Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Warner (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, first, I want to put Amendment 29 in context. I see it as part of a package relating to Clause 1. In our previous debate on Clause 1, there was a large measure of agreement that the corporate parenting principles needed to be kept tightly drawn and manageable in length. There was also a sense, however, that some important aspects, such as mental health, needed to be specifically incorporated into those principles. We also discussed at some length the importance of requiring the co-operation of other key partners in supporting the corporate parent in living up to those principles. I am sure that on this latter issue we will come back with amendments on Report to place a clear duty on key partner agencies and services to co-operate with the responsible local authority corporate parent.

I wish to raise a point on this, on which the Minister left me, and possibly other Members of the Committee, rather confused. Let me seek clarification from the Minister on what he said about other agencies co-operating with local authorities on the delivery of services linked to the corporate parenting principles. At one point he suggested that this was covered in Clause 10. As I said then, it is not. Then there was some suggestion that what was meant was Section 10 of the Children Act 1989. With a great deal of help from the Library, to which I give thanks, I have checked: it is not there in the 1989 Act. Then I asked the Library to show me the current version of the 1989 Act, as amended subsequently. It is not in the amended version of Section 10. I am struggling to find it elsewhere in any of the legislation. My request to the Minister, therefore, is that he write to me and other Members of the Committee as soon as possible—certainly well before Report—citing the text of the legislation that requires other agencies, and which of those agencies, to co-operate with the responsible local authority in delivering corporate parenting principles. Without that legislative clarity, I am sure many of us will want to press an appropriate amendment on this issue on Report.

I now return to my Amendment 29, which is linked to this issue. Alongside the corporate parenting principles and the co-operation and involvement of other relevant agencies, a third important element is, I suggest, required to make it all work in practice for the young people concerned. That is an obligation to help those young people get the services they need, which is where Amendment 29 comes in.

The amendment does two things. First, it requires the local authority corporate parent to ensure that all the relevant services are aware of the needs of children and young people in care or leaving care. We know that many of these services, some of which were cited in our previous discussion, are not aware of the special needs of those in care or leaving care. History suggests that we should strengthen the obligation on local authorities to bring home to the other agencies the special needs of those for whom they are corporate parents. Because of the unfortunate timetabling of the Bill, I had little time to prepare the amendment. I know that some services have been omitted from it, but this can easily be rectified.

The second part of the amendment places an obligation on the corporate parent to make sure the children and young people for whom it is responsible know about the services available to help them make their way in the world. It also obliges the corporate parent to help these young people secure those services. I regard this second aspect as very important indeed. Public services can be very complex; they can be very siloed—as was said in our last discussion—and pretty inaccessible. Many of us, as experienced and knowledgeable adults, often struggle to penetrate public sector bureaucracies, so why should we expect these young people to do it without help? It is not good enough to await young people coming forward and asking for help, which they often do not even know about. I recognise that I may not have got the wording quite right and this amendment would need to be aligned with the other amendments to Clause 1 that I have mentioned. However, I hope the Minister will see merit in this amendment and will be willing to make an amendment of this kind to the Bill and possibly discuss it with some of us beforehand. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support this amendment. I do so because it reminds me of my experience of being acquainted with a young woman who left care some time ago. She did get access to mental health support and saw a therapist over a quite considerable period. She is thriving; she is doing well and supporting young people leaving care. When she spoke to me about her experience, she highlighted how important it was for her to have that access to a counsellor. So if this amendment helps her with that, I would definitely like to support it. We will hear from the Minister about the Children Act duties and I hope that will comfort the noble Lord, Lord Warner.

This woman has a younger brother in care and she is concerned about the access that he is getting to therapy. This is a real issue for many young people in care and care leavers, so I am looking for as much reassurance from the Minister as possible in his response.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, rise to support the noble Lord, Lord Warner, in his amendment and particularly his plea that we should have some meeting to clarify the various amendments that have been tabled. In the next group, I shall refer to some of these amendments and it strikes me again that this is something that ought to be tied up between the Bill team and those of us who are taking part because otherwise we are in danger of having a thoroughly ill-constituted Bill to send forward to the other place.

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[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I also support this amendment. I apologise for not being here for day one but at Second Reading I explained that I would not be able to be present last week. At Second Reading, there were a number of clauses—this is one of them—where I was concerned that the work of independent fostering agencies, adoption agencies and the voluntary sector as a whole, which provides increasing support to children in care and leaving care, was hardly noticed. We need to keep on top of that. We should not restrict its growth but we should ensure that it is joined up with what is required of statutory authorities and that quality remains high. In supporting the amendment, I hope consideration will be given to that area of work as well in any future redrafting.

