Children and Families Bill

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Timpson]

If the hon. Gentleman bears with me, I will come to that point in a moment, and I will address it head-on. I am not trying to avert his gaze from that issue.

The fostering for adoption clause will require local authorities to consider a fostering for adoption placement as soon as they are considering adoption for a child, but local authorities must make the most appropriate placement available, which may well be a kinship care placement.

The Government recognise the importance of family members in taking care of children who cannot live with their parents, and we are aware that a child brought up by a family member benefits from living with someone they already know and trust, rather than a stranger. We stand by the measures in the existing legislation: the Children Act 1989 requires local authorities to seek first to place children with their wider family, and the Children and Young Persons Act 2008 strengthened that requirement. That is why section 17 was amended in April 2011 to make it easier for local authorities to provide regular and long-term financial payments to families caring for children, where they assess that to be appropriate. That is also why the Department has funded the Family Rights Group by £93,000 a year since 2011 and why it will award it two further years of funding in our voluntary and community sector grants in April to help further the role of family group conferences.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I know that the Minister is very much aware of the issues facing kinship carers—in fact, I think that he was one of the sponsors of the Kinship Carers (Parental Responsibility Agreements) Bill, which I introduced a couple of years ago—but does he acknowledge that the Family Rights Group says that clauses 1 and 6 need to be removed or amended because they place real obstacles in the way of kinship carers? Are the Government looking at that?

[Mr Timpson]

I am aware of the issue the hon. Lady raises. I have just set out the principles that remain in place, and it is worth noting that the concept of fostering for adoption is not new. A number of local authorities already use fostering for adoption very successfully, for example East Sussex county council. That is in no way trying to undermine the principles in law that already exist whereby local authorities must look at potential future placements within the family before considering a placement outside the family, and that will pertain as a consequence.

We also know that black children take, on average, one year longer to be adopted than white children or children of other ethnicity. Again, that is totally unacceptable. As Birmingham city council’s recent report illustrated, potential adoptions are still being blocked by misplaced and misguided efforts to find the perfect ethnic match over and above all other considerations. I want to make it absolutely clear, for the avoidance of any doubt, that we do not intend that ethnicity will never be a consideration. However, ethnicity should not block a placement that is in the best interests of the child and that can provide them with the loving and stable family home they so badly need. The Bill will remove the explicit requirement to have regard to a child’s religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background when matching them with prospective adopters. In doing so, it will ensure quicker and more balanced decision making when matching them for adoption.

As of 31 March 2012, 4,650 children were waiting for an adoptive family. We need more than 600 additional adopters a year just to keep up with the growing number of children waiting. To address the point made by the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), unfortunately we have a situation in which many small local problems are adding up to one big national crisis. There are currently around 180 adoption agencies, including 152 local authorities, each recruiting and assessing an average of 17 adopters a year. Many operate on too small a scale to be efficient and have no incentive to recruit adopters to meet the needs of children outside their area. That system is simply not fit for purpose.

We need to ensure that the national crisis of children waiting for adopters ends, and that it ends as soon as possible. Therefore, we are continuing to work with local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies and have recently provided them with over £150 million to scale up adoption recruitment services and bolster capacity to meet the growing demand for placements. However, if local authorities are unable to develop a sustainable approach, we will be prepared to use the provisions in the Bill that enable the Secretary of State to require some or all local authorities to outsource their adopter recruitment and assessment function to one or more other adoption agencies.

As we discussed a few moments ago, sadly some adoptions break down, with inadequate therapeutic and other forms of support often being a contributory factor, yet we know that properly assessed and well-planned support can help prevent problems that can lead to a placement breaking down. People adopting children need to be confident in the support available, but that has been sadly lacking, with many adopters not even being made aware of their right to request an assessment. So we are placing a duty on local authorities to provide information about the support that is available. We are also introducing personal budgets to give adopters more control over who provides the support and how it is delivered. With appropriate safeguards, the Bill will also widen access to the adoption register so that adopters can take a more active role in identifying children for whom they may be appropriate adoptive parents.

Taken together, the Bill’s measures on adoption will mean more children being adopted more quickly where that is the right thing for them. It will mean adopters having a greater degree of control and support so that they can give those children the best start in life.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

As I indicated in an earlier intervention, I wish to focus on the serious impact that the Bill could have on kinship care arrangements. I hope that the Government will seriously engage with and address concerns raised by groups such as the Family Rights Group, and take the opportunity to amend the Bill in Committee.

