Children and Young People: Local Authority Care

Lord Meston Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, like others, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Laming, for his introduction to this debate, which we all found as powerful as it was accurate.

My contribution is as a family lawyer who has been involved in public law care proceedings for much of my professional life, latterly as a judge in the family court, and as someone who has had to make care orders. In some cases, the outcome is sadly obvious and the process relatively easy, but in many cases the decisions required of the person making them are agonising, particularly when they may involve irrevocable changes for parents and children.

The increase in the number of children subject to care orders is not the result of any changes in the law. Most decisions are governed by the fundamental needs of each child for safety, security, stability and permanence. The courts have to consider all viable options and, particularly since the Human Rights Act, rigorous analysis is expected. Fortunately, this is one of the few areas where parents have automatic entitlement to legal aid, and vitally, the child is independently represented.

The system of children’s social care should, of course, offer support to families well before any crisis is reached and before the courts become involved. The reductions in financial and human resources, not least the curtailment of Sure Start, have meant that it is now often only a crisis that activates the system. Earlier and effective engagement with parents, overcoming their mistrust and gaining the involvement of the wider family in family group conferences are crucial in setting out the expectations of parents and avoiding the need for care proceedings. They must, in the same way, enable exploration of the prospects for kinship care. A recent initiative by the Family Rights Group called “Reimagining pre-proceedings” emphasises the structure and value of preventive work, which can and should be done to head off care proceedings and stabilise the family. That sort of work should be the norm, not the exception, serving to reduce high levels of late intervention.

The system depends on the retention of trained social workers who, as Josh MacAlister wrote in his 2021 report, have to make complex and challenging decisions every day. They require the skills and confidence to provide informed and robust assessments. Parents and children, as well as the courts, need continuity in the allocation of social workers. When, as too often happens, a stressed social worker leaves or moves on, progress can be halted; a familiar face vanishes, making a difficult case more difficult. If that happens after proceedings have started, there will be added pressure on the Cafcass children’s guardian to try to steer the proceedings forward in the right direction.

Not all cases are susceptible to pre-proceedings work. The other demanding category of cases concerns applications for care orders in respect of newborn babies whose mothers have avoided any antenatal care. They slip under the radar, yet 47% of newborns subject to care proceedings are born to mothers who have themselves been subject to such orders. The local authority becomes aware of those mothers only when they arrive in hospital to give birth, when it may have to make urgent applications for an emergency protection or interim care order. Very often that involves mothers who have used drugs during pregnancy; there is nothing more distressing than seeing and hearing a newborn baby who is withdrawing from drugs. If there is no reliable support in the wider family, the local authority has to struggle to find suitable foster care or specialist placements at short notice, then struggles to avoid changes of placement. The costly resort to private providers has been mentioned.

As the President of the Family Division has said, judges are being forced to perform functions that are properly the role of the state. I have stressed the importance of pre-proceedings work, and I wish briefly to point to other work that could and should be done, building on initiatives that deserve more than patchy support. First, more is required to ensure and underpin wide operation of family drugs and alcohol courts. They can divert parents away from conflict with social workers, towards the help and support they need to have a realistic chance of recovering and retaining their children.

Finally, much more is needed to support parents, particularly mothers, after a child has been removed. The saddest statistic is that at least one in four women will return to court having had a previous child removed. Too often they have reacted to the removal with an ill-considered decision to have another baby, with all too often the same consequences. They are truly wretched cases to deal with. Therefore, I certainly hope that the Government can endorse the intensive and expert work being done by the charity Pause to prevent this cycle of removals.