Children and Families Bill Debate
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Earl of Listowel
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Children and Families Bill
Earl of Listowel Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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The Earl of Listowel
“Looked after children: duty to provide information about support on returning home to care of parents or others with parental responsibility
(1) Except in circumstances prescribed by regulations, a local authority must provide the information specified in subsection (2) to—
(a) any person who has contacted the authority to request information about “return home support services” for a looked after child returning home to the care of P; and(b) any P within the authority’s area, to whose care a looked after child has returned, who has contacted the authority to request any of the information specified in subsection (2).(2) The information is—
(a) information about the return home support services available to people in the authority’s area;(b) information about the authority’s duties under section 22(3A) of the Children Act 1989 (“return home support services”: personal budgets) and regulations made under it;(c) any other information prescribed by regulations.”
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
Amendment 26 is in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen. Our two amendments relate to support for children returning home from care. Perhaps the best way to illustrate quickly what this is about is to give a couple of illustrations. Here is a quotation from a female caller to ChildLine:
“I’ve been in and out of care from a very young age due to my mum hitting me, neglecting me and taking drugs. Social services would come and take me away and I would spend some time in care, then mum would promise to change and I would go back home for the whole situation to start again. I don’t understand why social services keep giving me back to mum if they are going to end up taking me away again”.
Recently, I met a group of young care leavers, who shared with me their experiences. A 15 year-old girl—a lovely, lively young girl—had been promised that she was returning to a well equipped home. She found that there was no cooker and no microwave, and that she was sharing a pull-out sofa-bed with four other members of the family. There was no support. She had been doing well educationally in care, but when she went home her results plummeted. Another young woman did not want to return home. Her social worker offered to take her to McDonald’s; lo and behold, she was taken back to the family home and told that she had to stay there. I am sure there is good practice, but there is clearly a lot of work to be done.
I turn to the detail of my two amendments, which are supported by the NSPCC, the Family Rights Group, the Who Cares? Trust, the College of Social Work and TACT, the largest independent fostering and adoption agency. Returning home to a parent or relative is the most common outcome for children who have been placed in care. However, approximately half the children who come into care because of abuse or neglect suffer further abuse when they return home. Social workers often feel unsupported and lack the time and resources to support the children whom they return. In over one-third of cases, children returned home without an assessment. Parents’ problems often remain unresolved. Practice is highly variable in different local authorities. The Bill should be amended to require local authorities to assess, prepare, support and monitor a child’s welfare when they return home, and to ensure that parents know what support they are entitled to, just as has been developed in changes to adoption. It is vital that we improve support for all looked-after children if we are to protect our most vulnerable children from harm, and thus extend the entitlement in Clause 4 to support for children who return home.
Further research has shown that two-thirds of children who returned home remained with a suspected abuser even after concerns had been identified. Over one-third of children return home from care without an assessment, and a further 8% return after only an initial assessment. Research highlights children returning to households with a high recurrence of drug and alcohol misuse: 42% with drug misuse and 51% with alcohol misuse. Recent statistics published by the Department for Education show that almost half of children who return home re-enter care. In total, two-thirds of children who returned home experienced one failed return and one-third had oscillated in and out of care twice or more. A report published by the Department for Education concluded that appropriate services and support in place for a child and parents from the beginning of the care episode, throughout care placement and after the return home could significantly reduce the cost to the local authority. It costs around £2,650 per placement in care but it only costs £193 per month to look after a child in need. It therefore makes good financial sense to ensure that children and families get the support they need.
In a new Department for Education consultation on permanence, there have been welcome proposals in this area but they apply only to voluntarily accommodated children and, although it is more likely for such children to return home, it is important that support is also provided for all children returning home from care. Most importantly, the Government’s current proposals do not ensure effective assessment or that children returning home—and their parents—receive the support needed to increase the likelihood of a successful return.
I mentioned a recent meeting with some young people. In summary, they all found that they had not been given enough information about why they were returning home and their views were disregarded. One of them said that she had been promised regular monitoring for months after her return home, gradually reducing over time. She received two brief monitoring visits. None of them had received any substantial support to integrate back into the home and rebuild relationships, nor had their parents’ problems improved enough for them to stay at home safely. They all agreed that there needed to be more support for children and their families when they returned home and for this to happen over a longer period of time.
This amendment aims to increase the chances of successful return home from care for all looked-after children by requiring local authorities to adequately assess, prepare, support and monitor the welfare of the children when they return home from care, in line with support that is proposed, in Clauses 4 and 5, for children who are adopted. I look forward to the Minister’s response and beg to move.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, I support Amendments 26 and 29, in my name and that of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. I will briefly state the arguments for my Amendments 30 and 31, which refer to improved support for special guardianships.
I want to reflect on some of the things which came up in Committee last week about children wanting to know; children having experiences and having a voice. We know, from children’s own stories, that support for them is not always there when they return home from care. Returning home to a parent or parents is the most likely outcome for children who have been in care and this can be the best result, but NSPCC research shows that about half the children who go into care because of abuse and neglect suffer the same when they return.
I will illustrate this with something I heard at the weekend, at the opening of a centre in Brighton which supports young people whose parents are addicted to drugs or alcohol. Children may be placed in care because one or more parents are addicted. The parent or parents go into treatment and are rehabilitated: they get clean. The children return and family stress may mean that the parent turns again to drugs or alcohol. The parents need support and the child needs support. I know from my experience as chair of the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse that some local authorities and drug or alcohol agencies provide excellent information and support for parents, but others do not. So often in services, we end up with a vicious circle of rehabilitation and relapse—be it drugs or prison, abuse or neglect—with children in the middle. A recent report from the Centre for Social Justice talked of children falling between the cracks, and so they do. We have in the Bill an opportunity to strengthen local authorities’ responsibilities towards children returning home from care and increase the chances of it being a successful return. If that return is not successful, not only does it cause more stress for children and families but it is expensive, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said. Improving things is not likely to cause extra expense to the LA; it is likely to save money.
