Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 88A and 88B, which are tabled in my name. In doing so I declare an interest in this area because of my role as chair of the Governing Council of Salford University. These amendments are slightly different from those already being considered; none the less, they are concerned with maximising the educational attainment of looked-after children, albeit at the other end of the educational experience—higher education—that we do not hear about too much.

Amendment 88A would require each university to collect and publish data on their recruitment of students from looked-after backgrounds, the demographic characteristics of those students, their educational outcomes and their destinations on leaving university. Amendment 88B would place a duty on universities to assess the needs of students coming in from an experience of care, to provide the support—financial and non-financial—that they need to continue with their studies, to support them in vacations and to give them priority in the allocation of bursaries to cover fees and maintenance. The educational underachievement of children in care is significant, long standing and well known to everybody here.

At every level—through early years, schools, colleges and so on—children from care quickly fall behind their peers and often stay behind them. Recent figures show, for example, that less than 15% of children in care gained five good GCSEs, including maths and English, compared to almost 60% of all children. Over a third of care leavers aged 19 are NEET, compared with about 19% of all 19 to 24 year-olds. In higher education, although it is a considerable improvement on the 1% it was not long ago, still only 7% of care leavers go to university, compared to about 30% of all young people.

We know broadly the reasons why. Children in care have experiences before—and unfortunately very often during—their care experience that make learning much more difficult. I know that all of us here believe passionately that when the state is in loco parentis, the support and targeted interventions to make up for those experiences should be there. We should ensure that children in care come through the care experience having developed and attained everything they are capable of.

Successive Governments have focused on the outcomes, particularly educational, for children in care, and there has been some steady, if not dramatic, improvement in schools, colleges and local authorities. There is some excellent practice, which we can disseminate in those sectors. For example, there is the virtual head teachers scheme, which is extended in the Bill. Local authorities now require an educational plan for every looked-after child, and monitor that at senior levels.

However, there has been much less attention paid to what needs to happen in the HE sector to increase the number of children in care going to university, staying there and succeeding. There is some good practice, and a real focus on looked-after children in some universities. Two significant charities—Buttle UK, with its quality mark, and the Who Cares? Trust—have done a great deal to encourage universities to focus on looked-after children, but the situation is very patchy.

One of the first problems is that we do not even know how patchy it is, because there is very little data. Colleagues in HE have said to me that because the Higher Education Funding Council does not require any statistics on looked-after children, none are collected. OFFA, the fair access body, again encourages universities to include looked-after children in their access agreement, but does not require it. So we do not know how many looked-after children apply to university, how many go to each university or what their characteristics are. We do not know how they fare when they get to university and whether they complete their courses or disproportionately drop out, like some other vulnerable groups. Nor do we know the kind of employment or destination they go to.

Much of this information is collected for students as a whole, and some of it is disaggregated for other groups—for example, students from minority-ethnic groups and disabled students. But it is not disaggregated for students who come in from a care background, as it is in schools, so we cannot see the outcomes for those students and compare them with those for the rest, and we cannot compare the performance of universities.

Requiring universities to collect and publish data for looked-after students would enable us to see how students from care were doing, and which universities were doing well and which were not. It would be a driver, as it has been for schools and colleges, for steadily improving performance overall. Then, of course, there is the question of the additional support looked-after students are likely to need to go to university, to stay there and to be successful. Amendment 88B is not exhaustive, but it outlines the kinds of support likely to be necessary.

It is time to bring to the higher education sector the same obligations we have placed on schools, colleges and local authorities, and to try to make a real difference to the numbers of looked-after children going to university and coming out successfully. I hope these amendments will stimulate that debate and that the Minister will give full consideration to these issues.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I support what the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, has just said and pay tribute to the work of the Labour Government—their huge investment of funds to improve the education of looked-after children; the change in the law; the introduction of designated teachers; and the reform of the school admissions process, which is so important for these young people.

There has been concern about the success in higher education achieved by young people leaving care. It is also very important to bear in mind that many of these young people mature late. As I have mentioned in the Chamber, Dr Mark Kerr, a care leaver himself, who has done research in this area, found that upwards of a quarter of 25 year-olds in the group he looked at had gone on to higher education. I hope these statistics will provide a means of monitoring how many mature students have been through care, so that we can get a more accurate idea of how successful our efforts are. It has been somewhat demoralising to think that all the effort we have put into the education of looked-after children has not been reflected in higher education attainment, although there has been a significant increase from a very low base. Regarding how we might make best use of our resources, it may be helpful to know how many 25 year-olds who have been in care go on to higher education, for instance.