Recent research by Bristol university estimates that around 173,200 children are being raised by family members or friends of their parents because their parents cannot look after them. That equates to one in every 77 children in the UK, and in Bristol rises to one in every 59 children. These children have often experienced tragedy or trauma in their life due to the death or imprisonment of a parent, or to a parent’s alcohol or drug misuse or mental health problems. Sometimes, the parent has simply walked out on them and disappeared. Most of those children are being raised by grandparents, but sometimes siblings, aunts and uncles, and even friends and neighbours or a parent’s ex- partner, step in to help. Many of these placements occur when a crisis arises. Children benefit hugely from remaining within their wider family units and with people they know and who love them. That helps them to maintain contact with family members and sometimes, where appropriate, with their parents. Often, it also means they can stay at the same school and keep in touch with their friends.

Roughly half the children who enter kinship care have behavioural and emotional difficulties, but around 80% improve after placement—the same figure as for foster care. Despite the fact that support for family and friends carers is inadequate or non-existent, children in kinship care are as safe as and do as well if not better than children in unconnected foster care in terms of health, school performance and attendance, self-esteem, and social and personal relationships. There is also a marked improvement in emotional and behavioural problems. Family and friends carers are more likely to be highly committed to the children in their care than unrelated foster carers, as well as more likely to match their ethnicity, leading to more stable placements.

Only an estimated 6% of children raised in the care of family and friends are looked-after children. The huge majority live with relatives and friends outside the care system, either with their parents’ agreement or under a residence or special guardianship order granted by the courts. Such arrangements save the state approximately £12 billion, which is what it would cost for the children to go into independent foster care.

I first became interested in this issue when I heard the story of Paul on “Woman’s Hour” a couple of years ago. Paul is now 26 and from the age of 22 has raised his six younger siblings. He had to battle the system for more than a year and see his brothers and sisters taken into care and put into foster homes before the courts accepted that he was the best person to look after them. I was fortunate to meet him in June 2011 when I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill to assist kinship carers, and I was struck by the extraordinary love and determination he has shown towards his younger siblings, and by the sacrifices he had made in his own career and personal freedom to look after them. He was adamant that he had to step up to the plate and that he was the best person to look after his siblings, and so far that has proved to be the case.

Clause 1 states that when a local authority is considering adoption for a child in the care system but is not yet authorised to place them for adoption, it must consider placing that child with a local authority foster carer who is also approved as a prospective adopter. The local authority will no longer be required to give preference to placing the child with their parents or a wider family network. The Family Rights Group has undertaken detailed research into the impact of the proposals on family and friends care, and set out some careful and reasoned amendments that I hope the Government will consider. Clause 1 could apply to any looked-after child, even those in care by agreement with the parents, despite there having been no due legal process by which the threshold for the state to remove a child from their parents and/or place the child for adoption is fully established. In voluntary accommodation and pre-birth cases there will have been no legal proceedings at all, and kinship carers in such circumstances are unlikely to have had legal advice.

The court’s final decision on whether a child should be removed from their family will be pre-empted by the child forming attachments to the prospective adopters. Any court that later considers the case would not be able to resist the status quo argument—that it would be better for the child to stay with the adopters than return to their parents. That problem is further compounded by the lack of any legal duty to work with parents to help them resolve their problems before or after the child is looked after. It has been suggested that the measure might squeeze out potentially suitable family and friends carers because again the status quo argument would militate against moving a child from prospective adopters to a relative’s home.

It is vital that court decisions on whether to remove children permanently are not pre-empted. In addition, the Government’s proposal to limit the time frame for care proceedings to 26 weeks as set out in clause 14 might be imposed at the expense of getting it right for children. I am aware that that aspect of the Government’s changes to adoption has not received a proper airing because so far the debate in the media has been on efforts to reduce the emphasis given to ethnicity, culture and so on when matching a child to an adopter parent. However, given that this Bill makes provision for children to be removed from their families without due legal process being observed, I am slightly surprised that it has not caused more alarm among Government colleagues, who are normally quite exercised by the concept of an overbearing state interfering with people’s lives. I hope that the Government will reconsider clauses 1 and 6, and that they will take the opportunity to introduce amendments set out by the Family Rights Group that could support kinship care arrangements. I hope that such matters are considered in Committee.