well.

We also need to learn from other countries. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) talked about Denmark. Denmark has a long-term commitment to support for children through the use of social pedagogy and through the development and training of experienced residential workers who live with children over a long period of time to create family units. That is a successful model, and there are successful examples of it in this country. Perhaps the Government should look at those examples too.

Permanence for children is incredibly important, whether with their birth family, with kinship carers, in foster care or in residential care. Finding the right option for each individual child is the most important thing. We should learn from best practice in this country and around the world. Speed is also incredibly important when making these decisions, and any decision on whether a child should remain with their birth family should be made quickly and should always reflect what is right for the individual child.