Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Wills Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel]

I will speak to Amendment 47 in this group. Many noble Lords will recognise that adolescence is a difficult time for many young people. Anna Freud, the founder of the Anna Freud Institute, wrote three times on adolescence. Her final paper was entitled Adolescence as a Developmental Disturbance. Adolescence—the transition from childhood to adulthood—can often be a difficult time, but if one is a child in care, has experienced trauma before entering care and then may well have experienced further trauma on entering care—the process of being taken into care is traumatic in itself—one may find oneself with a protracted adolescence. Anna Freud describes the process of adolescence as the detachment of a child from their parent and the gradual process of moving to become an independent adult individual. I paraphrase, but that is roughly how she would describe adolescence.

The important thing to keep in mind here is that adolescence is about the detachment from the parent. The child has a close attachment to the parent; adolescence sunders that relationship. When we talk about continuing support of such young people up to the age of 25 by local authorities, it is very important to recognise that the developmental drive for those young people is to push themselves away from their corporate parent, the local authority, particularly because of their early experience. Just like any other good parent, the corporate parent, the local authority, has to make very clear to their child or young person: “We are here for you. You may not like us—you may hate us or despise us; that is normal for adolescents—but we are still here for you, we still care for you and we still want to see you and support you. We are here for you when you need us”. That is what I hope the amendment covers. It puts more of an onus than the Bill currently does on local authorities to say to those young people: “We want to support you. This is the offer we have for you”, and, for instance, to send Christmas cards and postcards, to do everything in their power to keep in touch and to treat them, in this regard, just as they would younger people aged under 21.

I recall Ashley Williamson, a care leaver I have known for a while. He did not get back into contact with his personal adviser until he was perhaps 20. He was just on the edge of losing the right to a personal adviser, but very fortunately he got back in contact. It made a huge difference to his life, because he and his personal adviser clicked. She supported him to get stable housing for himself. Following that, his life improved and he became a very effective lobbyist in Parliament, coming to parliamentary groups to talk about what needs to be done for care leavers and expressing concerns about the sexual abuse and exploitation of young people in care.

We have heard eloquent words about the treatment of young mothers, in particular, coming out of care. I remind your Lordships that young people and teenagers in care are far more likely to become pregnant than those in the general population. Very sadly, the number of children taken away from young people who have grown up in care is also far higher as a proportion than in the general population. If anything can be done to ensure that the financial environment for those families is as beneficial and supportive as possible, that would be a very good thing, as I hope your Lordships will agree. We need to do all we can to support these families. We know from the statistics that they are highly vulnerable, so the measures described here are very welcome and I hope the Minister can give a positive response.

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, briefly, I support Amendment 74A, to which I have added my name. I draw your Lordships’ attention to my entry in the register of interests about my involvement in a voluntary project for care leavers. I support everything that my noble friend said in support of this group of amendments. As she suggested, I want to put forward a set of arguments in favour of Amendment 74A, which is about the need to acquire better data about outcomes for care leavers.

As I said at Second Reading, delivering the Bill’s undoubted good intentions will be challenging. In particular, it is crucial that the individual circumstances of each young person must be considered if real progress is to be made. As the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said, these young people face all the challenges that all young people face, but the particular challenges from their specific circumstances are especially demanding. Therefore, their problems are unusually difficult and complex and they require tailored help to meet them. If we are to do so, we must overcome all the problems that public services have traditionally found in personalising delivery to the individual.

Adequate data on outcomes will be crucial if we are to use the Bill’s framework to devise effective strategies, but it is simply unavailable at the moment. For example, as I said at Second Reading, it is known that 5% of care leavers are in higher education at the age of 19; we do not know how many of those will graduate; nor do we know how many care leavers enter higher education in later life, although we know that many of them do so when they feel more ready to take advantage of that opportunity. Such data will be crucial if we are to assess the effectiveness of support for those young people. Requiring local authorities to keep in touch with their care leavers until they are at least 25 will, among all its other virtues, enable better data to be compiled about outcomes for them, which is a vital building block for the success of the Bill in the long term. For that reason, and for all the others that we have already heard, I hope the Government will consider the amendment sympathetically.

[Baroness Pinnock]

My Lords, I have listened carefully to the strong case made by the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, for the amendments and agree with much, if not all, of what she said. I repeat, however, that they would place additional duties, and therefore inevitably extra costs, on local authorities. That must be recognised. Can the Minister give the Committee before the end of this stage an estimate of the additional costs imposed on local authorities by the Bill? In response to my earlier point, the Minister claimed that I was asking for additional funding. Actually, I was making a plea for cuts not to be made. A 25% cut in children’s services spending is bound to have a significant impact on what local authorities can do for children in care and care leavers. I make a plea for having not so large a cut in local government funding.

