Relationships and Children’s Well-being

Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this vital debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on securing it and on championing, not only in this debate, but over the years, the importance of supporting the family.

It is extraordinary that the debate is not better attended, but despite the lack of attendance among Opposition Back-Bench Members, with the exception of the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea), we do face an epidemic, as my hon. Friend said, and it has been going on for many years. This epidemic needs the same attention we would give any other epidemic in our country, and it is interesting to reflect on that as we consider how well we are dealing with the scale of the problem.

My hon. Friend paid tribute to the report from the Centre for Social Justice. She mentioned a number of statistics, and one that struck me was that if we carry on in the same way, it is likely that, by the end of the next Parliament, more than half of children taking their GCSEs will come from broken homes. As she said, that is of particular concern as a social justice issue; in low-income households, half of those from the ages of nought to five do not live with both parents. The issue has been highlighted by not only the CSJ, but the recent Good Childhood inquiry, which said that family breakdown and conflict have the biggest adverse impact on children’s well-being.

I welcome the fact that my hon. Friend the Minister, who is with the Department for Work and Pensions, is taking a lead on this issue—quite properly, given the Secretary of State’s long track record on addressing family breakdown. However, it must be said that if our country was facing any other epidemic, Cobra would get together, and the Prime Minister would probably lead the meeting. There would also be a whole set of plans, and a significant amount of money would be thrown in to try to address the problem. I welcome the fact that the lead on addressing this epidemic is being taken by the DWP, but should it not be taken across Government at Cabinet level, as my hon. Friend said?

The Prime Minister has taken a lead—in fact, more than any other Prime Minister—not simply at the beginning of this Parliament, but very much as we get towards the end of it. I attended the speech he gave in August, in which he set out the steps we have taken, which are significant, and what we are doing now. My hon. Friend highlighted those points, but I should also emphasise the significant amount that continues to go into relationship support. That is welcome and important, but in many ways, it is the minimum we need to be doing.

Adoption reform is fantastic; what is happening is significant, and it must be welcomed. The belated introduction of the marriage tax allowance recognises the significance of marriage and helps to support it. The work done in the troubled families programme is also welcome. However, in many ways, that is only the minimum we should be doing to address the tide of family breakdown and instability, which is taking a huge toll on all our communities, but particularly the most deprived.

We should not simply accept that family breakdown is inevitable. We have to look at other countries. Sadly, we top the league of instability and family breakdown. There needs to be a shift, but it is not one that the Government can engineer; there needs to be a cultural shift, which will allow us properly to promote the benefits of marriage and committed relationships.

I do not want to give a commentary; in many ways, we all agree about the problems, the challenges we face, and the good steps the Government have taken. Instead, I want to address three issues. One is fathers. As we all recognise, fathers matter, but 1 million children in Britain today have no significant contact with their father. That is a huge problem and a huge shame. We all accept that fathers matter in family relationships, and we must do more to support fatherhood.

It is interesting that the Minister is here, because we need to do more in two areas. One is the joint registration of births. Schedule 6 to the Welfare Reform Act 2009 provides for the joint registration of births. Mothers are automatically registered, but unmarried fathers are not, and they have to go through a process to get on the birth certificate. I understand that the provisions have not been implemented yet, and they have no doubt been delayed by legitimate concerns about wanting to avoid problematic issues—for example, preventing a violent father from automatically registering and assuming responsibility for the child. However, the legislation does provide for exceptions, and I do not understand why we have not motored on with a decent piece of legislation introduced under the previous Government to ensure that, at the very least, we make it easier for fathers automatically to register. Being registered on the certificate is hugely significant; it says loud and clear that the father, as well as the mother, matters at the very start of the child’s life. Flowing from that, other shifts can take place, in terms of the father’s responsibility and the way in which he can be involved practically. Will the Minister therefore tell us how far we have got with implementing the legislation?

It is also important to look at how registration can happen practically. It does not need to happen at the registry office. Like others, I know the difficulty of getting everyone to the registry office to register. When couples are not married, or there are problems in a relationship, that can be even harder. We therefore need to look actively at registering births at children’s centres. That was recommended by the CSJ, and I ask the Minister to examine whether the Department for Education can look at the benefits. In particular, it has been recommended that we look at our children’s centres as real family hubs, where mothers and fathers can be together to access information and help to support their children. Even if there are problems in relationships, the mother and the father can still be involved in the child’s journey. Children’s centres can operate better as a wider family hub.