[The Earl of Listowel]

Very briefly, I recognise the concerns expressed by the noble Baroness. So much money might be saved if the right agencies worked with local authorities. It is hugely expensive to keep a child in a children’s home. If that child could be kept in a foster placement because there was adequate early intervention from health, for instance, the local authority could save a lot of money. There is room for negotiation—perhaps health could pay half the cost and the local authority could pay half the cost of an intervention, or there could be some other variation. But it could save local authorities huge amounts of money if the right intervention was made and the right agency worked in partnership with them.

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[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I listened very carefully to the Minister. Before responding, perhaps I may say that he offered to write to me. When I did not receive a letter, I went to the Library.

With this approach of simply asking local authorities to find different obligations in different bits of legislation, the Minister is undermining the strengths of Clause 1 and the corporate parenting principles. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham has given me some interesting information about the Children Act, so technology is giving us instant access to some of these bits of information. However, they do not cover some of the issues that were raised in the debate about the corporate parenting principles; they are narrower in scope where the partners are asked to intervene. We have been having a debate about the full range of services and agencies that need to co-operate with the local authority to enable the corporate parenting principles to be delivered to children. The Minister did not really deal with the issue in the second part of my amendment, which is about the local authority taking the initiative and showing children and young people what services are available.

I looked very carefully at Clause 1(1)(d). It is a pretty general proposition about helping young people, and it does not define who the “relevant partners”—the wording in the legislation—are. If the Minister wants to get the best out of this well-intended set of corporate parenting principles, we have to beef up the Bill in terms of the duty to co-operate placed on the full range of services, and we may need to specify them in the Bill with something along the lines of my Amendment 29. I will certainly come back to this, as I suspect will other Members, on Report. In the meantime—

[The Earl of Listowel]

Before the noble Lord withdraws his amendment, casting back to the Children Act 2004, one agency that was excluded was the Immigration Service. On the duty for all agencies to work together to secure the welfare of children, I am not sure that the Act was successful by excluding that service. In his letter to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, perhaps the Minister can make clear whether that is the case.

[Lord Warner]

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

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

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

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

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

[The Earl of Listowel]

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

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

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My noble friend Lord Farmer talked about family-finding services. Building on success in the United States, the Family Rights Group is now testing this approach in a number of local authorities. This is exactly the sort of approach that we want to test more widely as part of our forthcoming care leavers strategy. I hope that the noble Lord will feel reassured enough to withdraw his amendment.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, perhaps I may ask a quick question about SEN thresholds. I understand that recent legislation has raised the threshold for an SEN statement, the idea being that schools will have better capacity to meet the lower-level issues. I had a fairly low-level speech impediment and I am not sure that I would have qualified for a statement. I should like to be told whether that threshold has been raised and whether we are getting evidence that schools are able to meet the lower levels which are no longer being statemented. Perhaps the Minister would write to me or we could just have a conversation about it afterwards.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I will do that.

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[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 98A in this group in my name. This is about the universal credit standard allowance for single claimants under the age of 25, for care leavers and lone parents. It ties in with much of what my noble friend has just said.

I thank the Family Rights Group for its advice on this amendment, which is rather complex, but clear. Under the current system of income support and income-based jobseeker’s allowance, the rate of personal allowance payable to a claimant depends on the claimant’s age and whether the claimant has children. Those under 25 year-olds who are not parents receive a lower rate of personal allowance than those aged over 25. A lone parent aged 18 or over will receive the same higher rate of personal allowance that those aged over 25 are entitled to. Lone parents receive a sum of £73.10 per week, which equates to £316.77 a month.

Under universal credit, the Government have introduced different rates of standard allowance for single claimants regardless of whether they are a parent, depending on whether the claimant is aged under or over 25. Therefore, in universal credit, the standard allowance for a single parent under 25 years of age is £251.77 per month, almost £65 less per month or nearly £780 less over the course of a year than lone parents of that age receive under the current regime.

Many young parents under the age of 25 who are care leavers are entirely reliant on welfare benefits and tax credits to support themselves and their children. The reduced rate of universal credit is likely to push this group of parents, who are already vulnerable, into severe financial hardship and debt. That may result in their having to move home, away from the formal support networks and services that are an integral part of their own pathway plans as well as the plans in place to support them in caring safely for their children. If their ability to meet their children’s needs is compromised, that risks children being denied the chance of being raised by their parents, thus impacting on the child and the parent’s right to respect for family life. It could also increase the number of children in care, which would not be in the best interests of children and would lead to a considerably greater cost to the Government.

The payment of a lower personal allowance undermines those provisions that aim to support care leavers, including those provided for in the Bill. It undermines the Government’s commitment under the leaving care strategy to ensure,

“that care leavers are adequately supported financially in their transition from care to adulthood to enable young people leaving care to have the same opportunities to fulfil their potential as their peers”.

