Monday 9th June 2025
(1 year, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberChildren’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 View all Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Amendment Paper: HL Bill 84-III(b) Amendments for Committee (Supplementary to the Third Marshalled List) - (9 Jun 2025)
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, this group of amendments has enabled us to hear a consensus in this House about the enormously difficult, tragic and appalling instances of child sexual abuse over the years, and that it is no longer good enough for us not to take important action to protect children in the most appalling circumstances. That is why this Government are committed to protecting children from harm, including from the horrors of sexual abuse, trafficking and exploitation. Measures included in the Bill and the significant programme of reforms already under way will help to protect children at risk of abuse and stop vulnerable children falling through the cracks in services.
I shall speak to the detail of the amendments. As we have heard, Amendment 66, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, seeks to insert into the Children Act 2004 a mandatory duty to report child sexual abuse. I wholly understand why noble Lords have taken the opportunity today to raise this issue. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, we should take every opportunity to raise it and to emphasise the determination of this House and indeed this Government to take action. We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, alongside the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, about the specific issues relating to sport. We have also heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, the noble Lords, Lord Meston and Lord Bichard, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, about their experience and the pressure they have rightly put on the Government to make progress.
Noble Lords knew that part of my response would be that the Government are already taking forward a new mandatory duty to report child sexual abuse for individuals in England undertaking regulated activity with children, as well as, crucially, a new criminal offence of obstructing an individual from making a report under that duty. This duty is included in the Crime and Policing Bill, which is currently in the other place.
That is the most appropriate route to debate the detail of a mandatory reporting duty, but I have no doubt that colleagues in the other place—and those of my noble friends who will be responsible for taking that Bill through this House—will have listened carefully to the specific points and challenges raised by noble Lords during the course of the debate on this group, and on Amendment 66 in particular. I will draw this debate to their attention because, while we might disagree over the details, we can agree that any new duty must ensure that the words of children who are seeking help are heard and apply the strongest possible measures to anyone who seeks to cover up abuse of this kind.
I will respond to a couple of points on the mandatory duty. On criminal sanctions, there may well be differences, partly because of the sensitive and careful balance here, which the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, identified. The Government have not attached criminal sanctions in the Crime and Policing Bill to a failure to report. However, there will be criminal sanctions for anyone who obstructs an individual from making a report under that duty. This is because millions of people in England take part in regulated activity with children and young people. Many of them will be teachers, nurses, social workers and other qualified professionals, but a significant proportion will be volunteers giving up their time to support, for example, their child’s sports team.
Those volunteers are the lifeblood of many opportunities on offer to our young people. They should comply with the duty, but we do not think it would be proportionate to create a criminal sanction for failure to comply with it. That could create a chilling effect where people are reluctant to volunteer or even enter the professions, because they fear being criminalised for making a mistake. I know that this is a delicate and difficult area and I am sure that it will be subject to further debate when the Crime and Policing Bill comes to this House.
The purpose of mandatory reporting has to be to improve the protection of children. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, emphasised, the aim is to create a culture of support, knowledge and openness when dealing with child sexual abuse. In working through the details of how this mandatory duty works, we must be careful that we do not do the opposite to that. Mandatory reporting will create a culture of openness and honesty, empower professionals and volunteers to take prompt, decisive action to report sexual abuse and demonstrate to children and young people that, if they come forward, they will be heard.
Amendment 69A was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. Given the amount of work we have to get through on the Bill, I thank him for his brief but effective introduction to his amendments. I recognise the importance of safeguarding children from the risk posed by parents who have been convicted of serious offences, including those involving domestic abuse, child abuse and child sexual abuse. Ensuring their safety and well-being must remain at the heart of our family justice system. This amendment seeks to allow the High Court to curtail or remove parental contact where a parent has been convicted of domestic abuse, child abuse or child sexual abuse. It would also require the High Court to publish annual statistics on how many times they have removed or curtailed rights to parental contact.