One key is assessments of the needs of the family and the child. It is worth asking families and children what they need rather than making assumptions about it, assuming that everyone is the same or that they simply need information. As Amendment 26 suggests, information is important, but it is not everything. Information about support services should also be in place. More than one-third of children return home without an assessment taking place, and assessment is not necessarily ongoing. Assessment should not be a one-off. Needs can change. I know that successful treatment for an addiction means revisiting the initial assessment regularly. The Department for Education produced a useful data pack entitled Improving Permanence for Looked After Children in September this year. It has messages and questions for local authorities, such as: what are all the assessment and decision-making processes for return to home from care? What services are available for returning children to their family? How do services link across children adult and specialist services—for example, can access to parenting programmes and drug or alcohol programmes be part of a “return to home” plan? What action are you currently taking to improve return on practice?
All those questions are important, but perhaps the most important is the linking of services. So often, services are parcelled out into child, adult, mental health, drug and alcohol, but often there are significant overlaps which are not recognised or responded to. Following a child’s return home from care, neither they nor their parents have a right to any support, and children often end up, as we have heard, back in the same situation—as I said, a vicious circle. Children have said, “I was left to it. I have been in care because my dad assaulted me. Since I have been home, he has been threatening me, pushing me around. I have been cutting myself and I feel like I want to die”.
We all know that behaviour change is difficult. It is perhaps especially difficult for troubled families. The needs of such families—of all families and their children—must be addressed before a child returns home. Engaging with families has been identified as an opportunity to enable the return home to be successful. Personal budgets are important and Clause 4 suggests that they should be available to parents of an adopted child. It is vital that that is extended to children returning home. I hope that the Minister will respond sympathetically to the amendments.
I shall say a quick word about my Amendments 30 and 31, which refer to special guardianship support services and personal budgets. I shall not go into detail on the amendments; they are self-explanatory. Their aim is simply to ensure that improved support for adopters in the Bill in the form of personal budgets and better information about support is extended to special guardians who, like adopters, are providing a permanent home for a child as an alternative to them being in the care system.
I am aware that this issue will come up again but, meanwhile, I hope that the Minister will respond favourably.
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.
The Earl of Listowel
I thank the noble Baroness. She makes a very good point and I shall look at that. We are trying to ensure that anybody caring for these young people gets the support they need to do an excellent job. We do not want people who might wish to misuse any information about them to get information.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, I want to intervene briefly. We know that many children want to maintain contact with their natural family, even if they know that that family is chaotic. I absolutely support the amendments but my concern is that they do not push hard enough for support when the child initially goes into care. This builds on something that I was trying to say last week. Our responsibility ought to be to ensure that, while the child is in care, work none the less goes on with the natural parents so that an assessment can be made of whether they are capable of change and willing for change to take place. Our problem is that too often children who themselves have improved are then sent back home and no work is done with the parents before that happens. That is often why the placement breaks down again, and that is expensive—not just in monetary terms in trying to deal with that when the child comes back into care, but precisely because it adds to the damage that has already been done.
I chair an organisation in the north-east which does quite a lot of work with people who have addictions. We have a programme where we take mothers who are addicted into residential accommodation with their children. It is largely paid for by the National Health Service but we put a bit of our own money into it and we try to get some money from local authorities too. During the residential period, intensive parenting takes place and what happens to the children in that situation is also monitored extremely carefully. In that way, you really can make an assessment as to whether it is going to be feasible for the mother and her children to make it outside the care system.
One problem that was re-emphasised to us while we were on the adoption Select Committee is that very often parents who are encouraged or are made to put their children up for adoption because they are not capable of looking after them simply go and have other children. Our intervention with the Cyrenians in Newcastle is really trying to stop that by saying, “If you’re going to have another child then you’ve got to take the steps necessary to make sure that that child actually stands a chance”, so that there is not a wheel continually going round where they are saying, “If I can’t have that child then I’m going to have another child”, without any exit.
The Government really need to look at how we work with natural parents once the child has gone into care. If we can get better at that work, we may indeed be able to return children much more successfully and the support package being talked about in the amendments will then really bear fruit.
Baroness Northover
Okay, I shall shout loudly.
I shall speak first to Amendments 26 and 29 on the issue of assessment and support for children returning home from care to their families. As the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, pointed out, and as research has shown, almost half the children who return home later re-enter care, and almost one-third of those children have very poor experiences of that return. This is clearly unacceptable, and we recognise that. The noble Earl gave a very compelling instance of this, which was echoed by my noble friend Lady Hamwee.
This area is a priority for the department, which is why we established an expert group over a year ago to help us to understand and drive forward the improvements that we recognise are needed. The group includes academics, local authority representatives and sector organisations such as the Family Rights Group, the Who Cares? Trust and the NSPCC. We thank them for their work in this area. We are particularly pleased that the NSPCC is undertaking research in this area to understand how decision-making and support can be improved for these families. This will and must include ensuring that the voice of the child is at the heart of all decision-making, and I hope that that will reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, my noble friend Lady Walmsley, and others. The working group has focused on how data can be used effectively to support local authority practice improvements, identify the areas where the statutory framework needs strengthening, and help us understand how we can support changes in practice that are effective and sustainable.
The current statutory framework clearly sets out requirements to return a child to their parents and to provide information about the support services available for these families. It is important to acknowledge that the statutory framework is different for those children who are subject to a care order and return home and those children who have been voluntarily accommodated and then return. The current statutory framework clearly sets out the requirements for placing a child with their parents—that is, when a child will remain subject to a care order after returning home. For example, a robust assessment of the parents’ suitability to care for their child must be undertaken; a nominated officer must be satisfied that the decision to return a child to the care of their parents will safeguard and promote the child’s welfare; and the local authority must continue to review the child’s case, setting out the services and supports in the child’s care plan and reviewing this regularly. However, the statutory framework for voluntarily accommodated children is not as strong—and noble Lords are clearly aware of that. That is why we are consulting on changes that might be made to this.
The Improving Permanence for Looked After Children consultation launched on 30 September includes a number of proposals to address the issues faced by voluntarily accommodated children in returning home. We want to strengthen the statutory framework to ensure that the decision to return voluntarily accommodated children is taken by a nominated officer, that the plan for support following the return home is clearly set out and reviewed, and that these children and their families are offered continuing visits and support from the local authority following the return. Those are some of the issues that noble Lords have just raised and which the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, highlighted. Also, the department’s evidence-based intervention programmes announced in February 2013 include interventions forsome of the children who often return home, such as teenagers. There is, for example, a focus on developing multisystemic therapy and family integrated transitions; this intervention supports children and young people returning home from care or custody.