These are important considerations and I hope that the Government will look on them favourably and give some explanation as to the discrepancies.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I will speak to Amendment 47 in this group. Many noble Lords will recognise that adolescence is a difficult time for many young people. Anna Freud, the founder of the Anna Freud Institute, wrote three times on adolescence. Her final paper was entitled Adolescence as a Developmental Disturbance. Adolescence—the transition from childhood to adulthood—can often be a difficult time, but if one is a child in care, has experienced trauma before entering care and then may well have experienced further trauma on entering care—the process of being taken into care is traumatic in itself—one may find oneself with a protracted adolescence. Anna Freud describes the process of adolescence as the detachment of a child from their parent and the gradual process of moving to become an independent adult individual. I paraphrase, but that is roughly how she would describe adolescence.

The important thing to keep in mind here is that adolescence is about the detachment from the parent. The child has a close attachment to the parent; adolescence sunders that relationship. When we talk about continuing support of such young people up to the age of 25 by local authorities, it is very important to recognise that the developmental drive for those young people is to push themselves away from their corporate parent, the local authority, particularly because of their early experience. Just like any other good parent, the corporate parent, the local authority, has to make very clear to their child or young person: “We are here for you. You may not like us—you may hate us or despise us; that is normal for adolescents—but we are still here for you, we still care for you and we still want to see you and support you. We are here for you when you need us”. That is what I hope the amendment covers. It puts more of an onus than the Bill currently does on local authorities to say to those young people: “We want to support you. This is the offer we have for you”, and, for instance, to send Christmas cards and postcards, to do everything in their power to keep in touch and to treat them, in this regard, just as they would younger people aged under 21.

I recall Ashley Williamson, a care leaver I have known for a while. He did not get back into contact with his personal adviser until he was perhaps 20. He was just on the edge of losing the right to a personal adviser, but very fortunately he got back in contact. It made a huge difference to his life, because he and his personal adviser clicked. She supported him to get stable housing for himself. Following that, his life improved and he became a very effective lobbyist in Parliament, coming to parliamentary groups to talk about what needs to be done for care leavers and expressing concerns about the sexual abuse and exploitation of young people in care.

We have heard eloquent words about the treatment of young mothers, in particular, coming out of care. I remind your Lordships that young people and teenagers in care are far more likely to become pregnant than those in the general population. Very sadly, the number of children taken away from young people who have grown up in care is also far higher as a proportion than in the general population. If anything can be done to ensure that the financial environment for those families is as beneficial and supportive as possible, that would be a very good thing, as I hope your Lordships will agree. We need to do all we can to support these families. We know from the statistics that they are highly vulnerable, so the measures described here are very welcome and I hope the Minister can give a positive response.

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, briefly, I support Amendment 74A, to which I have added my name. I draw your Lordships’ attention to my entry in the register of interests about my involvement in a voluntary project for care leavers. I support everything that my noble friend said in support of this group of amendments. As she suggested, I want to put forward a set of arguments in favour of Amendment 74A, which is about the need to acquire better data about outcomes for care leavers.

As I said at Second Reading, delivering the Bill’s undoubted good intentions will be challenging. In particular, it is crucial that the individual circumstances of each young person must be considered if real progress is to be made. As the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said, these young people face all the challenges that all young people face, but the particular challenges from their specific circumstances are especially demanding. Therefore, their problems are unusually difficult and complex and they require tailored help to meet them. If we are to do so, we must overcome all the problems that public services have traditionally found in personalising delivery to the individual.

Adequate data on outcomes will be crucial if we are to use the Bill’s framework to devise effective strategies, but it is simply unavailable at the moment. For example, as I said at Second Reading, it is known that 5% of care leavers are in higher education at the age of 19; we do not know how many of those will graduate; nor do we know how many care leavers enter higher education in later life, although we know that many of them do so when they feel more ready to take advantage of that opportunity. Such data will be crucial if we are to assess the effectiveness of support for those young people. Requiring local authorities to keep in touch with their care leavers until they are at least 25 will, among all its other virtues, enable better data to be compiled about outcomes for them, which is a vital building block for the success of the Bill in the long term. For that reason, and for all the others that we have already heard, I hope the Government will consider the amendment sympathetically.

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[Lord Nash]

I was about to say something about data which I hope will satisfy the noble Lord. If it does not, I shall be very happy to discuss it with him further. Local authorities are required to provide data on care leavers aged 19, 20 and 21. From October this year, we will also publish data on care leavers aged 17 and 18. We are also now able to link with datasets held by the MoJ and HMRC, which will allow us to track care leavers’ longer-term outcomes. However, I shall be happy to discuss this further with the noble Lord.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, asked about funding. We do not believe that Clauses 1 and 2 represent new burdens on local authorities. However, as I have already said, we recognise that extending personal advisers to all care leavers up to the age of 25 will have financial consequences, and we have made a commitment to provide new burden funding to meet these extra costs. Our initial estimates are based on our experience in Trafford, which is a very high-performing local authority, and we will publish the figures shortly.