However, we do not believe that new legislative provision is required, because existing legislation already serves to protect children from the harms associated with abusive parents. This is undoubtedly an issue where the courts should consider enormously carefully the potential damage that could happen to a child through contact with people in the sorts of circumstances that this amendment references. Section 1 of the Children Act 1989 already states that the child’s welfare must be the court’s “paramount consideration” when making a decision relating to a child’s upbringing. That section already includes a list of factors, known as the “welfare checklist”, which the court must take into account when deciding whether to make a child arrangements order for a child to spend time with or otherwise have contact with a person. This already includes considering the likely effect of any change of circumstances on the child and any harm that the child has suffered or is at risk of suffering. It follows that, when determining whether parental contact with a child is appropriate, legislation already gives the court the powers set out in the first subsection of this amendment. The court must already consider any potential risk or harm to the child, and this of course includes the very serious risks associated with domestic abuse, child abuse and sexual abuse.
The noble Lord’s amendment would also require the High Court to publish data on the number of times parental contact is curtailed or removed. Although I understand the call for accountability, it would not in fact be possible for the Ministry of Justice to collate this information without consulting each individual judgment. Of course, many of these judgments will be made in the family court, and therefore it would be very difficult to go through each individual judgment in order to collate the information that the amendment asks for. This is not to undermine the significance of the point being made by the amendment, but I hope that the noble Lord will see that there is already, within the law and in fact within the practice of the courts, the ability to ensure that this protection is available for children.
Amendment 107B was tabled by my noble friend Lord Watson of Invergowrie. It seeks to enable courts to prohibit or enforce specific local authority action where children in local authority care are experiencing or at risk of significant harm. I wholly share my noble friend’s objective here; we recognise the necessity for children and young people to be protected from harm, to have their voices heard and to challenge aspects of their care, especially when they have concerns about their safety. But of course, if a child is at risk of harm, they need swift and responsive action from the professionals around them, not a court process to navigate. The system of children’s social care is purposefully designed to protect and safeguard children, and there are numerous existing mechanisms through which any concerns can be escalated.
That does not mean that there is no room for improvement here, as I will outline. But, for example, there are many professionals who surround children in care, each with a specific duty to promote the child’s best interests. They include social workers, independent reviewing officers and advocates. In children’s homes, they are required to report serious incidents and abuse allegations to Ofsted, which will investigate and, where necessary, has powers to take appropriate action. There are also legal routes to challenge local authority actions where there are serious concerns about misconduct. We are, of course, aware of cases in which children have been harmed while in care, which is completely unacceptable. We know that strong, trusted relationships surrounding the child are key to keeping children safe, which is why we are already taking further action, as I say.
First, we are improving advocacy for children in care by publishing new national standards and statutory guidance for advocacy later this year. Secondly, we are introducing new post-qualifying standards for social workers that clearly set out the need to be agile and timely in adapting plans and intervening to keep children safe. We are creating a new local authority designated officer—LADO—handbook to improve consistency and information sharing across local authority boundaries. We are improving qualifications, standards and access to training for staff in children’s homes to ensure that children are receiving the high quality of care they need. We are in dialogue with the sector, including children and young people, to consider how effectively professionals around the child work seamlessly together.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for the points that she has made. She referenced the update that came out in April, but that does not go far enough to meet recommendation 6 of IICSA, which talks about access to courts. It seems to me that there is an inconsistency between that and what the Home Secretary said in January about implementing all 20 recommendations, if the update is—if I understand my noble friend correctly—as far as the Government are prepared to go in this aspect of it at this stage.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
In relation to recommendation 6, in very big consultation with the sector, the objective of the Government is to deliver on the intention of the recommendation while recognising—this is something that professionals have also raised—that, for the reasons I have outlined, a new legal route here not only is not necessary but would risk making children’s ability to have their voice heard and for the professionals around them to support them less likely to happen. It is the Government’s view that this is a more effective way of delivering the intentions behind recommendation 6.
Between existing safeguarding mechanisms and planned improvements, this Government set a clear expectation that children are safe, their voices are heard and professionals work together to take immediate action in response to issues or concerns. I thank noble Lords for the range of issues that have been raised on this group of amendments. I hope that I have been able to provide some assurances and that noble Lords will feel content not to press their amendments.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am not sure that I entirely agree with the noble Baroness on the spirit of the law. It talks about “trifling”—where the chastisement is of a trivial nature—and, while different parents might interpret that in a different way, the kinds of abuse that were cited in the debate that we have just listened to were not trifling; there was no question that they were trifling.