We also propose to place a duty on local authorities to review a child’s case within a specified framework where the return home is unplanned. The consultation on these changes will close at the end of November, and we expect to publish our response in the spring, with the changes coming into force in the summer of 2014. I hope very much that noble Lords will take advantage of this consultation and feed in their experience, expertise and ideas effectively by the end of November.
I now turn to Amendments 30 and 31, which refer to information and support available to special guardians. Special guardians do a very important job, which we heard from both the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and my noble friend Lady Walmsley. We agree that we need to look at whether they are being given sufficient support. The department therefore commissioned the University of York in March 2012 to carry out a two-year research project to investigate how special guardianship was working in practice, and the rates and reasons for any breakdowns. The final report is expected in autumn 2014. This is a major piece of research which will help us to understand how well special guardianship is supporting children and families.
We are planning to pilot personal budgets, as noble Lords know, as part of the adoption support fund prototypes over the next 18 months, to see how they work in practice and whether they deliver the benefits that we expect. These pilots, alongside the richer understanding that we will have by then of the way in which special guardianship is working, will allow us to reach an informed view about the potential for personal budgets for special guardians. If there is a need to change the statutory framework we will consider what secondary legislation and statutory guidance needs to be brought forward and will consult on these before implementation. I hope, again, that noble Lords are reassured by the work going on. I hope, therefore, that I have given noble Lords sufficient reassurance that the Government recognise and are committed to working towards supporting birth parents and special guardians, and that the noble Earl will withdraw his amendment.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her very careful reply. It is very welcome that the expert group was set up a year ago, and it may be too early to ask what progress has been made. We have heard the rather depressing statistics about children returning from care. How much difference does the Minister expect to be making in the next three years, year by year? What is the timescale for changing the outcomes for these young people? Perhaps the Minister would write to me.
Baroness Northover
I am happy to write to the noble Earl, and to copy it to other noble Lords who have contributed to the debate, spelling it out in some more detail.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I thank the Minister and I also thank my noble friend Lady Massey of Darwen for her eloquent support, and for all her experience with the issue of substance misuse. Clearly, it is concerning that people who are addicted to alcohol or other substances will lapse from time to time, and if children are placed with them such families need to be monitored, with additional support put in as necessary.
I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in support of the amendment, and I particularly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for her communication on the voice of the children at our recent meeting. I was very glad that she was able to make the time to be present. I hope that those young people and others will feel that we have done justice to their concerns today. I will consider what the Minister has said and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
The Earl of Listowel
“Local authority investigation: advocacy
In section 47 of the 1989 Act (local authority duty to investigate) after subsection (5A) insert—“(5AA) In meeting its duty under subsection (5A), a local authority shall give consideration to making arrangements for the provision of independent advocacy for the child in relation to any decision making meeting in the course of section 47 enquiries unless the child states that he or she does not wish to receive the services of an independent advocate.
(5AB) For the purposes of this subsection—
(a) “advocacy” means the provision of independent and confidential information, advice, representation and support to a child;(b) “independent” means where the person appointed is not connected with the local authority by virtue of being—(i) a member of the local authority or any of their committees or sub-committees, whether elected or co-opted;(ii) an officer of the local authority employed by the Children’s Services Department of that authority; or(iii) a spouse or civil partner of any such person.””
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 28 standing in my name. Both amendments relate to advocacy and, again, it may be helpful if I begin with an illustration of why advocacy is important.
Advocacy is a means of ensuring that the wishes and feelings of children, particularly children in care, are heard. A typical issue might be whether they have the right to have contact with siblings or to continue to remain in the same placement. Another concern might be a child whom it is convenient for the local authority to move to a new placement, or the local authority may consider that it is in the child’s best interests to do so, but the child very much feels that where they are is where they wish to continue to be.
The first amendment looks at advocacy in relation to child protection conferences. This is a probing amendment and its purpose is to debate the merits of the introduction of a statutory presumption that local authorities should give consideration to ensuring that children and young people are supported by an independent advocate in initial and review child protection conferences unless they choose to opt out.
The purpose of the two amendments is to elicit a debate on advocacy and to get an assurance from the Government on two things. First, will the Government produce an advocacy handbook to replace the 2004 Get It Sorted guidance, which is now nearly 10 years out of date, to reflect current policy and practice? Secondly, will the Government collect more data on how advocacy is used in child protection conferences and care reviews so that we know better what happens and how good access to advocacy is for children in care in those two situations?
Evidence has consistently shown that the child’s voice is often not heard and effectively represented in child protection cases. Both professionals and children think that meaningful engagement of children in the decision-making process would lead to improved outcomes. Recent high-profile cases have once again put child protection services under close scrutiny. The exposure of systematic safeguarding failures in Oxford, Rochdale and Edlington have raised questions about the extent to which services are putting children’s experiences and voices at the heart of the child protection process. The 2012 Monro Review of Child Protection states:
“Children and young people are a key source of information about their lives and the impact any problems are having on them in the specific culture and values of their family. It is therefore puzzling that the evidence shows that children are not being adequately included in child protection work”.
Child protection conferences are a key part of the child protection process, although I shall not describe them in detail. Until recently, the framework for ascertaining a child’s wishes during the child protection process was provided by the Working Together to Safeguard Children guidance, published in 2010. From April 2013, a revised version of this guidance has been in place with the aim of reducing the level of prescription and bureaucracy involved within safeguarding procedures. Although the revised guidance recommends obtaining and understanding the wishes and needs of children within a child-centred system, it gives far less prominence to the involvement of children during assessment and within the child protection process than the previous version. In particular, there is no longer a presumption that a child, subject to age and understanding, should be invited to attend their conference with an advocate if they wish to do so. So there is less prescriptive guidance alongside no clear statutory right to advocacy. This risks reducing the opportunity for people to participate in the child protection process.