[Lord Wills]

The noble Baroness will understand how sympathetic I am, sitting on this side of the Committee. We have now officially ditched austerity as part of the Tory leadership campaign, so circumstances are clearly different. However, I am also conscious that we are living in very difficult times and there is not likely to be much more money. She makes understandable pleas, but does she accept that a lot of this funding will prevent spending being incurred later? If we cannot support those most vulnerable young people at the most difficult times of their lives, they will run into problems and, sooner or later, that will involve more spending by the state when it would be tragic to have to do so. When she pleads for funding, I ask her to accept that this funding has a prophylactic effect, so the extra demand on resources may not be as severe as she suggests.

[Baroness Pinnock]

When I spoke at Second Reading, I made a plea for the Government to consider shifting money to early intervention and prevention so that we would not have to address issues of looked-after children and care leavers. The idea would be to put effort and funding into family support at an early stage so that children can remain safely with their families and not have to enter the care system. That would be the best outcome for the child and for the state, which is funding children in care. The thrust of my argument is that this is all focused on looked-after children and care leavers. I urge the Government to put the focus on family intervention and prevention of family issues that lead to children going into the care system. The difficulty with that is that we know across the country that children’s centres, which are the focus for early intervention and prevention, are closing. Only at the end of last week, Hampshire County Council made a decision to close all but 11 of its 53 children’s centres. That is the thrust of my argument. I would much rather that we did not have to debate support for care leavers because we had prevented all those children going into care.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I shall speak to the group that includes Amendments 41, 43, 45, 47, 51, retabled as Amendment 74A, Amendment 54 and the proposed new clause in Amendment 98A. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken to them. All these amendments are concerned with the continuing support that care leavers receive.

First, I address Amendments 41, 43 and 45. Clause 2 requires local authorities to publish information about the services that they offer to care leavers, based on an understanding of their individual needs, as well as other services that they offer to help care leavers to prepare for adulthood. In preparing those local offers, local authorities must consult care leavers and relevant representative groups of care leavers, including children in care councils.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, talked about what the local offer should cover. The clause already includes a duty to publish information about services relating to health and well-being, education and training, employment, accommodation and participation in society. That is a non-exclusive list; the local authority may include other matters as it sees fit. Given the work that local authorities will already be undertaking, an additional requirement to assess the services required to meet the needs of care leavers would be overly prescriptive. Rather, these matters will be detailed in the guidance that my department will produce to inform the practical application of the corporate parenting principles, to which I have already referred several times during this debate.

With regard to the national minimum standard proposed in these amendments, the Government’s intention in legislating for the local offer is to raise the bar for services provided to care leavers. We want local authorities to aim much higher than a minimum standard when it comes to what they offer. We want to enable comparisons of the offer between local authorities so that there is upward pressure for them to do more. Ultimately, Ofsted will be the arbiters of how good a local offer is.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, referred to New Belongings. We eagerly await the evaluation results of the New Belongings programme at its dissemination event this Friday. That will inform our thinking. The care leavers strategy will support programmes that empower care leavers to drive change locally, such as New Belongings. I will come back to the noble Baroness on the care leavers fora and the other points that she made. In light of this, I hope noble Lords are sufficiently reassured not to move their amendments.

I now address Amendments 47, 51—retabled as Amendment 74A—and 54, which all concern the support that care leavers receive up to the age of 25. No care leaver will be left to fend for themselves when they reach 21. Through Clause 3, a care leaver aged up to 25 will know of their right to request support, including access to a personal adviser. If a particular service provided under the local offer is appropriate and meets a particular need, of course the young person should be able to access it. That is the purpose of the local offer, and personal advisers are responsible for identifying and co-ordinating the provision of services for the care leaver.

However, mandating a personal adviser for every care leaver, regardless of their wishes, and a requirement to provide such services would be disproportionate. To do so raises several obvious practical issues. Some care leavers want independence at the earliest opportunity and to sever any ties with their corporate parent. Some move away from the area and become hard to trace. Even those still known to the local authority will be in very different circumstances, with different needs and aspirations. Some will value the help of a personal adviser and some will look for guidance and support elsewhere, as my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook said. Often, this will reflect how well the relationship with the personal adviser has worked, how helpful they have been or might be, and their relationships with others.

If we were to impose the support of a personal adviser on every care leaver, there is a real risk that that would divert support from care-leaving teams away from those who really need it. Rather than impose a personal adviser service, it is better to make the personal adviser service optional for those who want it so that resources can be effectively targeted—as is done successfully in Trafford. However, we want to make sure that all those who want the support of a personal adviser can access it.