I will turn now to Amendment 173 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, which seeks to introduce a national strategy to address neglect of children. As we heard the noble Baroness explain—from her own professional experience, she brings great expertise on this matter—neglect is too common a feature in too many children’s lives. I commend her for bringing this to the attention of the Committee, and I would support her assertion that many practitioners lack confidence in how to respond to neglect. The approach set out in the amendment is practical in terms of sharing best practice and supporting both professionals and parents to understand and address neglect. My question to the noble Baroness, and potentially to the Minister, is whether it is wise to try to separate neglect from abuse, since we know that in most cases they will coexist, and therefore I imagine one would want practitioners to go in with their eyes open to both.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My Lords, the Government are putting children at the heart of everything we do. This is evident in the far-reaching child protection and safeguarding measures in the Bill.
The amendments in this group were tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Finlay and Lady Tyler. They relate to the defence of reasonable punishment and what the Government are doing about neglect.
I will speak first to Amendments 67 and 505, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, on removing the defence of reasonable punishment in legislation, which has been the basis of most of the contributions in this group. Let me be completely clear: the Government do not condone violence or abuse of children, and there are laws in place to protect children from this. Violence against children is not only unacceptable but illegal. The Crown Prosecution Service guidance referenced during the course of this debate is very clear that only the mildest form of physical punishment can be used to justify discipline. Child protection agencies and the police treat allegations of abuse very seriously; they will investigate and take appropriate action, including prosecution, where there is evidence of an offence having been committed. Local authorities, police and healthcare professionals have a clear duty to act immediately to protect children if they are concerned that a child is suffering or likely to suffer significant harm.
The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, identified terrible cases that we must all take note of. Much of Part 1 of the Bill aims to address precisely these types of cases. But it is important to emphasise that cases where children have been abused or murdered by their parents—children, in fact, who experienced abuse far short of the terrible cases she identified—even in cases where their parents claimed to have been legally disciplining them, would not be covered by the reasonable punishment defence. To suggest otherwise is simply wrong. I am not convinced that it really was simply a reasonable punishment that led to the terrible outcomes in those cases; I think it was something far more profound, dangerous and worthy of attention—in fact, attention would be legally required.
We have heard that other countries have made these changes. We are looking closely at changes in Scotland and Wales and continue to build our evidence base, but we do not want to take this important decision yet. Wales will publish its report at the end of the year, looking at the impact that the change in legislation has had.
It is important that, in making any decisions, we consider all voices, including those of the child, trusted stakeholders and those who might be disproportionately affected by removing the defence. I certainly accept some of the examples used by noble Lords about the support that there is for removing this defence. I do not think it is quite as straightforward and completely categorically clear as some noble Lords have suggested.
Most parents want what is best for their children and they should be supported. It is right that we protect all children who are at risk of harm, but it is also right that we do not intervene in family life when children are safe, loved and well supported. This is why I agree with noble Lords who identified the need to find more positive ways to parent. I do not think that most parents who resorted at some point or another to a smack feel that that is the most positive way they could parent their children.
That is why we are rolling out national reforms to multi-agency family help and child protection—backed, as we have said previously, by over £500 million of funding—and, importantly, providing parenting support in 75 local authorities through family hubs. Parenting is difficult. Any of us who has done it understands the challenges of choosing the right ways to promote the positive development of our children. The recent publication of our practice guide for parenting services for parents of zero to 10 year-olds is a positive way to help parents identify how to do that very difficult job most effectively.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
I warmly welcome the Minister’s remarks, because at the heart of this debate there seems to be a mischaracterisation and misunderstanding of Section 58 of the Children Act 2004 and a conflation of mild admonition with assault by beating, which obviously should be subject to the full force of the law. For the avoidance of doubt, and just to sum up, would she agree with the words of her colleague the Minister of State, Catherine McKinnell:
“As the law stands, quite frankly, any suggestion that reasonable punishment could be used as a defence to serious harm to a child, or indeed death, as has been asserted, is completely wrong and frankly absurd”?—[Official Report, Commons, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee, 6/2/25; col. 464.]