The second issue is one that does not always get a mention: grandparents and the extended family. Families come in all shapes and sizes: they go up, down and along in terms of their length, breadth and depth. We should recognise the unsung heroes of families—the 14 million grandparents in Britain today. They range widely in age, and we should not stereotype them. Half are under 65 and one in 10 is aged 50. One in four working families rely on them increasingly for child care. I understand from Grandparents Plus that they contribute some £7.3 billion of child care to society. We need to understand their role. They provide important practical and emotional support for parents, which is particularly needed in crises.

Kinship care is in some ways the poor relation in family policy. The Government have rightly done a lot about adoption, providing rights, support and access to information for adoptive parents. However, grandparents and other kinship carers are not on the same level. I invite the Government to think about how we can go forward on the reform of kinship care. It has such a significant role—particularly, as the Minister will know, when a child, or indeed a parent, has a disability. Grandparents can have an informal or formal role, and their involvement builds social capital within the family, but they also gain a lot of value themselves from being involved in the care of their grandchildren. It helps with their independence, and can avoid huge bills for social care subsequently. Much more active support for their role would be a win-win situation for the grandparents and the children.

In reality, grandparents struggle, particularly in crises. It is thought that up to 300,000 children are being brought up by 200,000 grandparents who carry out the role of family carers. In many instances domestic violence, drug or alcohol addiction, abuse and neglect are involved in the situation, and the only person who can be turned to is a kinship carer. That might be a grandparent, but it could be a sibling or other family member. Such approaches can also be important in crises, such as when there is a bereavement, an imprisonment or a combination of such factors. The reality is that 95% of children living with members of their wider family do not have formal looked-after status within the care process. Without that, kinship carers inevitably do not receive the same rights and benefit entitlements as those who provide formalised care. The evidence is that children do much better where there is a kinship relationship. Stress, anxiety, depression and isolation affect kinship carers immensely, and without the levels of support available to others, that is growing. Kinship carers may be affected by issues to do with housing and the availability of discretionary payments to enable them to cope during crises.

What can be done about the situation? When he gave the speech that I have mentioned, the Prime Minister was asked a question about kinship care and he said:

“You do see sometimes grandparents stepping in and effectively bring up children, and of course under the rules they don’t get quite the same set of rights as others. What you are saying is that if you can extend to adoptive parents things that birth parents have in terms of rights, couldn’t you do that for grandparents?

That is something I am very happy to look at in terms of manifesto, and we have got some Conservative MPs”—

in fact, there are two hon. Members present for the debate who were there at the time—

“who have got some responsibility for giving me ideas on that front, so I am sure they will take note of it.”

I encourage the Minister to take note, and consider the possibility of a local authority duty to consider the wider family before children are taken into care.

The Department for Education came up with good guidance in April, which states that

“the local authority should identify and prioritise suitable family and friends placements, if appropriate…before care proceedings are issued, as it may avoid the need for proceedings.”

That is very welcome; we need to think about how far that is embedded in local authority practice. The Department also said in guidance in April that foster carers should have 20 days’ paid leave for training and meetings, and that included grandparents who look after children. We should, furthermore, consider entitlement to adjustment leave to give kinship carers time to deal with family crises without losing their jobs. If the arrangement becomes permanent, they should be entitled to that leave. We should consider support based on need, not just legal status.

[Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)]

Quite often, when social services step in when families are experiencing breakdown or trouble, instead of looking first to the grandparents, who may have affection for and a relationship with the grandchildren, they look at them suspiciously. Social services should be looking in their direction.

[Mr Burrowes]

Yes, there can be almost a presumption that a child should go into stranger care, rather than family care. That would run counter to many cultures, but sadly such an unwelcome culture shift exists in our society. An attempt is being made to shift things through the guidance, but that shift needs to be embedded in practice.

I shall be interested to hear what the Minister says about kinship care. Campaigners such as Grandparents Plus and the Centre for Social Justice talk about bringing in some equivalent to adoption reform. For example, it was welcome that the Government introduced the passport for adoptive parents, to give them access to continuing support for housing and schooling. If adoptive parents can have it, why cannot kinship carers, who play such an important equivalent role, also have the right to request assessments of need, information on legal status, and support? I should welcome the Minister’s views on that, and on benefit system support to enable kinship carers to care for traumatised children. I understand that the Department for Work and Pensions is progressing that, with the distressed children review, and it will be interesting to see the conclusions.