Baroness Stedman-Scott
I thank the Minister for his response to my amendment and I am delighted that he acknowledges the spirit behind it. I believe this to be worthy of more discussion, and I know that his officials have already promised that. On that basis, I shall not be pressing the amendment.
The Earl of Listowel
I also thank the Minister for his response. It seemed to me very sympathetic and reflected the very positive attitude of this Government towards the idea of advocacy and hearing the voice of the child. I saw that reflected in the practice of Edward Timpson MP when he was chair of the all-party parliamentary group on young people. I believe that he still regularly meets groups of young people in care—groups of younger and older people—as well as care leavers. I think that this sort of approach will make a huge difference to policy. If good advocacy can make a difference for one child through having contact with his siblings and the principle is proved that children should have such access, that raises the game for everybody and creates opportunities for other children with similar difficulties.
I was grateful to be reminded of the doubling of funding for advocacy by the Government from £150,000 to £300,000, and I am grateful for the Minister’s consideration of the idea of a handbook. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I very much agree with all that has been said. I remember being struck by the strength of feeling expressed by the young people. At our previous sitting we talked about the importance of identity; contact with one’s siblings and understanding that family dynamic is another aspect of identity. I have been impressed by somebody outside the group of people whom the noble and learned Baroness saw, whose feeling of responsibility for her younger sibling was important to her to express and fulfil. By separating her from her younger sister—by being deprived of caring for her—she was being deprived of the expression of her own personality. That was of huge significance to her.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I would also like briefly to support the amendment and give an example of how passionately young people in care feel about being separated from their siblings. Delma Hughes, who was separated from her five siblings, I believe, later went on to become an art therapist and work with young and vulnerable people. She felt so passionately about correcting the wrong that had been done to her that she set up a charity called Siblings Together. It has run for several years, organising holiday camps in the countryside and events at the Young Vic theatre, so that young siblings who may never see each other apart from on such occasions can spend a week or so together. That woman is a real example of how terrible it feels to young people when they are separated from their siblings, and how at least one of them has become a champion in the area and made a huge difference to many other young people who have gone through that experience.
Lord Nash
It is something that we can ask the Children’s Commissioner to look at. We will talk to her about this. As my noble friend Lady Walmsley said, perhaps this is an area where we should do further research. I shall ask my officials to consider this. I think that the noble Earl raised that point as well. I have noted the strength of feeling on this point today, and we will take it away for further consideration. Nevertheless, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.
The Earl of Listowel
Before the noble Baroness does so, it occurs to me that the matter of staying put might be helpful in this arena. If there are two siblings, one of 16 and one of 17, in the same foster care household and then one turns 18, enabling the foster carer and the young person to stay together past the age of 18 might enable that sibling relationship to endure further. I do not know what the experience is there, so if the Minister can help with any information with regard to whether there is a significant factor in helping young people to stay put—if that helps in the issue of keeping siblings together—I would be grateful to him. Perhaps the voluntary agencies know of examples in that area; again, I would be grateful to hear about that.
The Earl of Listowel
I strongly support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness and speak to my Amendment 41. I support the amendment because of the importance of human curiosity. In recent child case reviews commentators have criticised professionals because they simply were not curious. They did not ask, “Why was this child bruised? Why did somebody not ask why the child kept coming back?”. They complained about the lack of curiosity among professionals. When Anna Freud, back in the 1930s, spoke to teachers about how to be a good teacher, she said that the most important quality was curiosity. She said, “We need you to be curious about the child, think about where he is, where he is going, and how to get the child to go there”.
Curiosity is so important and is reflected in our culture. Stories from Genesis or of Michelangelo’s most celebrated works of art are about where we come from. Another example is Haydn’s “Creation”. We are fascinated about our origins. The noble Lord, Lord May, is absent now, but he knows that we spend billions on finding out about the origin of the universe. How did we come into being? I am concerned that to deny young people the opportunity to find out where they come from is a way of undermining and frustrating their curiosity. It is a way of stifling their wishes and interest in the world if you say, “No, you can’t know where you come from; no, we will not help you with that”. This weekend I was looking at some photographs of my father from the 1950s which I had never seen before. I found them inspiring. I very much identify with the concerns of the noble Baroness and it was a privilege to hear her talking about her own experiences in this area. I hope that the Minister will give a sympathetic reply to her amendment.
My amendment deals with support for young people leaving the care system and allowing all young people to have access to personal advisers up to the age of 25. Currently, past the age of 21 it is restricted to young people in training and education. I give the example of a young man, Ashley Williamson, who is a care leaver of 21 or 22. He left care at the age of 16. I have met him on a number of occasions recently. He has chaired the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children and Young People in Care; he has provided advice on matters around sexual exploitation of children in children’s homes; and he left care himself at the age of 16 and wanted nothing more to do with the system. He washed his hands and went on with his life. However, at the age of 20 he connected with his local authority again and asked for help. He found a fantastic personal adviser who was very supportive and helped him to get a fantastic home for himself. Now, in his early twenties, he has a good, solid base. He has been very helpful to me and I am sure he will be helpful to other young people in care because he is articulate, intelligent and thoughtful and has had that experience.
For so many young people, early trauma means it takes them longer to do what many of our own children might do. Give them the time to make mistakes and then to realise they need to come back and ask for help. If I remember the story correctly, a young man who was a foster child of a social worker, Kate Cairns, was, as the age of 19 or 20, in prison and addicted to very nasty substances. He was a very difficult person to deal with and yet, 10 years later, at the age of 30 he had his own family, was employed and was providing for his children. Given time, he changed.
Let me give more detail on this amendment. Most people continue to receive love, advice and, perhaps, financial assistance from their parents into their adult lives and the average age for a young person leaving home is 26. However, young people in the care system are often thrust into instant adulthood at just 16 and, like most 16 year-olds, they tend not to have the life skills to be able to cope independently at this age. Of course, they often find adult life especially hard due to the traumatic childhoods they have endured. So young people leaving the care system are disproportionately more likely to end up getting involved in crime and drug abuse and very often struggle to achieve good qualifications. Our failure to help this group of people, for whom we have a clear responsibility, leads not only to personal tragedy but to great cost to society.