My understanding is that Amendment 98A, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, would extend the higher rate of universal credit to single-parent care leavers. The benefits system recognises the special needs of care leavers. However, in the current system there is considerable complexity around the rates for young people, with some differences between benefits. The structure of age-related rates in universal credit is much simpler than the benefits it replaces, with just four rates of the standard allowance compared with, for example, 15 in employment and support allowance. These age-related standard allowance rates are now established in universal credit.

Making changes such as those set out in this amendment would replicate some of the complexity that we are seeking to remove. Rather than handing out money to young people and expecting them to fend for themselves, universal credit seeks to support vulnerable young people and parents to stabilise their lives and find work. For this reason, the DWP extended second-chance learning from age 19 to 21. This allows care leavers to claim income support and housing benefit if returning to full-time, non-advanced education to make up for missed qualifications. In addition, single-parent care leavers who are working will be able to access help with 85% of their childcare costs up to the cap.

With that information, I hope I have reassured noble Lords that care leavers will receive and be able to access the support they need, and I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s response and particularly for what he said about keeping an open mind and thinking further about the degree of the burden on local authorities from keeping in touch with and being proactive towards young people up to the age of 25. What he said about guidance on being proactive was very welcome. Are there currently issues regarding those up to the age of 21? Under the current duty, do local authorities express concern that the duty sometimes causes them to expend resources unnecessarily? Do young people feel a bit harassed by the current system? Otherwise, I am not clear why one should treat those over the age of 21 any differently from those under 21. If there are no current issues, I am not sure why it should be an issue to transfer the provision to under-25s. However, I am sure that that can be answered in subsequent discussions and, as I said, I am grateful to the Minister for his response.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

I noticed that the Minister has kindly arranged a meeting with Mr Brokenshire, the Minister in the Home Office responsible for immigration. Will the provisions in Clause 2 apply to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children until the moment they lose the right to remain and have to leave, with them then appealing?

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[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I came to this Committee looking at the amendment thinking “No”. Young people themselves should be able to say “No”. Actually, listening to noble Lords, I now think it is absolutely right. These are the most vulnerable young people. For them to try and cut through the bureaucratic enjoyments of social services does not come easily. The onus should be on us to provide that support. This shows the value of a Committee, does it not? You listen to arguments and might change your mind.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I support Amendments 52, 53 and 74A. I was most grateful for the Minister’s encouraging reply on the previous group, which is relevant to this discussion, and for his sympathetic stance towards this. The current discussions about the pressures on local authorities, and the huge and diverse burdens they carry, might be one further reason why the onus should be put more firmly on them in primary legislation. Also, I am a little puzzled why one would wish to treat over-21 year-olds any differently to under-21 year-olds. My puzzlement is that if we are agreed that we should in this Bill make sure that over-21 year-olds receive the same entitlements that under-21 year-olds leaving care have had up till now, why should we not treat them in exactly the same way? I would appreciate some help with that question. If we can, and there is no legal impediment to do so, would we not want to give them exactly the same offer as that for under-21 year-olds?

On the personal adviser role, which was also discussed, I recognise absolutely the wisdom of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, in talking about some flexibility in how that role is provided. One of the great successes in policy in this area in reason years has been the introduction by the coalition Government of Staying Put. More and more young people are now choosing to stay with their foster carers past the age of 18. We heard eloquently from the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, about the importance of relationships and the continuity of them. Thanks to Staying Put and the Government’s work, more and more children are choosing to stay, from a position where in the past we were not able to encourage them to do that or make it possible. Enabling foster parents to become their young person’s personal adviser may be a very good and appropriate thing. This is someone they already have a relationship with.

My concern is that there also needs to be rigidity in certain ways. My concern about the whole issue of children found in social care is that we have allowed too much flexibility in the social work profession. Until very recently, it was not a requirement that social workers should have a degree to practise what they do. Indeed, later parts of the Bill address this very fact of the overflexibility and a lack of specification of what social workers should do. This personal adviser role is important as well. Reports from right-wing think tanks such as the Centre for Social Justice highlighted the failure to have a consistent personal adviser workforce. There needs to be both flexibility and rigidity in the system. I suggest that there can be assessments and processes to decide whether it is appropriate to devolve responsibility to a foster carer or some extended family, or whether to keep it with a personal adviser. However, we need some rigidity.

