Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2025 Commons Chamber

not my words, but those of Caroline, a teacher of 20 years’ experience. As the debate moves to part 2 of the Bill tomorrow, I hope there may be a glimpse of something brighter. However, probably pretty much like her, I remain unconvinced.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I rise to speak to new clauses 43 to 47, standing in my name and those of my hon. Friends. New clause 43 is yet another attempt to put my Healthy Start Bill into law. When I first introduced that Bill, 200,000 eligible pregnant women, babies and infants were missing out on Healthy Start vouchers. That is approximately £58 million going unclaimed from a scheme that is already budgeted for. These vouchers provide financial assistance in the form of a prepaid card to all under-18s who are pregnant, families with babies and children under the age of five, and pregnant women claiming certain benefits. This is to help with the ever-increasing cost of fruit and vegetables, milk formula and vitamins.

Just last year, the child of the north all-party parliamentary group, which I chair, heard evidence that children in the north are more likely to die before reaching their first birthday than those anywhere else in the country. It has been widely reported for some time that, in desperation, parents have resorted to the theft of baby milk and formula or to having to water it down, which is not surprising considering that formula prices are at historically high levels. As it stands, there is a lack of awareness about the scheme, and the application routes are overly complex and varied. The reason so many are missing out on vouchers is that the system operates on an opt-in, not an opt-out model. Auto-enrolment for all those eligible would ensure maximum take-up of this essential nutritional safety net. The Healthy Start scheme was introduced by a Labour Government. The current problems with it are the fault of the last Government’s management of the scheme. It is in this Government’s gift to solve those problems.

New clause 44 relates to improving sibling contact for children in care. The Children Act 1989 requires local authorities to allow a looked-after child reasonable contact with their parents, but there is no parity of provision for a looked-after child’s contact with their siblings or half-siblings. If siblings cannot be placed together, they should have exactly the same rights to contact defined in primary legislation as they do with their parents. The relationships that adults deem to be the most important for children in care are not the same as those that are most important to the children themselves. The Government’s own research acknowledges that maintaining contact with siblings is reported by children to be one of their highest priorities. Having that relationship ripped away causes them anguish on many levels.

Although the Department does not collect statistics on siblings’ contact levels, work by the Family Rights Group has shown that half of all sibling groups in local authority care are split up. Many of those siblings come from neglectful and abusive backgrounds. They state themselves that the only constant, positive, reassuring and enduring relationship is the one they have with their siblings. That is especially the case if they have been abused by their parents. Therefore, it cannot be right that our primary legislation gives more weight to a child’s contact with those who have or may have caused them significant harm than it gives to contact with their siblings, who are totally blameless.

Guidance on sibling contact does exist, but it is sufficiently opaque to be ignored, and it regularly is. We all know in this House that guidance is no substitute for a clear duty. I first raised the issue in 2016. Every Minister who followed—there were a lot of them—promised that the regulations would be amended. To date, they have not been amended; to date, children in care do not have contact with their siblings prioritised. This is robbing them of what they cite as their most important and enduring relationship.

New clause 45 seeks to rectify a clear inconsistency in the law, whereby children in stable foster placements can stay with their foster families until the age of 21, under the terms of the Staying Put arrangements, but similar provisions do not exist for children in residential care. We should not be presiding over a two-tier system, where those in foster care receive more comprehensive support from the state than those in residential care. The Minister knows that children in residential care often have complex needs and require an immense amount of support. That need for support continues when they leave care. One of the factors known to give them a better chance in life is suitable and stable accommodation. Staying close is not enough. Local authorities have a duty to ensure significant accommodation for looked-after children in their area. New clause 45 would introduce a similar duty to ensure sufficient accommodation for all care leavers up to the age of 21, not just those in foster care.

I turn to new clauses 46 and 47. Just as children leaving residential care are treated differently from their peers in foster care, children aged 16 to 17 in residential care are also treated very differently from their younger peers. In 2021, the previous Government introduced provisions through statutory instruments to prohibit unregulated accommodation for children in care aged 15 or under, but not for those aged 16 or 17. Later, in 2023, they introduced what they deemed appropriate standards for supported accommodation for children in care and care leavers. These statutory instruments legitimised and encouraged the increasingly shameful practice of placing children in unregulated, unsafe hostels, bed and breakfasts, shared homes and caravan parks. Some children were even placed in tents on campsites.

All those settings have left them without any support, vulnerable to criminal abusers, drug gangs and sexual exploitation. The changes that followed in 2023 to supported accommodation for children aged 16 and 17 included no requirement to provide these children in care with any care at all, no requirement for qualified staff or managers to be present in their accommodation, and no requirement for independent monthly monitoring of that accommodation. Ofsted is only required, on a three-yearly cycle, to look at a small proportion of these accommodations. They also did not prohibit corporal punishment, as is the case in children’s residential homes, and these changes still allowed putting children into care in caravans, barges and boats or accommodation with vulnerable adults and prison leavers.

As of March 2024, the latest statistics that I have are that up to 50%—nearly 900,000—of 16 and 17-year-olds in care were living in this careless, bleak accommodation. I have said before in this House that 50 children in unregulated accommodation have died, that we know of, the details of which are rightly not fully known or in the public domain, but the children themselves I have spoken to have said they are literally surviving. They are not living, they are not being allowed to prepare for adulthood, they are not in education, and they are not in employment. They are literally surviving hour by hour.

I remain deeply saddened that we did not object to these changes at the time, despite my efforts. Our 16 and 17-year-olds in care have been abandoned for far too long. My new clauses 46 and 47 will give them the support and care that they so desperately need and desperately want—the support and care that the previous Government ripped away from them.

While I have been in this place long enough to know that the Minister is not going to accept all of my new clauses today, I remain ever confident and hopeful that he will work with me and consider these new clauses deeply and carefully as the Bill progresses to the other place and eventually returns back to this Chamber.

[Mr Lee Dillon (Newbury) (LD)]

As the son of a lady from Limerick, may I offer my mum, my wider family and everybody in the House a happy St Patrick’s Day?

I rise to speak in support of two new clauses. New clause 13 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) requests a review of adoption support services offered by local authorities and requires the Government within 12 months of passing the Act to conduct a review of the adequacy and effectiveness of those services. This will give those providing adoption services and those receiving them the comfort to know that they are indeed adequate and hopefully increase the confidence in adoption services and increase the take-up of those offering their homes to children in need.

On the second amendment I wish to speak to, I declare an interest as a member of the all-party parliamentary group on households in temporary accommodation. New clause 14 tabled by the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh) has the support of 35 colleagues from both the Labour and Liberal Democrats Benches. It requires local authorities to notify the child’s school and registered GP practice of a household’s homelessness status.

In this debate, we heard from the hon. Member about the impact of living in temporary accommodation, but this new clause will help in detecting any learning or health outcome issues as a result of living in temporary accommodation—accommodation that the Chair of our Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee has mentioned in this place before as being no longer, sadly, that temporary. It is to be hoped, too, that it will help in learning the lessons of the 74 children who have died in temporary accommodation and that being classed as a contributory factor to their deaths. I commend both these new clauses to the House.