At present, young people leaving the care system are designated personal advisers and have pathway plans drawn up for them. These help to smooth their journey to adulthood but, at present, are only available until they are 21 unless they are in education or training. Young people who are not in training or education also need support. I recommend that personal advisers be made available to young people up to the age of 25, whether or not they are in education or training. These young people need that kind of support even more. This would ensure that vulnerable young people leaving the care system receive the ongoing support and advice that other young people receive from their parents and take for granted. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Northbourne
My Lords, I am not going to make a speech but I strongly support the noble Baroness, Lady Young. The more I learn about and think about disadvantaged young people, the more I realise that the question they are always asking themselves is, “Who am I?”. Their second question is “Am I a person who could succeed?”. Some of your Lordships may remember the two Ofsted reports about schools which were outstandingly successful although the children were from very disadvantaged backgrounds. The three principal things those schools had in common were: outstanding leadership, very committed staff and, thirdly, every child believing that they could succeed.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Young, on her brilliant exposition of her amendment and the reasons behind it. Others have said better than I can how impressed they were with it.
However, I also want to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, because her amendments are all very important. I hope, too, that if they are put to the vote they will receive the support that the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, obviously will get. I hope very much that they are supported.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I omitted to comment on the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott. I support her welcome amendments. Of course, children in residential care are among the most vulnerable. Unfortunately, the way it works is that there tends to be a placement in foster care and, if that does not work out, then it is in residential care several broken placements down the line. So the ones with the most complex needs are often in residential care and they need the most support.
I welcome what the noble Baroness has said. There is an issue about price and other issues around it. One solution offered by Jonathan Stanley, a former chief executive of the National Centre for Excellence in Residential Child Care, is to pair up young people in residential care with foster carers so that—one can do a staying-put—one can ensure that there is a seamless move from a residential setting to a foster setting for at least some of these young people to the age of 21.
Norfolk is a very good exemplar of break-home practice. There they have supported housing right by the children’s home so that there is little movement for the children and they can feel in touch with the staff in their old setting. The noble Baroness has made some extremely important points and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply to her concerns.
Baroness Benjamin
My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Young. I would like to draw the Committee’s attention to the case of a young man I know who was brought up in care for many years. For the first 49 years of his life he kept wondering who he was and where he came from. This affected his relationship with his children—when he eventually had children—and with his wife, who had to deal with his depression. He had a loss of confidence, did not believe in himself and did not feel worthy. After much searching he eventually found out who he was and it completely changed his outlook on life. It changed his mental well-being. He got a better understanding of who he was and started to accept his situation in life. That is why I believe that it is an abuse if we deny any young person information which can help them come to terms with their identity, culture and background if they wish to do so.
The Earl of Listowel
“Young people resident with foster parents to remain with them until the age of 21 when they choose to do so
(1) Section 23C of the Children Act 1989 (continuing functions in respect of former relevant children) is amended as follows.
(2) After subsection (4) insert—
“(4AA) The assistance given under subsection (4)(c) shall include the continuation of accommodation with the former local authority foster parent, unless—
(a) the former relevant child states that he or she does not wish to continue residing in such accommodation,(b) the former local authority foster parent does not wish to continue to provide accommodation, or(c) it is not reasonably practicable to arrange such accommodation.”(3) At the end insert—
“(11) In this section “former local authority foster parent” means a local authority foster parent within the meaning of section 22C(12) with whom the former relevant child, as a looked after child, was placed under section 22C(6)(a) or (b).””
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, this amendment would allow young people in care to remain with their foster carers until the age of 21 where they and their foster carers agreed to do so. I hope that it might be helpful if I give a couple of examples of practice in this area already. Before I do so, I would like to correct an omission that I made earlier. The Minister was kind enough to say some good words about my work in this area, and I omitted to thank him for them. I appreciated what he said.
I recall a couple of relevant episodes while on the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Looked After Children and Care Leavers. One young man described his experience of being set up in independent accommodation. Pretty soon the local drug dealer had decided that he wanted to join this young man, and soon afterwards he lost his accommodation. I think that he also ran up a big back rent. A foster carer talked to me about a young girl who had been excited by the prospect of moving into independent accommodation at 17 or whatever, and his comment was, “Well, she was doing so well at school while she was with me, but now that she’s independent she obviously has other priorities”. We should try to normalise the experience so that it is what we would want for our own children: we want them to keep in touch with us and we do not want them disappearing goodness knows where, getting mixed up with goodness knows whom.
If I may make just one more comment, there has been a lot of concern about the experience of young women in care in recent years—the past 18 months, I suppose. One has to remember that many of these girls and women leaving care have had poor experience of men in their lives, and unfortunately many of them may turn to men who will not treat them well. For them this has been the norm and their experience. It has been striking for me, in recently meeting young women who have been allowed to stay with their foster carers past the age of 18, that they have a good continuing relationship with their male foster carer—and one can hope that they have a better model of how a man can relate to a woman than many of those who move out earlier.
Young people are living at home longer than ever, with an average of leaving home now at well over 24, yet many children in foster care, who are arguably among the most vulnerable in society, are still required to leave their foster home at the age of just 17. Those who get to stay past their 18th birthday are either the lucky few, funded by their local authority, or fortunate enough to have foster carers who can afford to offer them a home for free and support them out of their own pockets. Research shows that the longer a young person can stay with a foster family, the more successful they are later on. In 2011-12, only 320 young people remained with their foster carers past the age of 18, which is only 5% of care leavers; in the most recent year, only 10 more young people stayed put. It has been put to me that, in the current rate of progress, to reach the Government’s aspirations of 25% of young people staying put would take about 140 years.
Care leavers are more likely to be unemployed, young single parents, mental service users, homeless or in prison than those who grew up in their own families. This amendment to the Children Act 1989 is really important, in that it would allow young people to remain with their foster carers up to the age of 21. Staying Put has been piloted already in 10 local authorities across England, with great success. Young people who stayed with foster carers were twice as likely to be in full-time education at 19, compared to those who did not. Those staying put gave young people more control over their lives and their transition from care. Studies have shown that allowing young people to remain in care until 21 is associated with increased, post-secondary educational attainment, delayed pregnancy and higher earners.