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I hope I did make that clear earlier, but I am very happy to reiterate. It would be wholly wrong. It would not be in line with the law for the types of cases that we have heard about in this debate to be subject to the defence of reasonable punishment. The Crown Prosecution Service has been clear, as professionals are clear, that that would get nowhere near to this defence. I know that noble Lords will be disappointed, with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, with the response of the Government, but I think it is a reasonable recognition of the very strong action taken when children are subject to violence and the need to learn from those who have recently changed the law. That is a sensible and appropriate way to go forward in this case.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, I am most grateful to all those who have who have spoken in support of this amendment. I am slightly disappointed that it leapt straight into the court end of things. I did not recognise being categorised, as was said, as an activist parent. I am not an activist parent, and those who have spoken are not activist parents.
One of the problems—and that is why I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister of Burtersett, Lady Whitaker and Lady Benjamin, who have been with me on this journey for such a long time—is that violence and assault against children happens insidiously. Children learn that this is the way to get control over other people, and it escalates. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, parents lose it. When they have lost it, it is often associated with alcohol, drugs or other stresses in the home. They do not deliberately set out to beat up the child; it just escalates, and it becomes more and more common.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, for pointing out the change in the constitution in Germany towards children and to the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, for his extensive experience with children. I think his experience may mirror mine. When I was doing paediatrics and admitting children, I was told, “Oh no, I just smacked them and they fell over”. When we investigated further, we found multiple fractures: old fractures, new fractures, all kinds of injuries that nobody had noticed before because they thought this had just been a gentle smack. I have yet to find a family who declare that they are wilfully not a loving family, but loads of families declare they are loving families and they clearly are not, and they have many problems.
The emphasis on positive parenting is certainly a theme from this Government. It has been a theme from the Government in Wales. It is terribly important. The last thing that I will say is that I have seen this at first hand with one family where the father certainly smacked his children remarkably often—and when he had had a drink, it was even more often. When he was told by the others in the family, “You can’t do that any more, you’ve got to stop”, his behaviour changed. Interestingly, the children’s behaviour improved dramatically. They went from being quite disturbed and disruptive to being quite well behaved, because of the positive parenting that went with being told why what they were doing was not good rather than just receiving a clout. That is what we are trying to do. The defence is used at the end of the road. For somebody seeing a child who is told “Oh, that was just reasonable punishment”, it is very difficult to unscramble it in the school or the GP surgery as you cannot do a bone scan. You have to take things at face value.
I shall just comment on the issue of skin colour. You do not see bruises nearly as easily in highly pigmented skin. That is just a fact. I advise noble Lords to look at a textbook of dermatology. All these things were written based on white skin, and they have finally woken up to the fact that in pigmented skin all kinds of things look different, and that includes injury and so-called “superficial injury”. So to say that you must not leave a mark does not hold water in a country where we have people from all over and a wonderful richness there.
So for the moment, I will withdraw the amendment, but I am very tempted to come back to it later, because I am not convinced by what I have heard today from the Government, and I feel much more convinced by my home country of Wales and my other home country of Scotland. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 169 and 172 in my name and to comment on the other amendments in this group. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and my noble friend Lord Farmer for their support on Amendment 169, and the noble Lords, Lord Hampton and Lord Meston, for their support on Amendment 172. As has been noted, they seek to do similar things.
Amendment 169 is a narrower version, focusing on support for mothers who have had a baby removed into care at birth. Like the noble Lord, Lord Meston, I prefer Amendment 172, which is broader and would create an obligation for local authorities to offer an evidence-based programme, such as the Pause programme, to mothers who have had a child removed from their care and who, as we have heard, very often immediately get pregnant again. From a human point of view, one can absolutely understand why, after all the attention that they may have received from children’s services prior to the child being removed and then the deafening silence that surrounds them once the child is gone. Very often, that void is filled by another pregnancy. I prefer Amendment 172 because it is a real issue and is broader, but the evidence for Amendment 169 is crystal clear. Almost half of newborns subject to care proceedings are born to mothers who had previously had a child—an older sibling to the newborn—removed through those proceedings. The near inevitability of that seems very powerful.