There are two important issues here. The first is whether and how care leavers are made aware of the offer of support from a personal adviser. I suggest that the obvious place for that is the local offer. The second is whether a care leaver who has lost contact with their personal adviser should be able to resume this if and when they feel the need to do so at a later date. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, referred to an example of this. I can certainly confirm that that would be possible through the existing legislation and Clause 3 for care leavers up to the age of 25. The guidance we are producing will encourage local authorities to carry out this new entitlement clearly, proactively and positively so that care leavers are encouraged to take it up.

We need to set an expectation that local authorities should attempt to remind care leavers of their entitlement to this support so that a young person refusing support at age 22 does not feel that they should be barred from accessing it later. I accept that this is an important point. I should like to reflect further on this in discussion with local authorities and over the next few months before we return on Report.

[Lord Wills]

I understand the force of what the Minister is saying and the Committee will be grateful for his offer to keep looking at these points. Could he also take into account my point about data and the importance of keeping some sort of better check on what happens at least until the age of 25? What he has said so far does not really address that point. Perhaps he could reflect on that and come back to us either with a letter or on Report.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Wills]

52: Clause 3, page 3, line 42, leave out “on request”

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, all the amendments in my name in this group aim to fulfil the ambitions of the Bill by extending support for care leavers. The reasons for most of them were extensively debated at Second Reading, when widespread concern was expressed about the onus being placed on young people to request a personal adviser, and I do not intend to rehearse those arguments now. They seem self-evident. If the Bill is to deliver on its objective of better support for care leavers, the duties under Clause 3 should not be dependent in this way. In response to those concerns, the Minister said at Second Reading:

“This is an extremely good point which I would like to go away and reflect on”.—[Official Report, 14/6/16; col. 1204.]

I hope that he has now done so and will feel able to accept these amendments, which address that point.

I also speak briefly to Amendments 60, 72 and 74 in my name. Amendment 60 provides that all care leavers with a personal adviser should have a full needs assessment to ensure that they receive all the support they need. A young person may seek help from their local authority for a small problem, which can easily be resolved, but may also have more complex problems that only a full needs assessment will identify, so it is important that their needs continue to be monitored throughout their pathway plan and they retain their personal adviser even if the care leaver is referred to external services for their needs to be met. The amendment would secure that.

Amendment 72 is a probing amendment. As the role of the personal adviser is so critical to the content of Part 1—we have already heard noble Lords discuss this at some length and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, earlier talked about the need for them to deliver services of an appropriately professional standard—it is clearly important that there should be clarity about what exactly that role is. The amendment is designed to encourage the Government to make clear whether they have any plans to change the role of the personal adviser and, if so, what they might be.

Finally, Amendment 74 would extend the duty on virtual school heads to care leavers. The creation of this role is a potentially valuable innovation, but those who have left care before their 18th birthday are not covered. Moreover, the role excludes a focus on care leavers over the age of 18, while local authorities have continuing duties to support care leavers in education up to the age of 25. There is clearly a need for better joint working between local authorities and further and higher education providers. The amendment would extend the role to cover further education and higher education providers. I hope that the Government will look sympathetically on all those amendments.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, the Bill as drafted places responsibility on the young person to request advice and support. No one in this Room or reading the Bill would be in any doubt that we are talking about vulnerable young people, so the question has to be asked: what support will be offered so that young people know about all their entitlements; and what systems will be in place to help a child make that request, remembering that many of these children will have literacy difficulties? It is one thing for a young person to turn down advice and support that they have been offered. There are two ways of looking at that if it happens. One is that that the individual does not lack a certain amount of confidence, which is a good thing. The other is that they may not have thought the thing through or may lack the requisite amount of common sense, turning away from what is clearly valuable and important information.

Confidence is a big issue for many children who are leaving—or young people who have recently left—care. That lack of confidence is simply because of their life experiences up to that point. They are moving into a world of their own, taking many important steps in a way not experienced by children fortunate enough to live within a family, who have that family as a safety net after they have left home, should things not go entirely to plan. A young person leaving care may not have been informed that they can ask for advice and support. Even if they have been informed and have had that support, it could depend on how that was done. The young person may not always grasp what is available to them.