The benefits to care leavers and to society of extending care have been found to outweigh the cost to government by a factor of at least 2:1, so staying put represents value for money. The department’s evaluation of the pilot found that to implement the policy nationally would require £2.7 million per year. This modest funding could be found partly through a smarter use of existing expenditure but, given all the burdens being placed on local authorities, it is only reasonable, especially as central government will be the greatest beneficiary in the long term, that a sum is set aside to enable local authorities to make the transition to this new arrangement, with many more—we hope that soon it will reach 25%—staying put.
To point out the saving to state-funded services, I turn first to housing. For every young person staying put with their former foster carer instead of independent living before they are ready, a one-bedroom flat is freed up locally, so this saves on local authorities paying rent on such properties in the private sector at high expense. Many care leavers who are forced to live independently before they are ready build up huge rent arrears, and that money is rarely recouped. Staying put is successful also in tackling the benefits cycle that young people are often at risk of entering. The one-to-one support and guidance offered by foster carers to young people in their transition to adulthood is crucial to ensuring that they can be helped on the road to becoming net contributors to society as adults, rather than a drain on resources. Those who stay put are more likely to be working full-time or part-time, or studying, and hence claim less housing benefit and income support.
The Children’s Minister strongly shares our belief that more young people should be allowed to stay with their foster carers for longer, and I am grateful to the Minister for taking a couple of occasions over the summer to talk to me about this issue. I recognise that the Government really want to see this happen, but they are in favour of a voluntary approach. As I have said, over the past year, only 10 more young people have taken up the Staying Put offer, so overall there has been a 0% increase because the number of young people coming into care has increased over the period.
What is happening is that, even in the current situation, many young people and foster carers have had to fight with their local authorities to allow and support Staying Put placements. We need an end to this postcode lottery. It is unacceptable that at a time when young people should be focusing on their education and training, as the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, said, they face doubt and anxiety over their future. Interviews with former pilots show that half had scaled back the provision, either by reducing the maximum age from 21 to 19 or by excluding NEETS, who are the people most in need of support and guidance. While I welcome the Government’s current interest in care leavers and the many important measures that they are bringing forward, I believe that without legislation, too few fostered young people will have a realistic chance of staying with their foster carers beyond the age of 18. This is a rare opportunity to change the law and ensure that the next generation of care leavers is given a better start in adult life. My parents would not have wished there to be any uncertainty that I would not get the support I needed to go through my education and go to university. I am sure that noble Lords as parents would also want to be certain that they could support their daughters and sons through whatever they chose to do during their transition to adult life. So far, I have not heard anything from the Government to reassure me that we will see this happen soon. If we introduce this provision in the legislation, within a short time we would see hundreds of young people on a better course as they left care. I look forward to the Minister’s response and I beg to move.
Baroness Young of Hornsey
My Lords, I strongly support this amendment. As I said earlier, it is part of a suite of amendments aimed at making the lives of young people in care more palatable. The idea of being told at the age of 16, 17 or 18 that you are going to be independent and that you will live in a flat, with minimal training in handling a budget and coping with the unwanted visitor referred to by my noble friend Lord Listowel who will derail your attempts to study or work, is unthinkable in relation to our own children. There is a concept that we should think of children in care or looked-after children as being our children, so we should do everything we can to ensure that they do not experience even more disadvantage.
I am not going to repeat all the statistics, research and evidence put before the Committee by my noble friend; suffice it to say that the Staying Put scheme was piloted in 11 local authorities. As he has said, the outcomes for the young people who stayed with their foster carers were significantly and substantially better than for those who were not able to do so. It gave them an opportunity to take more control over their lives and to make more successful transitions from care towards independent adulthood. The Fostering Network found that none of the pilot authorities reported significant problems with foster carer provision as a result of offering the Staying Put scheme, which I know is a concern that has been expressed by some people. While a minority did say that staying put would mean that in theory a former foster bed would no longer be available, it is often the case that foster carers plan to retire after the placement ends and would have been retiring at whatever age the young person left, whether or not it was beyond the age of 18. In addition, foster carer recruitment strategies have simply been amended to suit the new needs of the service.
I shall quote a leaving care manager who participated in the Staying Put pilot scheme. He said:
“Nowadays we do not even recruit foster carers who would not want to offer Staying Put. Indeed, because many of them now want to provide a Staying Put placement, we are keeping them happy and ensuring their future commitment to our service by allowing them to keep young people living with them. They see it as the natural and obvious thing for a professional fostering service to do and they want to play a part in that”.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to debate the important subject of how local authorities support care leavers. I fully understand concerns raised by noble Lords, including the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the noble Baronesses, Lady Young, Lady Massey, Lady Morgan and Lady Howarth, the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and my noble friends Lord Storey, Lady Howe and Lady Walmsley, and many external parties about the ongoing support for care leavers. As the noble Earl has said, we have had the opportunity of discussing this matter privately on a couple of occasions recently. I look forward to further discussions with him on this matter as he knows I also feel strongly on this subject.
We have emphasised the importance of staying put in revised statutory guidance, because we recognise that for many young people the ability to stay on with their former foster carers, particularly when they are in further and higher education, is the right decision. The Minister for Children and Families wrote to all directors of children’s services last October, encouraging them to prioritise their staying put arrangements, so that all young people who wanted to could benefit from this provision. I accept there is more to do. Naturally we are disappointed that the 2013 statistical returns from local authorities show only a marginal increase in young people in staying put provision. However, we should recognise that these figures collected by local authorities are a snapshot at 19 and they run only until March 2013, so there is not much time to see the impact of the actions we have taken since 2012. Moreover, they do not tell us about the number of young people who might be benefiting from this provision from the age of 18, and who will leave this arrangement before they turn 19. From next year the department will be collecting data at age 18, 20 and 21, and will be able to see from 2014 how many young people are benefiting from this provision before and after the age of 19.
