Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Lords Chamber

Finally, as the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, said, Amendment 99 in my name calls for the publication of a national offer. It is really important to draw the line here between the national offer and a local offer. The national offer should be a foundation that no care leaver should fall below. That does not mean we might not hope that local areas might be able to do more than that, if they have the resources or the capacity, or if they acknowledge a particular issue, problem or local circumstances. The local offer will vary from the national, but it should not fall below the foundation of the national level that meets the basics that should be available to every care leaver. That is the intention of this amendment.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to the excellent and compelling amendments in this group. In particular, I support Amendments 96 and 107A, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran.

The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, will remember that I spoke at Second Reading of her commendable Private Member’s Bill on mental health professionals, which I think was about 18 months ago. I raised the particular issue of children with complex needs—specifically children mainly in mainstream schooling who are diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome. For a number of years in the other place, I supported Tourettes Action in its research, profile-raising and fundraising. For full transparency, my brother is a professor of cognitive neuropsychology, specialising in human movement studies, which includes Tourette’s.

I do not wish to detain your Lordships’ House in discussing Tourette’s, but I want to make the point that one of the key issues that affects children who have Tourette’s is a lack of collaboration and consistency across schooling, primary care and hospital settings. In other words, often children behave badly in school and are excluded because they are not diagnosed with Tourette’s and do not get the clinical care that they need. That work between the two parts of the state is not happening, and there is a similar issue for children with complex needs in the care system.

Again, all these amendments are excellent, but the specific advantage of my noble friend’s amendments is that they would impose an imperative on the education sector, and specifically the health sector—primary care, hospitals and other clinical settings—to focus on those children leaving care with specific and very important pressing needs.

There are a wide variety of issues that affect young people in that situation, including housing—the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham have focused on those issues—but the advantage of these two amendments is that they would put a focus on primary care in the Bill. Yes, young people are worried about education, skills, training and housing, but probably the most important thing is their health.

On that basis, putting this in the Bill would be a positive move that would encourage different social care agencies and the people who write the statements for those children and young people, such as teachers and so on, to start thinking about what their healthcare pathway will be in addition to other pathways, such as housing, education and skills. For that reason, I support these amendments. I hope that the Minister will look kindly upon all the amendments, but those two in particular.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 100 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, which would insert a new clause aimed at giving all care leavers up to the age of 25 priority status in homelessness legislation. To that extent, it is a subsection of the much broader debate about how we look after care leavers.

The amendment would end a current anomaly in the law, whereby care leavers up to the age of 21 are entitled to priority under the homelessness legislation, if they present as homeless to their local authority, but not those between the age of 21 and 25. It is supported by a range of charities, not least Barnardo’s.

All young people need a safe and stable home in which to start their adult life—and, if you do not have that, it is difficult to access education, employment and health services. As we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, care leavers are more likely to be homeless than non-care leavers. Research by the charity Become shows that they are nine times more likely to become homeless, and that threat does not stop at the age of 21. Again as we heard from the noble Baroness, the numbers of young care leavers presenting as homeless has gone up by 50%.

We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, earlier that non-care leavers are staying at home much longer; the average age at which they leave is now 24, up from 21 a decade ago. Over the years, the legislation has been gradually catching up with that trend, beginning I think with the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000, which recognised that the state or local authorities need to support children beyond the age of 18. Again as we heard earlier, care leavers do not have the same safety net of family to fall back on.

There is a lot in the Bill which I welcome to support care leavers, in particular a recent amendment disapplying intentionality for care leavers, meaning that local authorities, when they have a corporate parenting duty, no longer view care-experienced people under 25 as being intentionally homeless. But the Bill needs to go a little bit further. Under the current legislation, all young care leavers under the age of 21 who present as homeless are deemed to be in priority need, which means that local authorities have an obligation to accommodate them. However, there is no such automatic protection for care leavers between the ages of 21 and 25. Under the current homelessness legislation, they are required to prove that they are vulnerable—something that is not defined in legislation. This means that they have go around getting letters from their GP, for which they may have to pay, and getting other letters from psychiatric services, to prove that they are vulnerable and their corporate parent is under an obligation to support them.

There is also a problem with children who are placed out of area. They are not apparently automatically eligible for the usual care support in the local authority in which they are now living, even if they have been living there for many years, whereas local care leavers have that entitlement. That seems to be an anomaly that the Minister might like to comment on.

Finally, the amendment would bring the homelessness legislation into line with the Children and Social Work Act 2017, which obliges local authorities to continue to provide support up to the age of 25. It will not be a panacea for all the problems facing care leavers, but it will be an important step towards ensuring that, when the worst happens, help is available for a young person who may have few other places they can turn to for help. So I encourage the Government to accept the amendment.