It is very much an Anglo-Saxon approach to have a flexible workforce and it has many advantages to it, while the continentals face great challenges because they have a rather rigid way of approaching their workforce. I would argue that for vulnerable children, there have been advantages in the continentals’ rigid approach. It is well documented that they have far higher requirements for social workers. In staff at children’s homes, they have pedagogues who normally have a degree-level qualification and have had very substantial training, which I would argue is very appropriate to working in residential care. I recognise the noble Baroness’s concerns but I share the concerns around the Committee that the personal adviser role needs to be more clearly spelt out and specified. I hope that the Minister can help us with that in his response.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I want to say a word about personal advisers. The first thing we have to look at is who these children are and what their needs are. I have heard recently in the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children and in the European Union sub-committee which is discussing a report on unaccompanied asylum seekers just how vulnerable these children are—and how, in that vulnerability, they may find it difficult to make decisions and have the confidence to choose or request a personal adviser. Their relationships have suffered so much by their experiences that they may not trust anybody. We need to look at the children first. They may of course not wish to have a personal adviser, while some of them may not know exactly what they want so might try out various support systems before they decide. Personal advisers should not be available on request but should be there automatically for those children who are so vulnerable.

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[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I am sure the Grand Committee is very grateful to the noble Baroness for tabling these important amendments and bringing this issue back to us. I pay tribute to her and her colleagues for introducing the teenage pregnancy strategy while they were in government. After many years, it brought down the level of teenage pregnancies. It is not equivalent to that of the continent but at least it is moving in that direction. It has been a most important success.

Listening to the noble Baroness, I was reminded of a 24 year-old woman who, some time ago, attended the all-party parliamentary group for young people. The group was discussing mental health and she bewailed the fact that she had not been able to access mental health services. She had two young children whom she was really struggling with. I very much welcomed the earlier amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, to extend mental health support to the age of 25. At the APPG the 24 year-old bewailed the fact that, even if that was changed, she would be too old to benefit from it by the time it came into effect.

Last year the Maternal Mental Health Alliance launched a very important report into perinatal mental health, identifying the extent of perinatal mental health issues and the cost to the nation of failing to meet them. This group of young women is particularly at risk of perinatal mental health issues. The charity Best Beginnings does much work in this area and published a video that looked at a young woman as she was suffering from postnatal depression. It covered her experience of having a poor relationship with her mother because of her boyfriend, who did not understand her situation, and a GP who just did not have time to talk to her. She suffered a gradual spiral into depression and lost any patience with her children. She was not a young woman in care but one could easily see the same situation arising for such a person. She desperately needed help but she did not know how to ask for it. I hope that the amendments will make us think more about what we can do to reach out to these young women and ensure that they get the right help.

There is increasing support for women during pregnancy. The Government have invested more in perinatal mental health, and in particular there are models of what I call “caseload midwifery”—one-to-one midwifery, where the midwife makes a relationship with the parents early in the pregnancy, maintains that relationship and ideally is there at the birth. That model of service could be very helpful to these young mothers.

There has been a lot of recent research into neurodevelopment. Some of it has looked at the neurodevelopmental plasticity of infants, and it has been found that adolescents go through a further major neurodevelopmental change. There is also evidence that women show some plasticity in their neurodevelopment in childbirth because of the powerful relationship with their infant. However, there is a great risk that becoming a mother at an early stage will be too much of an experience for some women to manage. Their early experiences in infancy may prevent them being able to mother their children adequately, but there is also the opportunity for it to be a key turning point in their lives, where they learn to love and be loved for the first time. We need to be there for them as far as we can to make sure that that is the outcome—that it is a turning point in their lives and a positive experience for them and their child. Therefore, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for moving her amendment and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I feel that I could already write the Minister’s response by saying that of course these needs are already met in Clause 3(5)(a) or (b), as the subsection refers to meeting “his or her needs”. However, when, year after year, report after report notes that these needs are not dealt with, surely we reach the point where they need to be specified—hence I support the noble Baroness’s amendments. The needs of these young parents have so consistently not been adequately met that we now need to specify them so that they are.

I would also comment that, on occasions, young men may also find becoming a parent a positive turning point. There is a need to support young men who are looked after and become parents who recognise that they have now come to a point of responsibility and they would like to step up to it. They also need support. I invite the Minister’s comments on that.

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I hope that noble Lords will see that the particular needs of young parents and of parents will be fully covered within the corporate parenting guidance and that the Government are undertaking a programme of work to support these vulnerable young people. With that, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her careful and thoughtful response, but I have a couple of questions for her. With regard to health visitors, I acknowledge the immense investment that the Government have made in the regeneration of the profession. However, is she aware that until recently central government has been funding health visitors and many more have successfully been recruited, but that has recently moved to local government responsibility. There has been concern that some local authorities may choose not to fund the service or to fund it less. One issue is how frequently health visitors can visit. I should like an assurance from the Minister that so far the news of that transition to local government funding is that health visiting services are continuing as they have before. She can write to me but I would appreciate reassurance on that point. There might be room for improved guidance in this area. There is clearly a struggle in prioritising how health visitor services should be used in this climate and how many visits can be made to families. I would appreciate an assurance that the guidance is explicit that a young care leaver should have at least four visits—I think the standard may be three or two at the moment. Something like that might be helpful.