Our approach is and has been to improve practice. We are continuing to look for ways to promote and encourage this. We have already worked with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions to issue practical guidance on staying put to help carers and local authorities around tax and benefit issues. As I have already said, the revised Ofsted inspection framework that comes into practice in November has a specific focus on the quality of leaving care services. A focus on the care leaver assessment will be on accommodation, and inspectors will consider staying put opportunities. Being able to stay in placements beyond 18 is mentioned within one of the grade descriptors of the care leavers’ judgement. We will monitor closely the reports on these inspections and feedback from care leavers, and expect to see significant improvements in 2014 and 2015 in the number of young people staying put. In addition, through our work with the National Care Advisory Service, my department will encourage local authorities to share effective practice where they are making good progress in this respect. While doing everything that we can to promote staying put, we must recognise that this sort of provision will not be appropriate for all young people. Care leavers, like their peers, have different needs, and attitudes regarding their transition to adulthood. The crucial point is that young people should be offered a range of placements that are safe and suitable, and meet their individual needs. I want to reassure noble Lords that the Government want to encourage all looked-after children to stay in care until they are 18 and beyond, where this is the right choice for them. We want to do everything we can for all care leavers.
I recognise the strength of feeling expressed today, and wish to take the issue away to consider further what more we can do to increase the numbers of young people in staying-put arrangements. I understand that noble Lords feel there is a case that all we are doing is not enough. I have asked my officials to work further with the Fostering Network and others on this issue. The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, mentioned a figure of £2.5 million, which is no longer our view of the figure, although it is a figure that the Fostering Network has recently come up with. We believe the figure is considerably higher, but we will be working with the Fostering Network to see if we can pin this figure down further. I would be pleased to discuss this issue further with the noble Earl over the coming weeks.
I hope that what I have said reassures noble Lords of our commitment to this issue and I therefore urge the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and my noble friends Lady Sharp and Lady Walmsley not to press their amendment.
The Earl of Listowel
I thank the Minister for his reply. Before thanking colleagues, perhaps I may put a few questions on the detail to the Minister. With regard to the timescale, he was good enough in his comments just now to say that he expected a significant increase in the next two years in the number of young people staying put. Perhaps he would like to write to me with a clearer timescale. My concern is that unless we move quickly on this in the next one, two, three or four years, hundreds of young people will miss out on a pathway which we know would do them a lot of good and mean that they would have much better outcomes. If the Minister wishes to take a different approach, the voluntary approach, I should be grateful if he could make it clear when he hopes to achieve the target of 25%, which I think is the government target. It would also be helpful to know what steps the Government will take if that target is not reached or if good progress is not made in that direction. Those are just a couple of questions. He may prefer to write to me rather than answer them now.
The Earl of Listowel
I thank the Minister. I thank all colleagues for their support for the amendment. It is heartening for me to hear that depth of support from across the Committee. If I may say so, it was most interesting to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, about his experience today in an adult court. It was not at all surprising.
I should have made clear a couple of things in my opening remarks. First, 11 local authorities took part in the pilots to begin with. Then two of them merged, so it became 10. That is the reason for the disparity between the comments made by my noble friend Lady Young and me about the number of local authorities in the pilot evaluation. I also omitted to say that some of the local authorities taking part in the evaluation were selecting young people who work in education or training, so that does not give us as clear a picture about the successful outcome as one might like. I think that it is still very clear, but I want your Lordships to be aware that there was a difficulty there in terms of the group used in the pilots.
I welcome what the Minister has said. Of course, the measures that he is proposing are untried. We have seen only a marginal improvement in the past year. My concern is that in the years to come—the next one, two, three or four years—if the movement is too slow, hundreds of children will miss out on an education, a training or employment and go down much worse pathways if we do not grab the nettle and act now. I look forward to studying what the Minister said and to further conversations before Report.
I reiterate once more how grateful I am to noble Lords across the Committee for their support and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
They do it already. There is no difference. They have a requirement under the Act to accommodate. They have had that since 1989, or since 1990 when the Act came into force. I am talking about giving them a parental responsibility order, which is a wake-up call and has nothing to do with finances at all.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
I am asking that Amendment 43 be decoupled from this amendment because it deals with a quite different issue. I wish to speak briefly to the amendment moved by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, if the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, will allow me. It is extraordinary that there are children in this country, from wherever they have come, for whom the local authority fails to take some sort of action. I do not often say this but, in my day, children would be seen as having no parental cover whatever and there would be no doubt that the local authority would have had a care order. There is no doubt that that would have happened in the past. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, agrees.
I understand why we want fewer court proceedings. Having been the chair of CAFCASS, I absolutely understand that. They are expensive and are often not helpful to the child’s experience, never mind that of the local authority. Under the 1948 Act we had a way of ensuring that children were placed under the equivalent of a care order by a process in the local authority. In the days of Sections 1 and 2 of the Children Act 1948, one lot of children went to court and the others went through a process in the local authority. We should ask the officials to look at this. Without a doubt we have a national responsibility to protect this small cohort of children. I have come into contact with them because I deal with serious sexual abuse issues. The girls who are trafficked are seriously sexually abused. It is not just prostitution; it is abhorrent prostitution. Unless we find ways of protecting these youngsters they will just slip away and disappear, not of their own choice. I support the noble and learned Baroness in her attempt to find a way that is not expensive but which secures these children’s futures.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, an issue that is not directly relevant to this amendment, but which is akin to it, is that of parental responsibility and the accommodation that these children go into. I know that these highly vulnerable children are put into shocking accommodation. They are followed by traffickers, drug dealers and criminal gangs. They are abducted and disappear or something even more terrible might happen to them. I want to emphasise that parental responsibility must include decent accommodation for these children.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I advise the Committee that I wish to decouple my Amendment 234 from this grouping. I apologise; I did not watch carefully enough the information from the Whips’ Office this morning.