The noble Baroness referred to the Frank Buttle Trust, which has done such important work in this area, and the Who Cares? Trust. One issue the Frank Buttle Trust has identified is that, where there is someone to champion care leavers at university, one needs to plan carefully for that person’s succession. One can have a very good person in place but when they move on, everything can fall back. Therefore, I hope that can be kept in mind in any guidance arising from this work. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, for tabling these two amendments and look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes. When I was chancellor of a former polytechnic, which became a very successful university, we had a worrying number of undergraduates who left at the end of the first year, or sometimes the second year. We did not know whether or not they had been in care. There was a very good support service at the university which could have been used to help them if they had been identified as needing extra help. These two amendments are very helpful.

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[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 90 in this group, which adds,

“the child’s wishes and feelings”,

to the list of matters that must be included in the local authority Section 31A plan. This is the plan that must be in place before a court can consider whether to make a care order.

There are many issues on which the child may have particular wishes and feelings, such as who is to foster them, where they are to live and what contact they are to have with members of their family and others. The inclusion of the child’s wishes and feelings is vital and should be uncontroversial. The court is required under the welfare checklist to have regard to the ascertainable wishes and feelings of the child concerned, considered in the light of his or her age and understanding. Therefore, placing local authorities under a similar duty will ensure that family judges have access to the information they need to determine what is in the child’s best interests. Local authorities are subject to comparable duties when undertaking child protection inquiries, assessing need and making decisions about a child they are looking after or proposing to look after. Independent reviewing officers are required to ensure that a child who is subject to a care order has been informed—again, in accordance with his or her age or understanding—of the steps he or she can take to challenge the order.

It makes no sense to arrange for children to be assisted in challenging their care order without any parallel requirement that they be encouraged to express their wishes and feelings prior to such an order being made. It is like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. That is the basis of my argument for Amendment 90.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I would like to support Amendment 89. I am grateful to the Government for clarifying the importance they place on long-term foster placements, but this amendment is also welcome. In the Government’s very important drive to secure more adoption placements, the risk is that it might appear to some that they do not value as much the very important role of foster carers who provide long-term placements for children. I welcome this debate and I encourage the Minister and his colleagues to take every opportunity, whenever they talk about the continuity of care that young people who have been traumatised and enter the care system need, to also speak very highly and positively of foster carers who provide long-term foster placements.

[Baroness King of Bow (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 90A, which would place a duty on local authorities and specialist NHS children and young people’s mental health services in England to provide long-term support for adopted children. I thank Adoption UK and the other adoption agencies for the work they have done on this issue. We believe that it is imperative that the Government change the law to give all adoptive families the right to appropriate adoption support when they need it. I have been calling for this for many years, as have all those colleagues who sat on the Lords Select Committee on Adoption Legislation, chaired by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, whom we heard from earlier.

Our 2013 report stated:

“We are concerned that the provision of post-adoption support is often variable and sometimes inadequate. We believe such support is essential to ensuring the stability of adoptive placements, and to increasing the number of adopters coming forward. We therefore recommend a statutory duty on local authorities and other service commissioning bodies to cooperate to ensure the provision of post-adoption support”.

That, essentially, is what the amendment would do in the areas outlined.

This is a very important issue. Most adopted children have experienced abuse or neglect in their early lives, and they require ongoing support. I usually welcome programmes such as the adoption support fund, which the Minister mentioned earlier, but as we know, it is currently dependent on short-term funding arrangements. Given the extreme difficulties adoptive families can face, they need to be given a right to access programmes such as the adoption support fund.

Further supporting evidence from the research report Beyond the Adoption Order: Challenges, Interventions and Adoption Disruption of April 2014 highlights startling findings. We should bear in mind that this was a government-backed report. It found, for example, that the majority of adoptive parents were,

“dissatisfied with the overall response from support agencies”.

It also stated:

“About a quarter of parents described major challenges with children who had multiple and overlapping difficulties”.

Some of the children’s behaviour, such as aggression,

“self-harm, night terrors, soiling, manipulation and control”,

was literally ruining their lives. The report continued:

“Many were struggling to get the right support in place. Parents reported that they were physically and mentally exhausted”.

In some cases, a lack of support led to a breakdown in adoption. The report also stated:

“Respite care was often used as a last ditch attempt to keep the family together”,

and was almost never used “proactively”. I cite one other finding from the research report which is possibly its most shocking—namely, that adoptive parents were forced to use the police “as a support agency”.