I want finally to mention mental health. A child’s well-being is wrapped up with their relationship with their parents and family, and the need for a stable, supportive, nurturing relationship is also wrapped up with their mental health needs. Whether the parents—ideally two parents—are around is an issue, but so is the quality of parenting, which affects children’s well-being and emotional and mental development. It may perhaps go without saying that when the parents are in conflict, the anxiety, depression and anti-social behaviour emanating from family relationships can have a direct impact on children. It may not go without saying, perhaps, that family breakdown is strongly associated with poor mental health in adults and children. We need to tackle mental health issues. The Government recently advanced a welcome mental health strategy, but it did not mention how conflicts between parents and in fractured families affect children’s mental health. Perhaps that is a given, but it needs to be explicit, because we need to consider how work can be done with whole families to tackle the causes of problems. The Good Childhood inquiry report has recognised poor parenting as a significant contributory factor in increasing mental health problems.

What can we do? The Government deserve to be applauded for the improving access to psychological therapies programmes, which have been extended, and into which a significant amount of taxpayers’ money has gone. They are focused particularly on cognitive behavioural therapy, which is perhaps the normative response, and which has been expanded. I understand that couples therapy for depression has also been expanded within IAPT programmes. Some have expressed concern to me that when someone goes to their GP with depression, the response does not go beneath things, into the causes of the depression within the family, which could well be family problems.

I understand that only a quarter of IAPT programmes offer couples therapy, and that only 0.62% of IAPT sessions have delivered couples therapy. That seems to be out of kilter with what is happening on the ground. It is only rarely considered as an option. Millions of pounds are going into IAPT, particularly for cognitive behavioural therapies, but it seems to be inappropriate that little is going into couples therapy.

I do not want to take up more time, because colleagues have a lot to contribute, but to return to where we started, we have a huge problem. There has been significant progress, but we must pull all levers of Government, together, to promote a cultural shift and show that we are on the side of families and better relationships, in the interests of children’s well-being.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Hollobone, to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate my good friend and colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on securing this important debate. The subject needs discussion and careful and considerate handling, but it is right to examine how we nurture children’s well-being and what support exists to ensure that children in this country can benefit from the best possible situation when growing up. It is not enough to observe family breakdown and its wide implications for society and then say it is nothing to do with the state because we are frightened to death of seeming to moralise about people’s private choices.

I am here this morning because I believe we should look at the evidence in our society. As my hon. Friends the Members for Congleton and for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) said, the evidence is overwhelming. The Government must look at the evidence, suspend their reticence about getting involved in family circumstances, and act. It is right to acknowledge the Government’s progress. I, too, heard the Prime Minister’s excellent speech in London in August when he set out what the Government have done and his aspiration to go further.

This morning, I want to use my contribution to focus on the importance of children’s relationships with their fathers to amplify some of the points that my colleagues have made.

[Dr McCrea]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that good relationships and respect in society start in the home and in the family? Parental responsibility is essential and cannot be handed over to anyone else, not even the state. However, Government policy must encourage and strengthen the family unit instead of undermining the traditional family unit in society.

[John Glen]

I agree absolutely that we must look at how relationships are formed in the home and recognise that families exist in a wide range of sometimes sad circumstances. We must not be squeamish about being honest about messy situations, but recognise that solid family relationships give children the best platform to develop good and meaningful lives in society.

I want to focus on the importance of children’s relationships with their fathers, especially when fathers cannot live with their children. I believe that fathers’ involvement boosts children’s self-esteem and confidence and that children with good relationships with their fathers are less likely to experience depression or exhibit disruptive behaviour at school. When fathers are actively involved in their children’s care, children are more likely to feel good about themselves, do well at school, avoid trouble and reach their potential.

Several months ago, a lady came to my surgery saying that her relationship with her partner had broken down after they had lived together for 10 years. During that relationship they had brought up their own child and another child who had been born a year before the relationship began. The acrimony of the breakdown of the relationship had led the departing father to arbitrate on which child—they were only a year apart in age—he would want to have contact with. The one who was not his blood relative—the stepchild—wanted to maintain the relationship because the man was the only father figure he had known, but his birth child was more reticent about seeing his father. The impact of the disruption on those children and the arbitrary removal of that father influence would have tragic consequences. That experience typifies many that we hear about in our surgeries and throughout society, and we must respond to it.

