Children: Looked-after Children

Lord Laming Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Laming]

My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Earl on securing this important debate. His commitment to this subject commands the respect of the whole House. It was a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, who has already made such a helpful contribution to the debate.

I feel sure that on all sides of the House it is recognised that removing a child or young person from the care of their parents is a decision of immense significance. The state has to be careful about exercising such power. Clearly checks and balances must be in place so that the exercise of such authority is reasonable and demonstrably in the best interests of the child.

If the state makes the momentous decision to remove a child from parental care, then at the very least that brings with it the huge responsibility of ensuring that the state is a “good parent”. Sadly, it is all too clear that often that may not be so, yet the state has not only a legal duty but a moral responsibility to ensure the safety, well-being and proper development of each child and young person for whom it becomes a substitute parent. It has a responsibility to ensure that that child or young person has the best opportunity to recover from what has happened in his or her early life and to develop into a fulfilled citizen in our community.

Sadly, the reality is that many of the children coming into the care of a local authority have been let down by the adults in their lives to whom they were entitled to look for care and protection. Instead, they will have experienced chaotic lifestyles, serious neglect or even deliberate harm. The duty of the state is, first, to ensure that these children and young people are provided with a safe place to live that provides a consistent, reliable framework offering a structure to their daily lives. It is from this foundation of that secure framework that it is possible to make an individual assessment of their needs and the beginnings of an individual care plan that will promote their recovery and development.

In the past, most children and young people coming into care had an initial experience in a specialist residential home. These homes generally had skilled and highly regarded staff. Of course, we all know that some establishments turned out to be absolutely ghastly, and appalling things were done to children who were easily exploited and even abused. The haste with which foster care has come to be relied on as the main and, generally, the only way of responding to the needs of children has led to residential care being neglected, downgraded and often regarded as a placement solely of last resort.

In my view, the rush into foster care was influenced, sadly, not by a belief that it was right for every child for most of their time in care but, regrettably, because it was seen as a much cheaper option. Of course, there can be no doubting that our society is deeply indebted to a large number of wonderful foster parents who should rightly be regarded as heroes of the state. That phrase in no way overstates their contribution to our society. They are heroes of the state. However, that is not a justification for the serious neglect of residential care. We need the widest range possible of facilities to meet the needs of these very damaged children and young people. The very best homes provide not only stability but also the staff who are able to begin the important therapeutic work which facilitates the healing process so that a young person can begin to trust adults again, to develop self-confidence and become optimistic about their future.

By 1998 it became evident that some local authorities, particularly inner-city local authorities, were closing all of their children's homes and moving the residents to distant places which offered—guess what?—the cheaper option. In exceptional circumstances, we all know that it may be right to send a child a long distance from their home area and their environment but, sadly, these decisions are seldom taken with the needs of the child or young person in mind, and are almost entirely dictated by the financial cost to the authority. When a placement is hundreds of miles away, who ensures the quality of care that is provided to that young person? Who provides continuing contact with the child? Who can the child or young person turn to when things go wrong in their lives?

My fear is that these placements are often characterised by nothing more than “out of sight, out of mind”. Is it any wonder that many of these young people receive either seriously inadequate or no education? Is it a wonder that they run away? Given so little opportunity for them to develop their potential or to be helped to prepare for adulthood, is it any wonder that so many end up in penal establishments? One of the most chilling comments I have ever read came about when a senior officer concerned with the recent cases in Rochdale was asked how a 14 year-old girl in care was able to be out of the home so late at night being sexually abused. He is reported to have said that for this child, “This was a lifestyle choice”. No vulnerable child in the care of the state should be given the option to be away from the protection of the services designed to promote their well-being.

I hesitate to burden the House with a personal experience, but I am encouraged to do so only because it is of no credit to me, yet the impact on me has endured. I hope it will have an impact on the Minister, who is very well respected in this House. For more than 20 years, I had been responsible in a large local authority for all of the social care services. The announcement that I was leaving the authority to take up another post attracted the attention of the local media. Before I left I attended a well publicised event, which was at a facility for adults with special needs. During the visit, the officer in charge of the day centre told me that there was a young man outside who wanted to meet me. She had invited him in to meet me and offered him tea but he refused. He would not come in so I had to go outside, which I was happy to do. I met a young man in the second half of his teenage years. He told me that he had been in the care of the local authority almost throughout his life; I had been the director of social services throughout his whole life. The few formal letters that he possessed had my name at the top, so before I left the local authority, he wanted to meet me so he could put a face to my name. That young man had spent his entire life in the care of the authority for which I was the chief officer responsible for his services, yet I did not even know that he existed. Nothing has been so powerful in making me realise the burden of responsibility that we have for the care, protection and development of these young people. I was then, and I remain, chastened by that experience because we must never allow these young people, who are our responsibility, to be lost in the system. It happens so easily.

I met a young woman who had been in care and who told me she had been sent to 19 different placements, and that with every placement there came a move to a different school. Is it any wonder that her education had been disrupted? We must take the needs of these young people more seriously than we have done in the past. We know the ingredients of good-quality residential care. We know how to ensure that children and young people in care can have the disruption in their lives minimised by our facilitating continued contact with their wider family, their grandparents, their friends and their school. I urge the Government to set up an independent, comprehensive and robust review of residential childcare services in this country. I believe that nothing less will do. In an earlier report, I ended by saying, “Just do it”. Today, I end with a plea to the Minister, “Please do it”.