I strongly urge the Government to accept the spirit behind Amendment 90A, which places a duty on local authorities and specialist services. We all know that children adopted from care are the most vulnerable in Britain. The neglect and abuse they experience, even in the womb or after birth, does not disappear just because they are adopted. We clearly must do better for these children.

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[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My lords, I believe that the latest Ofsted findings show that siblings are being kept together and placed without undue delay in most circumstances, which is extremely good news. I wonder if the Minister could verify that. Certainly, it was what was said at the presentation of the latest Ofsted report and I greeted the news with some joy. However, it does not mean that I do not support this amendment, because the very fact that Ofsted has to report on this and say how much better it is getting shows that we have had to reach a point of changing practice to make sure that children are able to talk to their brothers and sisters. I am delighted that it seems to be getting better, if that is so, but it does emphasise the need for this proposal. I am the very unlikely founder of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Grandparents—they could not find anybody else—but, as people know, I have brought up children and still find myself with my great-nieces and great-nephews for care, and for all the things that grandparents do.

What I have learned from working in the north of England, where all my family are, is that grandparents up there are mostly caring informally for their grandchildren. It is only when things go seriously wrong that they suddenly find that they are not adequate to care for those grandchildren, because the assessment says that they have to be moved somewhere else. That is where the two parts of this Bill meet, because we are looking for good assessment by a social worker. Of course, the child’s needs must be paramount; you do not leave a child with a grandparent who does not have the ability to care for that child—but surely it is better, if they have made that relationship and the grandparent is fit to care, that they continue. The recent death of Ellie Butler is an example of that.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I welcome this group of amendments, and particularly welcome what the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, said. It is so important to the young people who come to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children, young people in care, care leavers, and their foster carers and social workers, that they are heard by parliamentarians. They often express their regret that not more MPs and parliamentarians are there. I am so very grateful to the noble Baroness for taking such great pains to listen, record and share with the Grand Committee her experience of visiting that meeting. I agree of course with everything that she said.

I flag up one more time the important role that Delma Hughes has played over the past 10 or 15 years in terms of advocacy for sibling contact. As I mentioned before to your Lordships, she entered care and lost contact with her five siblings; she went on to become an art therapist and practised for many years. On recognising about 10 years ago the lack of facilities for facilitating sibling contact, she set up her own charity, Siblings Together, and has organised workshops over many summers and Easters where groups of siblings who would otherwise be separated have come together to enjoy performing in plays and camping together. She has made a big mark in this area. She met with Ed Balls, the former Secretary of State, to advocate on their behalf, and has been a member of the SCIE consultation group on this area. She has really made a big difference, and I pay tribute to her.

It is encouraging to hear what my noble friend Lady Howarth said about the recent Ofsted findings. To enable siblings to stay together, one obviously has to have foster carers with the capacity to offer the larger placements—so congratulations are due all round that some progress is being made.

I can summarise the last two or three amendments by saying that they are about better supporting special guardians, kinship carers and others. The problem is that local authorities are very stretched for resources. If they have no legal obligation to support such families, who are standing in, those families may get very little if any support. Yet those families save the Exchequer huge sums of money each year by caring for many thousands of children. They often do so at their own expense, not being able to do the job that they might otherwise be able to do. They may have to live in a very cramped housing environment because of the extra child they take in. Anything that the Bill can do to make central government more aware of the duty that we owe those families and of the support, or lack of it, is very welcome.

We recently discussed a housing Bill and a welfare reform Bill in which concerns about the helpful role that these special guardians and kinship carers offer was raised. To some degree, their concerns were answered, but we need always to keep our minds on those people. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, argued in earlier amendments for making Secretaries of State bear much more in mind of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, so that we can look, across all departments, at the impact of Bills on children, whether they are welfare or housing Bills. So often those Bills have other priorities, and there is a risk that different departments will not work together to improve the outcomes of children but work against such outcomes. I welcome this group of amendments and look forward to the Minister’s response.

