Looked-after Children/Social Work Reform

Lucy Allan Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes, in a debate on this very important issue. The voices of children in care are seldom heard and too often their needs are forgotten. When society does take an interest in the needs of children in care, the focus is far more often on their physical needs than on their mental health and emotional needs, which mirrors the way that mental health is generally treated in society, so I am delighted that the Education Committee pursued this inquiry, involved highly respected experts and professionals and brought forward this report and its recommendations.

As the Children and Social Work Bill is currently going through the House of Lords, this is a real opportunity to make substantial change to the lives of the most vulnerable, and I do not want the opportunity to pass us by. I will come on to the Government’s response to the inquiry later, but if the report had not been carried out, I would be more enthusiastic about the setting up of a Government expert working group on the mental health of looked-after children. I gently remind the Minister that the Education Committee has taken evidence from expert witnesses, all of whom are cited in the excellent report. It took a year to get the report to this stage. To start that process all over again by setting up an expert working group, which may well come to similar conclusions, would feel like a reluctance to take meaningful and prompt action.

The mental health and emotional needs of a child in care must be considered as at least as important as any other need that a child in care may face, because, whatever the reason for being in care, these children have suffered the trauma of losing parents, siblings and all that is familiar to them—friends, schools, a sense of belonging, a sense of identity—and may carry with them a stigma or sense of being unwanted or unloved, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) noted. During their time in care, they may have experienced multiple placement breakdowns, which will only intensify the feelings of loss, rejection and instability. There can be no doubt that children in care will need help and emotional support to overcome that trauma and move forward with their lives. They will need tools to overcome the challenges and build resilience to cope with whatever has come their way.

As has already been mentioned, children coming into care receive statutory health assessments, but mental health is not always addressed and certainly not on an equal footing, as the Committee heard in evidence to the inquiry. Sometimes the difficulties that children in care face are put down to challenging behaviour, rather than being defined and addressed as mental health needs.

I used to sit on fostering and adoption panels and often we would sit around discussing and worrying about smoke alarms and stair gates and the physical needs of children being taken into care. There was always a glaring omission. We would ask foster carers about how much exercise they took or how many cigarettes they smoked, but we did not ask them how they would deal with the emotional needs of a child who had experienced trauma and loss. We did not even attempt to discuss a child’s mental health needs or the help and support foster carers would need in order to address those concerns. That happens because mental health needs are less visible, and for that reason, we must not ignore them. There must be recognition that children in care will have a higher risk of developing mental health problems.

Members will know from surgeries that it is hard enough to access CAMHS when there is a devoted parent to fight a child’s corner. If the child is in care, moving around from placement to placement, they are not entitled to access to CAMHS until they have a stable placement. Priority access is therefore even more important. A child cannot get access if they are 16 to 18-years old and not in school, and yet a child in care is less likely to be in school at that age. Children in care and care leavers will seldom have someone to fight their corner. It is the state that has taken the decision to take the child from their family and, having done so, it is for the state to make adequate provision for their needs.

It is not enough just to say that the help is out there. There are difficulties with the availability of mental health provision for all children, including with accessing and navigating the system. Accessing mental health care, asking for help and overcoming stigma is hard enough for any young person, even with a strong, supportive family, and we have to acknowledge that.

The Minister has done much to support young people in care and care leavers, and I am sure that he will have carefully read the report and its recommendations. He will be more familiar than most with the outcomes for care leavers, and I will not rehearse them here, but it is arguable that those poor outcomes are directly connected to the neglected emotional health and wellbeing needs of young people in care, which is why this inquiry is so important.

Young people in care need help to build resilience to overcome the difficulties that they face, rather than being left to develop their own coping mechanisms, which may so often fail them. A key part of our inquiry was listening to the experience of children in care. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) said, we took evidence from care leavers and foster carers, both in Committee and informally. We met young people in residential care settings and heard about their experiences of mental health provision. Their views informed the report, which is why I urge the Minister to take the recommendations seriously. I hope that the findings of the inquiry will generate greater awareness of the mental health needs of young people in care and the development of a stronger cross-departmental approach, with greater accessibility to mental health care provision for our most vulnerable children.

I have read the Government response. I know that the Minister has long been a passionate advocate for children in care and care leavers. In that context, it was a disappointing response, knowing as I do how much he cares about these young people. I say to the Minister: please do not put the report on a shelf and let it be forgotten. I was concerned to hear my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) say that the Munro report had made similar recommendations, which appear to have been put on the shelf and forgotten. The Children and Social Work Bill is a real opportunity to focus on the mental health and emotional needs of children in care. It cannot be an opportunity that we miss. Children in care need every single opportunity to overcome the challenges that they face. I urge the Minister to do all that he can to ensure that prompt action is taken and the report is not just put aside and left to another day.