It is highly worrying that the Centre for Social Justice has estimated that more than 1 million children have no meaningful contact with their fathers by the end of their childhood. The shocking but quotable statistic that a young person is considerably more likely to have a smartphone than a resident father is a sad indictment of society.

The coalition’s programme for Government promised to encourage shared parenting from the outset and to look at how best to provide greater access rights to non-resident parents, but I would like to highlight three areas where we could do more. First, we should bring into force schedule 6 of the Welfare Reform Act 2009 on joint birth registration, which requires fathers to register themselves on birth certificates. As my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate said, there seems to be some ambiguity about why that has not happened. At present, the law on birth registration signals that fathers are less important to children than their mothers and that less is expected of them. If they are not married, the mother, not the father, is named automatically. Crucially, the mother’s approval is required if the father wants to be named. Obviously, there must be appropriate exemptions, such as when the mother does not know the father’s identity or whereabouts, the father lacks capacity within the meaning of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 or the mother has reason to fear for her safety or that of the child if the father is contacted in relation to the registration of the birth.

If that change was made and the mother wanted the father to be recorded, but that was against the father’s wishes, the mother could identify the father independently. Similarly, a father who wanted to be named but was obstructed by the mother could declare his paternity and have his name recorded against her wishes. Being named on a birth certificate confers parental responsibility and the right to be involved in decisions affecting where the child lives, their education, religion and medical treatment. If fathers are not registered on the birth certificate, that predicts both less involvement in their children’s lives and low or non-payment of child maintenance. Australia achieved a reduction of 20% in mother-only registrations during the 10-year period between 1994 and 2004 by adopting a similar measure.

Secondly, if parents separate, it is often highly beneficial to children if they continue to have a relationship with both parents. Yet it can be incredibly difficult to ensure there are well functioning contact arrangements with children. That can be incredibly painful for children, but it is understandable because parents’ inability to work together rarely repairs itself naturally after they have split up.

At this point, I want to refer to a meeting I had on Saturday in Salisbury, where I gave out some awards to volunteers at Salisbury’s contact centre, and in particular to Liz Sirman, who has spent the last five years managing that contact centre. I said then, as I do now, that it seems we can either say that the glass is half-full or half-empty. We can either say that it is lamentable to have children’s contact centres, where parents’ relationships are so broken that they have to rely on volunteers to arbitrate—one partner delivers the child and goes, and another comes to collect the child, and then there is the same process in reverse—or we can pay tribute to the work of such centres, as they try to rebuild relationships and help those families form better relationships in the interests of the children.

We need to be willing to support families once parents have separated. The Department for Work and Pensions innovation fund has invested significantly in better ways of doing that. Additionally, we need family relationship centres, such as those that have been functioning in Australia for several years. Pioneering centres such as Island Separated Families on the Isle of Wight and the Jersey Centre for Separated Families will shortly be joined by other centres in the midlands and the north-west of England. Their help for separated families could be delivered within the system for family hubs mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton.

Finally, although the contributory principle in child maintenance is indispensable, it should not have the unintended consequence of preventing non-resident parents from playing a meaningful role in their children’s lives. Some low-income parents are being left with too little money to look after their children adequately while they are in their care after paying child maintenance. That is because the current thresholds at which maintenance is paid are fixed at 1998 prices, and there is no self-support reserve in our system, unlike in many other countries.

This is a critical and controversial area, but we have to examine the reality of how these dynamics are working for the poorest in our society. We need to look at making interventions that change those rules to facilitate better dynamics between, and more involvement of, both parents in bringing up a child. I know that the Minister, who is universally seen as one of the most capable and thoughtful individuals in Parliament, will reflect very carefully on these points. I look forward to hearing what he has to say in response today and subsequently by letter, if some of these issues cannot be responded to today, but I urge him to reflect on the spirit and the substance of what has been said this morning. We are here because we can see an epidemic of family breakdown in our society. We are concerned about the life trajectory of those children, and I urge him to do anything that he can to improve that situation, such that those children can look forward to better lives, with both parents involved in their upbringing.