Although I welcome the family nurse partnership model and the benefits that it brings through having a professional team around the family and not just the health visitor on her own, I believe that that is a fairly short intervention. Perhaps the Minister can let me know how long it lasts. Given the issues of continuity of care for this group of young people, I would appreciate more information about the duration of the family nurse partnership model and what provision is made to ensure a smooth transition to other services. Reassurance on that matter would be welcome.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am happy to write to the noble Earl with more detail and will circulate the letter to other Peers who have been here today.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I rise to express not dissimilar concerns to the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth. I firmly support the tenor of what is proposed, but at the same time I go back to Second Reading when the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, raised the question of foster carers. Some foster carers will rail against the professionalisation of advice. If we believe that there needs to be flexibility in the range of personal advisers, we need to beware of the Bill being so constraining that we lose that flexibility. They have to be securely and safely recruited and vetted, and we must ensure that there is ongoing support. The concern just expressed about the vulnerability of an individual personal adviser also needs to be heeded. I wanted to place on record a concern that this is something that must still be wrestled with. We have not got to the bottom of the right answer yet, either with what is in the Bill or in the guidance. This will be another example of where the guidance needs to be seen before Third Reading.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I very much appreciated the 1992 report of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, Choosing with Care. I have referred to it many times during my career in this House. I find it extremely helpful and illuminating, and in visiting children’s homes, I know how helpful they have found it. There is even something called the Warner interview in which they are instructed to look back over the CV of the applicant to see if there are ever any gaps and probe the applicant on what they were doing in those gaps. It was very influential and important.

I also emphasise what noble Lords have said about the first line manager or supervisor. Recently at a conference, I heard from the chief executive of Frontline, which trains social workers. He produced evidence that where there was an excellent supervisor and manager, even in a poorly functioning local authority, newly qualified social workers could do well and be resilient. Dame Claire Tickell was commissioned to produce a White Paper for social work and she emphasised the need to train first line managers strongly. I welcome what the Minister has said so far about how he sees the Government helping to develop this personal adviser role. I hope that he will also look at their supervision and their first line managers and how those need to be developed.

Finally, on the issue of flexibility versus rigidity, there are strengths to both sides of the argument. I hope that we can find a marriage between the two. My concern is that there are huge burdens on local authorities’ resources at the moment, and unless one is very specific in terms of the personal adviser profession, we may find huge disparity in quality and that our young people may not get delivery of what they need. At the same time, there needs to be flexibility where someone knows that young person and they have a relationship. We want continuity of relationships and we want foster carers, teachers or friends to be supported to be able to deliver that. We want to allow that role to be given to the foster carer or whoever. This issue is complex. This is a helpful debate and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, as we have heard, this is a complex and difficult issue. I have huge sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, the right reverend Prelate, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said about the need for flexibility. These young people are very vulnerable. They have a wide range of needs and they will respond differently to different people. It is not a question of having one professional group that will deal with every young person in the same way. We must be very careful about this because everything that I have learned about this complex subject suggests that one of the most crucial things is stability in the lives of these young people. The more difficult and restricting we make the area in which we can recruit these personal advisers, the more difficult it will be to provide stability, so there is clearly a huge problem here.

Having said that, we should not let all those difficulties dissuade or deflect us from the fundamental importance of what the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has said. There is always a temptation in government—I remember it very well from all my years as the Minister—that when things come complicated and difficult, particularly in such sensitive areas, to push it aside, kick it down the road a little bit and have a review which, in the circumstances, will not necessarily produce anything very valuable. We have heard the experience of all those people with a lot more experience than I have in these matters of how these problems come to light only after the damage has been done.

I urge the Minister to grapple with those difficulties, not lose sight of the importance of what the noble Lord, Lord Warner said, and to produce a substantive response today.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly in favour of Amendments 75 and 135. It would be very helpful if there were a duty on the Secretary of State to address the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in the way that the amendment describes. It would be helpful if there were child rights impact assessments for every piece of legislation—for instance, on the housing legislation that we have debated recently. Low-income families have suffered most in the recent years of austerity. We heard earlier about the closure of children’s centres, which are a vital tool in transforming the lives of these young people. It would be very helpful if central government were more aware of the impact of every piece of legislation on children and families, particularly poorer families. There was hardly any mention in the housing Bill of the impact of homelessness. There was some mention of families in temporary accommodation but I suggest that not nearly enough attention was paid to their needs.

