Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Bishop of Manchester Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I am grateful for the Bill as an opportunity to address a number of what we call adverse childhood experiences. I suspect that, given the lateness of the hour, we are not going to reach some of my amendments on care leavers that are scheduled for later. This group, particularly Amendment 171, deals with children who have experienced bereavement. Not much has been said about that in this short debate, so I will say a few words.

I was in that position. My dad died when I was 14, leaving me, my younger brother and my mum. It made my mum the only wage earner in the house at the same time as she was coping with her huge grief at losing her husband at the age of 43. She had two children—boys of 14 and 11, who are not the easiest to cope with. I still do not quite know how we coped. I think I coped by burying it for the next 10 years; my little brother coped by having stomach pains for the next few years. It damaged his education. I sometimes wonder whether having to go through that at that early age led to me feeling that I had a calling to be a pastor; I may have had a silver lining. But there were no bereavement services to turn to and there was nothing to support me.

As the eldest son of the family, I felt I was trying to hold the family together when everybody else was falling apart. I would have so appreciated there being somewhere I could have turned to; some signposting to where I could have looked for something outside the family—for people who were not grieving as I, my mum, my brother, my father’s parents and others were all grieving: somewhere I could have turned to get some support. If the Bill and Amendment 171 can, in a small way, help us create better bereavement services for children so that those who are in the position I was in all those years ago are not left with nowhere to turn, that would be a great thing for us to do.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly support Amendment 172. I do so in preference to Amendment 169, although I see that both are directed to the same wretched problem of successive removals of children and babies from mothers. Quite simply, much more needs to be done to support parents, particularly mothers, after a child has been removed into care, to reduce the risk of a further child being removed from the same mother.

The sad statistics have already been mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, but the fact is that at least one in four women who has already had a child removed will return to court. Too often they have reacted to the removal of their child with an ill-considered or unconsidered decision to have another baby, with all too often the same consequences. These are truly wretched cases for the courts to deal with, particularly if it is impossible for the court to find any real improvement since the previous removal, and particularly if the mother has become mistrustful and finds it difficult to seek and accept help.

As things stand, once the previous proceedings finish, the mother may receive no further attention or support from the local authority until the next pregnancy is made known, by which time it may be too late. The evidence collated and presented by the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory on the frequency and impact of recurrent care proceedings and removals is compelling, if depressing. The Nuffield Observatory points out that services are available in some areas but describes them as “few in number” and “mostly small in scale”. The work done by the specialist charity Pause—already mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett—shows that, with the right work and support, the cycle of recurrent removals can be broken.

The human cost of successive removals, in terms of misery and grief, is all too obvious. The financial cost to local authorities of successive care proceedings leading to fostering and adoption is enormous and, I would suggest, avoidable. When Sir James Munby was president of the Family Division, he encouraged judges to persuade local authorities in their area to adopt the work done by Pause. Many of us tried to do so, but it was not easy, because local authorities were nervous of the cost, thinking only in terms of the current year’s expenditure rather than the potential budgetary benefits in years to come. Accordingly, post-removal support remains unavailable in more than half of local authority areas. That is why primary legislation is needed.

I note that previous attempts in November 2016, similarly presented by the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, were not accepted for reasons that were, I have to say, frankly inadequate. I hope that this Government will do better and accept Amendment 172.