Lord Storey
My Lords, I would like to explore this in a bit more detail. Perhaps the Minister, if he is not able to give the information in his reply, could write to us. My experience in local government and as a head teacher is that, of course, children are trafficked, but some are trafficked because their parents in another part of the world want a better life for them, so they pay someone to put them on a plane and the poor child then arrives in the UK. As I understand it, there are regional centres where the children are received. There is one in Dover. Liverpool was and is another regional centre. The children come to Liverpool and Liverpool tries as best it can within the resources to cater for them and to look after them. I know that for two reasons. One is that, four or five years ago, our director of social services wrote a report saying, “Look, my budget can’t cope with the number coming in. We want to help, but it seems unfair financially that Liverpool should carry this burden”. Secondly, I also know as a head teacher that some of these children have been put into foster care. I gave the example at a meeting of a Mongolian street child, whose grandparents had paid a trafficker to bring him to the UK. He landed in London but was sent to a regional centre, which happened to be Liverpool, where he was fostered with a wonderful family in Halewood. He came to my school and he was well looked after. For me, the issue is not the reluctance of local authorities to deal with this but the sheer size of the problem and the support that they get. I hope that that makes sense.
The Earl of Listowel
I am reminded of the report by my noble friend Lord Laming on the death of Victoria Climbié. One of the comments made by the social workers in Haringey who were interviewed was that they were overwhelmed at the time, particularly by unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and young people. This can put a heavy burden on local authorities. I have another, related experience of visiting a children’s home some years ago. I spoke to the manager, who was very experienced—in many ways, she was a remarkable manager—but when it came to working with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, she felt that these were not their children. She had enough to do looking after the children with whom she had to deal, rather than having to deal with these other children, if you like. There is a difficulty and perhaps the amendment is a helpful way of tackling it. Some people will just say, “Look, we have enough on our plate. We don’t want to think about these extra children and we’ll find ways not to do so”. I am not sure whether that is exactly the issue in hand, but my experience is that, understandably, given the strains on social services and the immense emotional burden that caring for children with complex needs brings with it, some people can find ways to rationalise not giving proper care to vulnerable children because those children come from a very different background from theirs.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble and learned Baroness for tabling this amendment. We all share her abhorrence at what is currently happening out there in the way that the care system is routinely failing trafficked children. I was interested to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said. One aspect of it might be that children whose parents want a better future for them come here voluntarily. However, the people that the noble and learned Baroness is talking about are duped into coming here on completely false pretences. They are told they are coming for waitressing jobs or otherwise to earn money. They certainly do not expect to come in the mode of being owned by a gang member, which is where they find themselves. The noble Lord is right that there is some good local authority practice but that is where people want help and support genuinely to make a better future here: these are not the same people.
This all goes to show that the problem for local authorities is much bigger, in the round, than we are looking at. There are people who come in on the noble Lord’s terms and those who come in on the noble and learned Baroness’s terms. There are some excellent charities working in this sector, as well as the local authorities who are providing a safe haven and proper care and advice for these young people. However, they need to do more and they are very much the exception. All too often, everyone feels powerless to prevent those children who are rescued disappearing. It is not just that they are being traded and sold into slavery and sexual abuse. Very often, the children go along with the gang members because they are spooked by some form of black magic which is endemic in their original societies or they feel that their families will be threatened by violence back at home if they do not go along with it. In no sense are they involved voluntarily: this is under absolute fear, duress and panic. It is a scandal that we are allowing this to happen on our territory and are unable to prevent it.
I was pleased to hear the proposals of the noble and learned Baroness. I do not know well enough what difference it would make but it would be fair to say that if it did make a big difference it would have a cost implication. If it were not going to make much difference, it would not. We have to own up to the fact that there may be a cost implication to what is being proposed. It is only right that, if a child is under 18, the local authority should have the same duty of care to look after them as it would to any other young people under its jurisdiction. It also seems only right that, when they go missing, it takes the same level of care as it would for any other young children under its jurisdiction, including making sure that it escalates the details of those young people beyond the local missing persons’ procedures.
We have touched on what is going wrong with local authorities. It is partly about resources but they also think that it is just too complicated to deal with on their own, particularly when they are dealing with young children and traffickers who are constantly moving and crossing local authority borders and other boundaries. It is all too easy for local authorities to feel that it is, in a sense, someone else’s problem and that the problem has moved off their estate and into the hands of someone else. That is not justifiable and we want to work with the Government to find some way to deal with this problem. It seems an absolute affront to our civilisation that children can be bought and sold and exploited in our own sight, and that we seem to be powerless to stop it.
The real solution probably lies with having the political will to make this issue a priority, which I do not think that it has been up to now. At the same time, a lot could be done if all the agencies involved worked more closely together to share information and act decisively. Whether that needs to be put in legislation is another matter, but a bit more joined-up action and joined-up government could go some way to addressing it. I very much appreciate the noble and learned Baroness raising this issue, and I hope that the Minister will explain how she is going to solve this problem.
Baroness Northover
Perhaps I should clarify my comments to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. He suggested that local authorities, because they are dealing with large numbers of asylum-seeking children, were therefore not dealing with trafficked children. I simply wanted to place that in the context that the numbers there are dropping. In case I caused any confusion, perhaps I can clarify what I was saying.
The Earl of Listowel
Just to clarify my position, I was simply using that as an example: that occasionally local authorities are overburdened for one reason or another and we need to support them as far as possible to meet those needs.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
I am talking about a very specific group of children. Some trafficked children may seek asylum, but that is a completely different matter. I am talking about children who have through the NRM been positively identified as trafficked or are going through the process of identification—one or the other. I am not talking about children who might possibly be trafficked but who have not yet gone through that identification.
The reason for tabling the amendment was as a wake-up call to local authorities. I totally understand the extent to which they are overburdened and underresourced—I said that—but this small group of children is slipping through the net. I was delighted to hear what the Minister had to say about missing children, because there is a serious lack of data from local authorities on children who go missing. They ought to be able to identify what sort of children they are. Are they the children who keep going missing from children’s homes? We know that there are children who go missing three, four or five times a week. That is not the sort of child we are talking about. The group we should worry about is the child who goes missing and is never identified again as a child who was in a children’s home or a foster home. Local authorities do not even know. They have to get their act together to know that those are trafficked children.
I welcome the opportunity to discuss that further with the noble Baroness. I have no doubt that the group of which I am a co-chairman would very much like the opportunity to do that, particularly the chairman of the Human Trafficking Foundation, Anthony Steen, who was previously an MP who worked tirelessly for this cause. This children issue is one that we are truly concerned about. I very much welcome what the Minister said and I am happy to withdraw the amendment.