Moving to Amendment 135, I was very interested to hear from the Leeds deputy director of children’s services four or five weeks ago. Leeds had been a struggling local authority in terms of children’s services but that was turned around, and he described the process. First and foremost, the foundation of the change was to consider the UNCRC—it was the very basis upon which the change was made. Leeds recognised that to improve children’s services it was necessary to look at all the children in the city and to think about how to improve their lives, listening to their needs and wishes to understand them better. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 135, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has already quoted from the 2016 report by the observers from the UN Human Rights Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was very damning. I want to draw attention to the fact that in 2008 there was an earlier damning report and the Government’s response to that in 2010 was to say that they would give due consideration to the rights of the child in all new legislation and policy. I have to say that there has been precious little sign of that, which worries me.

The other thing that worries me about this is the comment made by the noble Baroness about the inequality that exists in the observance of the rights of the child in the various parts of the United Kingdom, with England consistently lagging behind. I really think that this Bill is an opportunity to do something about this, and we ought to seize it.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I omitted to say that there seems to be a real issue in the United States, France and this country about a large section of the population feeling left out. The success of globalisation has in many ways simply left them behind. This would be one helpful measure to ensure that those at the bottom of the heap are better treated and feel better treated.

[Baroness Wheeler]

My Lords, Amendments 75 and 135 have been comprehensively argued and we have a great deal of sympathy with the intention to include in the Bill reference to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to promote the rights and well-being of children in care and care leavers. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, pointed out, general duties on the Secretary of State exist in relation to health and education, so it is important to consider this issue in the Bill.

Specifically on the UNCRC’s latest report, the Minister underlined at Second Reading that the Government fully recognised the importance of the committee’s work and were looking closely at the report. The report has again warned, as we heard, of the growing and disproportionate impact of austerity and spending cuts on disadvantaged children. It would be helpful if the Minister explained further his thinking on the report and what are the Government’s plans for responding to it.

We recognise the importance of upholding the rights of children in care and care leavers and on ensuring their well-being. Establishing at the end of Clause 3 a duty for the Secretary of State to promote the rights of children and young people covered by the Bill in accordance with the convention and other relevant legislation reinforces the commitment to provide the services that care leavers need. It also defines well-being, which we asked for, and to include physical, mental health and emotional well-being; the skills needed to contribute to society; and the importance of social and economic well-being, for which we have all recognised the need.

The provisions in Amendment 135 would be particularly important if Clauses 15 to 19 remain in the Bill. The Minister knows that there are deep concerns at the wide-ranging scope of these clauses, which we will debate on later amendments. This amendment would place a duty on public bodies and any person providing children’s services of a public nature to have due regard to the UN convention, particularly in functions relating to safeguarding or promoting the welfare of children—it is vital for this protection to be included if the scope of Clause 15 is as wide-ranging as is currently feared—and for regular reports to be published on how the requirement is being met.

Importantly, the amendment refers to this report as needing to be in a format “accessible to children”. In this context, I commend the valuable programme of work currently being undertaken by Coram Voice to find out from young people in care themselves what well-being being actually means to them. Its survey of children in care, Your Life, Your Care, began last year and aims at measuring the quality of their care experience and their own sense of well-being under what it calls the four Rs—relationships, recovery, resilience-building and rights, which very much resonate with the issues and approaches that have come up under the Bill. It can be used to help local authorities demonstrate how they are meeting Ofsted requirements, for example: what they are doing well and what they could improve.

Amendment 76, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, and supporting the Joseph Rowntree Foundation call for the Secretary of State to have power to introduce a social justice premium grant to local authorities for services or grants for care leavers, reflects the need to find responses to the huge funding pressures faced by local authorities and the impact of the scale of the cuts in recent years. The overall aim of improving care leavers’ life chances and closing the gap between them and children who have not been in care is certainly one we all fully support. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation underlined that this policy is in the early stages of development ahead of the application of its anti-poverty strategy later this year and we look forward to seeing further work on this. The aim of basing the grant and calculations of harm over the care leaver’s lifetime is also laudable but a very challenging proposition.

Overall, it is worth emphasising that further premiums or special funding at the Secretary of State’s discretion, however welcome in the current context, are not the answer to medium or long-term funding problems. Local authorities must be adequately resourced to undertake the work and responsibilities placed on them, and Labour is strongly committed to achieving that. If we listen to care leavers themselves to help shape their services to them, as we all advocate, we know that worrying about money, fear of not being able to pay the bills and getting into debt that can never be paid off is at the heart of a lot of the problems they face.

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley, Lady Bakewell and Lady Pinnock, the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for these amendments and their comments, and for the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler. I am grateful for their brevity. In that regard and without wishing to be rude, I know we are debating important matters but if we are to get through this Bill in four days in Committee I would be grateful if noble Lords could come back on Wednesday in that vein.