I am not sure whether it is on my register of interest, but I did a period of volunteering for Pause before I joined your Lordships’ House, so I have seen the quality of its work first hand. Since 2013, over 2,000 women have completed the Pause programme who, prior to working with Pause, collectively had had more than 6,200 children removed from their care—that is just over three children per woman. This is not a competition for how many children a woman has had removed, but Pause was founded by a social worker, Sophie Humphreys, and a district judge, Nick Crichton, after they worked together on a case where a 14th child was removed from the same woman. It is grounded very much in the experience of women.
I suggest to the Minister that this amendment is similar in spirit to Clause 1, which puts family group decision-making processes on a statutory footing, in the sense that some local authorities offer these programmes and some do not. The delivery is inconsistent and patchy and, as the noble Lord, Lord Meston, said, the funding for it is not always available. Also in the spirit of the Bill, which seeks to support those in the care system, we know that 40% of women who have taken part in the Pause programmes were themselves in care.
The Minister will know that the DfE’s own evaluation of this work saw significantly improved outcomes for mothers, reduced rates of infant care entry and very significant savings to children’s social care, with the department’s evaluation suggesting that every £1 spent on the Pause programme resulted in a saving to children’s social care of £4.50 over four years and £7.61—that seems remarkably accurate—over 18 years. I am not sure whether that is the net present value of £7.61, but anyway—that is a 7:1 return. From the point of view of the mother and the children, and from the financial perspective, these amendments deserve the Minister’s serious attention.
More broadly, this group has been focused on the important subject of support for families, both at a relatively early stage and at crisis points, such as when a child is removed into care. The purpose behind Amendment 68, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and my noble friend Lord Farmer, is to ensure that there is universal provision of family support services. There is no question that such services are valued by the families who use them and can make a great difference to the lives of children and to their parents. We support the spirit of the amendment, which keeps universal services separate from those that are voluntary but targeted to more vulnerable families, as the noble Baroness knows from our earlier debates on Clause 3.
Amendments 68A and 68B seek to introduce the concept of earned autonomy for family support services, which is again something that we are very sympathetic to. I have the greatest respect for my noble friend Lord Farmer for his extensive work in this area, particularly in relation to family hubs. I look forward to hearing what the Minister might say about the expansion of family hubs, which the Government have described as
“a non-stigmatising gateway to targeted whole-family support”.
In normal-speak, I think that is a good thing.
Amendment 167, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, would require local authorities to report annually on early intervention services for children and families in their area. As the noble Baroness acknowledged, local authorities have annual reporting requirements, including in relation to their multi-agency safeguarding work. As I understand it, this amendment would make that more explicit in relation to early help. I just wondered whether this would not naturally fit as an update to the Working Together to Safeguard Children statutory guidance, as opposed to being in the Bill.
It is hard to argue with the spirit of Amendment 171, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. I was sad to hear of her loss and that of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester. I am sure that, across the Committee, we are very grateful to those charities that offer great support to children, and their families, who have been bereaved. When I was in the department, I remember meeting the team at the Ruth Strauss Foundation—indeed, I went on to recommend it to extended family members, who benefited from its support. In some cases, when perhaps a parent has cancer, the death can be anticipated and support can happen pre bereavement as well as post bereavement, if the family wishes, but in other cases, such as cases of domestic homicide, the child in effect loses both parents—one parent has been killed and the other parent is in prison. Effective support in all these cases is to be encouraged. If accepted, this amendment would make the task of finding the right support so much easier for bereaved or soon-to-be-bereaved children.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for highlighting in this debate very important issues aimed at ensuring that children and families can get the support that they need at the right time. That is an enormously important theme of the Government’s reforms to children’s social care. In doing that, we are already taking forward recommendations from the independent review of children’s social care, mentioned by several people today, particularly the aim to rebalance the children’s social care system towards earlier intervention and supporting more children to stay safely with their families.
I shall speak first to Amendment 68, in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, which raises the important issue of family support services. I appreciate the noble Lords’ intention with this amendment and confirm that the Government are already investing in the provision of family support nationally. I also accept the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, that there is a need to ensure that there is that investment. The noble Baroness outlined the fall in investment since 2010; for example, in the Sure Start programme. It took me back to one of the very last interventions that I made in the other place before I came starkly up against the electorate in 2010. I expressed concern that a different Government might not continue to support the development of family support services and Sure Start in a way in which that Government had. There was heckling and jeering, as tends to be more the case at the other end of the building than here, but I am afraid that what we saw in the intervening years was a reduction in support for precisely the sort of services that noble Lords today are, quite rightly, pushing the Government to ensure that we both develop and fund. That is why, as we have frequently referenced—I do so again—that this Government have provided over £500 million to local authorities to roll out the national Families First Partnership programme, which aims to prioritise earlier intervention and ensure that families can access the right support sooner.