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Moved by

[The Earl of Listowel]

93: After Clause 9, insert the following new Clause—
“Information sharing and notification for looked after children placed out of area
(1) The Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010 are amended as follows.
(2) In regulation 11 (placement decision)—
(a) in paragraph (2)(d)(i) after “authority” insert “, clinical commissioning group (or local health board in Wales) and police force”;
(b) in paragraph (2)(d)(ii) after “plan” insert “and the area clinical commissioning group (or local health board in Wales) and police force have been notified”.
(3) In regulation 13 (notification of placement)—
(a) after paragraph 2(i) insert—
“(j) the area police force for the area in which C is living and, if different, for the area in which C is to be placed.”;
(b) after paragraph 4(b)(ii) insert—
“(iii) the child’s name and date of birth,
(iv) whether the child is—
(a) provided with accommodation under section 20 or 21 of the Children Act 1989, or
(b) subject to a care or supervision order under section 31 of the Children Act 1989,
(v) the contact details for—
(a) the child’s placing authority, and
(b) the independent reviewing officer appointed for the child’s case under section 25A(1) of the Children Act 1989,
(vi) whether the child has a statement of special educational needs and, if so, details of the local authority that maintains the statement,
(vii) a risk assessment, with specific information about the risk of them going missing from the placement.””

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, the amendment would ensure that information is shared and that notifications are made to relevant authorities when a looked-after child is placed out of area. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, referred to the amendment earlier. It concerns the fact that health services, in particular, are losing track of these vulnerable young people when they are placed out of authority.

Currently, there are a variety of different procedures for placing children out of area, which are dependent on distance, the type of placement and the home nation in which a child is placed. There are also different information-sharing requirements, which means that in some areas crucial safeguarding partners are not always aware of vulnerable looked-after children living in their area and any risks that they may face.

As of March 2015, 37% of looked-after children were placed outside their local authority, with 14% being placed more than 20 miles away from their home authority. Sometimes, an out-of-area placement is important in keeping a child or young person safe—for example, where a child is targeted for exploitation in their home area.

Currently, a distant placement—an out-of-area placement that is not in an adjoining local authority—must be approved by the responsible authority’s director of children’s services and all other out-of-area placements must be approved by a nominated officer. I am grateful to the coalition Government for introducing this change, which means that the director of children’s services has to be involved in the process of sending children out of their local authority. Local authorities across England adopt their own notification processes, but a different approach has been taken in Wales, where a national out-of-area notification protocol is in place to ensure consistency.

Children living outside of their local area are more likely to be reported missing or absent: 50% of all looked-after children reported missing or absent are placed out of area. The Children’s Society sees in its practice many examples of the criminal exploitation of young people thus placed. It sees particular difficulties in ensuring an appropriate multi-agency response because of a lack of information sharing and confusion about responsibilities with these children. It is estimated that 60% of suspected child victims of trafficking in local authority care go missing and almost two-thirds of trafficked children are never found. Most victims go missing within one week of being in care, many within 48 hours and often before being fully registered with social services.

Given these significant risks, if information is not shared with partners before the placement is made there may be significant delays in responding to the child if they go missing or are targeted, while the police and other partners try to gather all the information about a child that they need to keep that young person safe. Does the Minister agree that the police and health services are as important as local authorities in making sure that looked-after children placed out of area are appropriately safeguarded? I beg to move.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I added my name to this amendment, and entirely agree with what my noble friend has said so far. I endorse his proposal that the Wales protocol should be adopted in England as well. The number of people they put on the informed list under that protocol is interesting, as it means that most people who are likely to need to know, such as the police, health services and the director of social services, are included.

This reminded me of something that happened when I was Chief Inspector of Prisons, when the chief inspectors of constabulary, the courts services, education, probation and social services were collectively worried about the lack of information flowing around the system. We published a thematic review of what each of our particular responsibilities needed of the others, what was readily available, what was obtainable only with difficulty and what was not obtainable. We presented this to our respective Ministers, who were interested, but the tragedy was that it fell on stony ground because no one Minister was responsible for cross-governmental working to ensure that all this information was shared by those who needed it.

To the categories mentioned by my noble friend, I would just add that of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, who are frequently moved from their port or airport of entry to local authorities all over the country in order to share the burden. We need to know where they are and what is happening to them, so the information mentioned in this amendment needs to be shared by many others—not just the directors of social services but immigration authorities and others covered in the Wales protocol. I recommend that, which is why I support my noble friend’s amendment.

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for this amendment and for raising the very important issue of children being placed at a distance from their home authority.

I recognise that the amendment seeks to improve safeguards and access to services for children placed outside their home authority. I reassure your Lordships that there are already significant safeguards in place that ensure children are placed out of area only when it is in their best interests and, importantly, that appropriate agencies are notified. Most crucially in relation to this amendment, local authorities are already required to notify the host local authority and health services when making out-of-area placements under Regulation 13 of the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010. This also requires the host local authority to be given a copy of their assessment of needs and care plan. Much of the information this amendment seeks to have included in out-of-area placement notifications is already legislated for, because the care plan already contains it or it is in statutory guidance. We have issued guidance that contains a model notification for out-of-area placements to help guide authorities, which includes the key information about the child. Personal education plans should identify any statement of educational needs or any education, health and care plan. Placement plans must include details of how welfare will be promoted and safeguarded.

