Children and Families Bill

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel]

I rise briefly to support these amendments and to make three points. First, above all, children who have experienced trauma—indeed, all children—need parents who stick with them through their lives. Children who have experienced abuse over periods of time need carers who stick with them over the years and who are reliable and consistent.

Last night, I was at a meeting and met psychiatrists from all over the world who have just published a book on the mental health of looked-after children. The final point in the editor’s chapter in the book was that he encouraged all clinicians always to remember that the most important thing to help these children recover from past trauma is to enable them to have relationships with people who care about them and stick with them. Family relationships—long-term committed relationships—are what they need. If they cannot find that at that particular time in their lives then, as a clinician, you need to equip them to be able to make and keep those kinds of relationships. It seems to me that that is much more likely to happen in these kinship care models than in foster care, although it often happens there too.

Secondly, good social care interventions can make a difference. The most popular intervention that foster carers talk to me about is support to understand how they manage the behaviour of their young people. All young people can, at different times in their lives, be difficult to manage, but young people who have been traumatised, abused or neglected will often display very difficult behaviours. In fact, in 2004 a report from the Office for National Statistics on the mental health of looked-after children highlighted that those in foster care had, I think, a 40% rate of mental disorder compared with, I think, a 5% rate in the general population. The rate for those in residential care was 70% or so. A very high percentage of those mental disorders are conduct disorders, things such as troubling behaviours from young people. Carers need support to understand and manage those behaviours, and they tell me they really appreciate it.

They also need to be connected with other carers with the same experience. When foster carers are helped to connect regularly with other foster carers in the same position and the same job, they value being part of a community of carers and being able to share experience and learn from it.

Finally, I take this opportunity to highlight the letter sent to me by the noble Lord, Lord Nash, regarding the recruitment and retention of child and family social workers. It is key to this area, to trafficked children and to children returning from care. In this brief debate, we have heard examples of poor and variable practice in child and family social work. I know that several noble Lords trained and practised as social workers. It is enormously encouraging that, in recent years, in the previous Government and in this Government, there has been a real commitment to raising the professional status of child and family social work—to raising entry requirements and training standards. In his letter, among several other things, the Minister drew my attention to a review by Sir Martin Narey commissioned by the Government into the initial training of social workers, which is being published in January, and to new data-collecting on social workers on the front line in local authorities, so that we will have a better understanding of how well we are retaining the new social workers that we are recruiting. I draw that to your Lordships’ attention because I think it is important.

I also want to commend the Government for taking this consistent stance towards social work, which in the past has been far too neglected. One of the key ingredients for getting better outcomes for children, whether they are in kinship, foster or other settings, is to get support from the right professionals, and I hope we are moving in that direction now. I strongly support these amendments.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I wanted to speak briefly in support of these amendments. My noble friend Lady Massey has set out the framework and how important it is statistically, but I was sitting as a family magistrate only last week and I thought it might be interesting for the Committee to hear the decisions that we were invited to make as a court. The scenario was of a two year-old boy in a successful fostering arrangement. His uncle had come forward with his wife. They already had three children and they were willing to take on the boy. That would put them in the situation of having four children under the age of six in a two-bedroom flat in London. All parties supported the arrangement that was to be made by the court and the decisions that we were invited to make as a court were to finalise the financial arrangements between the local authority and the carers. There was a bit of brokering and toing and froing on what those payments were to be. As far as I know, they were discretionary but nevertheless they were offered. As I say, it was a bit of a haggle but a figure was agreed for the kinship arrangements to go ahead.

The second decision we were asked to make was whether to put in place a special guardianship order. This was opposed by the local authority but we decided to put it in place in any case, very much for the reasons that my noble friend has said. We believed that it would help the carers to have the support of the local authority for the first 12 months. That was no reflection on their ability to be good parents—in fact, we were sure they would be—but we wanted to help them. So we went against the local authority’s wishes on that particular decision. The other decision we made was to put in place the contact arrangements for the mother. The mother was a recovering drug addict. She was in court and we wished her well. We arranged that she would have contact on a yearly basis and that can be reviewed in due course.

Another issue that we were invited to address was the housing arrangements of this family. As I said, they would have four children in a two-bedroom flat. There was really very little we could do about that other than include a sympathetic paragraph in the judgment, urging local authorities to review their situation sympathetically. Realistically, they were looking at a two or three-year wait for a transfer. Nevertheless, that was something we put in the judgment. The final thing we put in, which we thought about very carefully, were the transfer arrangements. As I said, this particular little boy had been in a successful fostering arrangement where he had blossomed for two years and now he was moving to another arrangement. Obviously, however well-meaning everyone was, it would be a difficult transition arrangement for the boy.

The point that I wanted to make is that all the parties supported this. The local authorities put extra money in and the mother agreed to the arrangement, even though she was losing her boy and the kinship carers would have to take the child on. This is a good solution for all concerned, and if it can be put on a more statutorily substantial footing, I think that that will be to the benefit of all concerned.

[Baroness Northover]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for her amendments, which cover support and services for family and friends carers. I commend her for the motivation behind the amendments.

We fully recognise the valuable contribution made by family and friends in caring for children who cannot live with their parents. We owe them a great deal, as the noble Baroness so eloquently showed. We have heard a great deal about the potential benefits of family and friends carers not only from the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, but from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, and the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby.

I found myself thinking that sometimes women like me are described as the “sandwich generation”. We look after our children and our parents, but if our children then come back and bring their children for us to look after, that perhaps makes us a double-decker sandwich generation. I hope that my children do not do that.

Noble Lords will be aware that family and friends care, or kinship care, covers a wide range of legal arrangements and, where appropriate, as we have heard, assessments are already in place for putting in the appropriate financial or practical supports. The Children and Young Persons Act 2008 amended Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 so that local authorities could provide regular and long-term financial payments to families caring for children where they judged this to be appropriate. This provision, passed under the previous Government and made discretionary, came into force in April 2011.

In order to clarify the role of local authorities, the Government released statutory guidance on family and friends care, and this also came into force in April 2011. It aims to ensure that children and young people receive the support that they and their carers need to safeguard and promote their welfare.

We are aware that family and friends carers often struggle, as we have heard, to obtain information that will assist them in their caring role, particularly when they have taken on the care of a child in an emergency. That is why the family and friends statutory guidance makes it clear that local authorities have a duty to ensure that their family and friends policy supports the promotion of good information about the full range of services for children, young people and families in the area and highlights the availability of advice from independent organisations.

However, we are aware that the quality and quantity of local authority policies in this area are not at the level they should be. That is why we currently have a programme of work to reduce the variation in practice within and across local authorities. This includes sector learning days for local authorities that will support the development of local policies and guidance as well as clarify the primary legislation and how it is being implemented.

I thank the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for commending this Government and the previous Government for their support for the vital social work profession.

It is also very important that family and friends carers understand what support services they are entitled to, so the department will be developing an information resource containing the basic facts, entitlements, services and advice that are available to them. This resource will not only increase the knowledge base of carers but will raise awareness of front-line practitioners, such as GPs, and those in education and childcare settings, who are often the first point of contact for new family and friends carers.