First, I will respond to Amendment 135, on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. I offer my reassurance that the Government remain fully committed to this important convention. The recent report by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child on the UK recognised the progress made by the Government in protecting and enhancing children’s rights over recent years. The Government are unconvinced that putting a statutory duty to pay due regard to the convention on Secretaries of State or other bodies would have a real impact on children’s lives. In 2010, the coalition Government made a Statement to Parliament stating that the Government would give due consideration to the UNCRC when making new policies and legislation. This Government maintain that commitment.

Legislation is already assessed to ensure compatibility with the UNCRC. A rigorous child rights impact assessment was conducted on this Bill, for example, and shared with the Children’s Commissioner and the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Similarly, at a local level we believe that putting additional duties on public bodies is not the right approach to either raise awareness of the UNCRC or to change the way decisions are made. More targeted approaches through guidance and support to specific professionals or related to specific aspects of children’s rights are more effective. In 2013, for example, we issued statutory guidance to DCSs to have regard to the general principles of the UNCRC and to ensure that children are involved in development and delivery of local services. The Children’s Commissioner’s primary function is to promote and protect children’s rights and ensure that they are properly understood, including by children themselves. She raises awareness and ensures that their views are brought to the attention of decision-makers at both local and national levels.

Turning to reporting mechanisms, under the UNCRC process we are required to provide a full UK report on a five-yearly cycle. The reports are publicly available on the UN website. Any additional requirement would risk duplicating our existing obligation. I recognise the value of impact assessments carried out on legislative proposals where they affect children, as referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. We carried out a very full analysis of the Bill’s impacts on children’s rights, interests and families. The Government are committed to giving due consideration to children’s rights on matters such as this, as I said. Of course, there are aspects of children’s rights where we can and should do more. I assure noble Lords that we are considering the recommendations of the UN Committee, published earlier this month. We will respond to the concluding observations this year.

Amendment 75 proposes that a similar duty is put on the Secretary of State to promote the rights and well-being of children and young people who are looked after or care leavers. We believe that introducing such a duty is unnecessary. This is due to the duties which the Secretary of State already owes and the commitments that the Government have already made. The Children Act 1989 sets out the legal principle that the child’s welfare shall be the paramount consideration in decisions regarding children in the social care system. The guiding principle of any decision taken in relation to looked-after children will be to have their well-being as the primary consideration.

Section 7 of the Children and Young Persons Act 2008 obliges the Secretary of State to promote the well-being of all children in England and empowers her to take action to promote the well-being of care leavers. Clause 1 introduces the corporate parenting principles. The first principle sets out that a local authority must, in carrying out functions in relation to looked-after children and young people, act in their best interests and promote their health and well-being. We hope that this will reassure the noble Baronesses.

Turning to the social justice premium grant, the Government fully support the principle behind Amendment 76. As a Government, we are committed to improving the life chances of care leavers. Our forthcoming care leaver strategy will set out our ambition that care leavers should have the same opportunities, experiences and life chances as other young people. The best local authorities, such as Trafford, already provide additional support to care leavers to improve their life chances and to narrow the gap between them and their peers. Trafford ring-fences apprenticeship opportunities for care leavers and gives them free access to leisure centres.

Our goal is to see more local authorities providing excellent services that improve the life chances of all care leavers. This Government are committed to an all-out assault on poverty and improving chances for all children, regardless of their background and past experiences. Our forthcoming life chances strategy will set out our plan for transforming the life chances of disadvantaged children and their families and for tackling deep-rooted social problems so that no one is held back or prevented from making the most of their lives. In view of the measures that we have already taken to promote and protect children’s rights, particularly for children in care and care leavers, I hope that noble Lords will feel sufficiently reassured not to press their amendments.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply and for what he said about child impact assessments on child-related Bills. But is it not even more important in Bills about housing and welfare that there are such child impact assessments? Those Bills have a huge impact on children and their families and one does not get the sense that the impact on children is really thought through. American academics who come to this country talk about how important housing is to children and bewail the fact that there does not seem to be awareness at senior levels of government of that necessary connection.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken to this group. I will not say much because I need to be in the Chamber for the dinner break business. I thank the Minister for his reply. This is not the first time that I have tried to get some incorporation of the UNCRC into UK law and I am sure that it will not be the last. We made progress under the coalition Government when Sarah Teather announced that all government policies would be scrutinised to make sure that they were compliant with the UNCRC. That is why I wonder why, on the front of the Bill, we have a compliance statement about the UN Convention on Human Rights, but no statement about compliance with the UNCRC. That would be a step forward. After Sarah Teather made that statement, I went to talk to civil servants in the Department for Education to ask them what was the procedure to make sure that every policy was compliant. They did not have one. I would be interested to know what the procedure is now, because that was five or six years ago. Let us hope that we have moved forward in that respect because unless we have a proper procedure for doing this, it will not always happen and we things will fall through the gaps. However, I said that I would not say much, so I will sit down and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.