I note noble Lords’ desire to ensure the police are made aware of children placed in their area and given their care plans so that they can help support these vulnerable children. We have already amended the regulations so the police can access the addresses of children’s homes in their area, enabling them to form positive relationships with children’s homes and to be more aware of children placed from other areas. I again sympathise with the intent behind providing the police with children’s care plans, but these plans contain deeply personal information, and children in care have, as part of previous government consultations, expressed concern about police access to less sensitive information. Children absolutely need to be protected, but this must be balanced with protecting their privacy.

We shall consider the Wales protocol and how it could be helpful to local authorities in England. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, raised the point of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children being placed out of area. They will be looked-after children under the Children Act, and so will be subject to the existing duties placed on local authorities in that Act and under the care planning regulations. The local authority must therefore give notification when a child is placed out of area. In view of the strong safeguards and notification requirements already in place regarding out-of-area placements, I hope that the noble Earl will feel reassured enough to withdraw the amendment.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham for adding his name to this amendment and to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, for his support. I am also grateful to the Minister for his careful reply, which I will examine with care but to a large extent find reassuring. It is good to be reminded of the important steps the Government have taken in recent years to protect children placed out of their local authority area better. He refers to the fact that there is now a duty for police forces to be told of the whereabouts of children’s homes in their area, which is an important step forward.

However, as I think the Minister appreciates, there is still considerable concern about the numbers of children being placed outside their own local authority’s care. In March 2015, 37% were placed outside their local authority. Clearly, these are more vulnerable children, and it might be helpful to look at some examples of good practice to reinforce the improvements the Government have made so far. For instance, the Children’s Society has an example from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority which the Government might wish to look at, and I will send the Minister information on that. I am grateful to him for agreeing to look at the Wales protocol and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 93 withdrawn.

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[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I support this amendment. I will not offer flattery, as the Minister probably knows, but I take him back to the post-legislative scrutiny report of the Select Committee on Adoption Legislation. It is a shame that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, is not in her place, but some of us met a lot of adoptive parents, some of whom were on quite low incomes. They made two points to us very strongly. One was the issue we have already discussed, about the levels of support for adoptive parents, but the second came from people who had been foster parents. They pointed out brutally—but in an amiable sort of way—that the financial disincentive in moving from being a foster parent to an adoptive parent was very high. This seemed to me and other members of that Select Committee pretty bizarre, given that the Government were at that point going hell for leather to promote adoption as the gold standard for permanence.

There is something not quite right here about what we might call the intragovernmental strategy—this applies not just in the Minister’s department—on how we align the financial incentives with the policy objectives. Therefore, the Minister should start to raise some of those issues not just within his own department but across Whitehall.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendment. The noble Baroness speaks so eloquently from her experience and makes a strong case. She takes me back to research that was discussed at the Thomas Coram Research Unit about eight years ago. That unit has carried out comparative research into residential care and foster care in France, Denmark and Germany. It is a long time ago but what stood out for me was that in those continental countries, many more teachers and social workers were recruited into foster care.

Professor Jackson, one of the leading academics on the educational attainment of looked-after children, has raised concerns that many foster carers have themselves had difficult experiences at school. That is another reason why we need to support them very well. The issue of professionalisation comes into this debate. Do we want professional foster carers? My recollection suggests that they are better paid on the continent. That may be why one can recruit from the middle classes there. There is an argument on the other side that we should not pay foster carers a lot of money, as they should be doing this out of love. I have sympathy with that argument as well. However, the very least we can do is to pay them child benefit. I hope that helps the noble Baroness’s argument. I look forward to the Minister’s response, which I am sure will be sympathetic. I hope that we will see some action.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, I support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lady King. Noble Lords recognise when they hear an outstanding contribution. My experience is that such a contribution tends to have three elements. First, it must have a strong and convincing narrative. Secondly, it must be delivered with emotion—but controlled emotion—often based on personal experience. Thirdly, it must be powerfully delivered in a way that carries other noble Lords with it. All those elements were contained in my noble friend’s notable contribution. We are happy to support the amendment. This is indeed an issue to which we will come back on Report if the Minister, as I suspect, is unable to give the answers that are sought today. This is an important issue and it has to be put right.