The question must be asked: why take that risk? Why leave it up to the young person? Much better surely that the duty falls directly on the local authority, not the person himself or herself. We have to have a sense, as we debate issues like this, that we have a duty of care in terms of framing legislation that affords the maximum amount of support to young people. I think Amendments 52 and 53, to which I am speaking at the moment, do that. I mentioned earlier—as did the Minister—that his department has today published the policy paper entitled, Putting Children First: Our Vision for Children’s Social Care. If that means anything at all, I suggest the Minister should live up to it by accepting Amendments 52 and 53 and making sure that the onus is firmly on the local authority to be proactive rather than reactive.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

I fully understand that; I am sorry if I created some confusion.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to everyone who has taken part in what I thought was a useful short discussion on all the amendments. On the one which has taken up the most time, the question of reversing the onus of requesting continuation of support in this way, I will read and reflect carefully on what the Minister said. I understand that the Bill is full of good intentions and I know that he is personally. I worry, however, that, as other noble Lords have said much more powerfully than I, we are still placing an unrealistic burden on very vulnerable young people who do not suddenly stop being vulnerable when they pass a particular age. At least until 25, many of them will be in very difficult circumstances and not all of them will be capable of making these informed, rational decisions, as the Minister said, however accurately informed they are of their entitlements. I will look at the Hansard record of what he said, but, given the widespread support for a change to this part of the Bill, we may return to it at Report.

My only other comment is about the role of the virtual school head. I thought I heard the Minister say that in many cases, they do not just turn a blind eye but go on being involved. That is precisely the point: it is in many cases, not necessarily in all. Again, I am not altogether reassured by what he said but will read what he said in Hansard and reflect, but we may return to it on Report. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 52 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I very much appreciated the 1992 report of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, Choosing with Care. I have referred to it many times during my career in this House. I find it extremely helpful and illuminating, and in visiting children’s homes, I know how helpful they have found it. There is even something called the Warner interview in which they are instructed to look back over the CV of the applicant to see if there are ever any gaps and probe the applicant on what they were doing in those gaps. It was very influential and important.

I also emphasise what noble Lords have said about the first line manager or supervisor. Recently at a conference, I heard from the chief executive of Frontline, which trains social workers. He produced evidence that where there was an excellent supervisor and manager, even in a poorly functioning local authority, newly qualified social workers could do well and be resilient. Dame Claire Tickell was commissioned to produce a White Paper for social work and she emphasised the need to train first line managers strongly. I welcome what the Minister has said so far about how he sees the Government helping to develop this personal adviser role. I hope that he will also look at their supervision and their first line managers and how those need to be developed.

Finally, on the issue of flexibility versus rigidity, there are strengths to both sides of the argument. I hope that we can find a marriage between the two. My concern is that there are huge burdens on local authorities’ resources at the moment, and unless one is very specific in terms of the personal adviser profession, we may find huge disparity in quality and that our young people may not get delivery of what they need. At the same time, there needs to be flexibility where someone knows that young person and they have a relationship. We want continuity of relationships and we want foster carers, teachers or friends to be supported to be able to deliver that. We want to allow that role to be given to the foster carer or whoever. This issue is complex. This is a helpful debate and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, as we have heard, this is a complex and difficult issue. I have huge sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, the right reverend Prelate, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said about the need for flexibility. These young people are very vulnerable. They have a wide range of needs and they will respond differently to different people. It is not a question of having one professional group that will deal with every young person in the same way. We must be very careful about this because everything that I have learned about this complex subject suggests that one of the most crucial things is stability in the lives of these young people. The more difficult and restricting we make the area in which we can recruit these personal advisers, the more difficult it will be to provide stability, so there is clearly a huge problem here.

Having said that, we should not let all those difficulties dissuade or deflect us from the fundamental importance of what the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has said. There is always a temptation in government—I remember it very well from all my years as the Minister—that when things come complicated and difficult, particularly in such sensitive areas, to push it aside, kick it down the road a little bit and have a review which, in the circumstances, will not necessarily produce anything very valuable. We have heard the experience of all those people with a lot more experience than I have in these matters of how these problems come to light only after the damage has been done.

I urge the Minister to grapple with those difficulties, not lose sight of the importance of what the noble Lord, Lord Warner said, and to produce a substantive response today.

[Lord Nash]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, for his amendment and the points that he, the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, the noble Lord, Lord Storey, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, the noble Lord, Lord Wills, made about the importance of safeguarding young people from predatory adults and the qualifications, training and management of personal advisers. These are of crucial and, in the case of safeguarding, paramount importance, and I will ensure that these points are covered in our review of personal advisers, to which I have already referred in some detail. This will inform what we say on Report, although I recognise the points made by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lord, Lord Wills, about flexibility and stability and will look at the worrying delays to which the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, referred in relation to vetting.

I hope that the noble Lord will accept that I do not want to prejudge the outcome of our review by accepting his amendment now, and I hope that he will therefore consent to withdraw it, but I assure him that I recognise the importance of the points he makes.