To turn to some of the more detailed points, I note the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, regarding earned autonomy status for local authorities to not follow prescriptive criteria in determining the services to be delivered. This is a challenge: how do we enable local authorities to have the autonomy to build and link the services in a way that makes sense to them in their circumstances, while also ensuring that additional investment placed into preventive services is spent on that? I have considerable sympathy for the idea that there needs to be that flexibility. That is why the Government are not mandating the delivery of specific family support services by any local authorities through the programme. They all have flexibility to respond to need in their areas, taking account of available resources, and they are supported in thinking about what might be appropriate and what would work best by reference, for example, to the programme guide that the Government have issued and the work of foundations that are developing information about what is most effective and working well. It is of course important, as I say, that we are clear that the additional money allocated for this work is spent on it. Grant funding is therefore ring-fenced to ensure that it is spent on a range of preventive services. Within that ring-fence, there should be—and there is—flexibility for local authorities to think about the nature and combination of the services that they are providing.
Before I move on, I want to respond to the point that the noble Lord made not only about flexibility, as we have talked about, but about combining funding pots. It is an important point. While local authorities funded through the family hubs and Start for Life programme have the flexibility, as I have said, to tailor services to meet programme expectations and address local needs, combining funding is also an important bit of that flexibility. Many local authorities are combining funding with other funding sources to enhance support for families. It is important that they are enabled to do that, notwithstanding the accountability point that I have made.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I would be grateful if the Minister would agree to go back and talk to her ministerial colleagues about this again. She is absolutely right that some of the effective targeted help and Section 17 types of help that she was talking about, set out in the Families First pathfinders, can be useful to some families, but these cases where a woman has already had multiple removals do not typically fit into that bracket; they go straight to care proceedings. The case load, if I remember rightly, is that each full-time Pause practitioner works with three women, so it is super-intensive and I think is complementary to this. I would just be grateful if she did not close the door on that as an option, particularly as I know that her noble friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, previously put this down as an amendment—I feel strengthened in that knowledge.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I have been persuaded in the course of this debate about the significance of this issue. I had some experience in previous work that I did in children’s social care about this, so I will certainly undertake to go back and talk to my colleagues about some more specificity around the particular requirements in these cases. Perhaps I can return to the noble Baroness with a bit more detail about that.
Amendment 171 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, seeks to establish a duty on local authorities to improve access to bereavement support services for children. Like others, I recognise and respect the noble Baroness for talking about her own experience of bereavement, as we also heard from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, identifying the enormous pressure that falls on families and particularly other children at the point at which they are bereaved. It is for this reason that the Government continue to consider how to improve access to existing bereavement support. There is a cross-government bereavement group, chaired by the Department of Health and Social Care and attended by officials from the Department for Education, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Home Office, continuing to look at how we can improve access to support.
Following discussion by this group of opportunities to improve signposting of support—and as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester said, I would have appreciated being signposted to some support outside the family—we have recently added links to bereavement support specifically for children and young people on GOV.UK. Schools increasingly talk to their pupils about mental health and where to access further support, both as part of the curriculum and through their wider pastoral duties. The relationships and sex education statutory guidance specifies that teachers should be aware of common adverse childhood experiences, including bereavement. I hope that, bringing those things together, we are enabling an improvement in the support that we provide for children who have suffered bereavement. I hope that this, along with the continued investment in services for children and family support, reassures noble Lords that we are taking action on that.
In all these areas, I hope that I have provided, after a useful and important debate, some reassurance about the acceptance by the Government of all the issues identified during the course of the debate, but also about the action that the Government are taking to commit to and invest in improving outcomes for children and their families through effective support services. I hope that noble Lords will feel able not to press these amendments, but I will certainly come back on the specific points and reflect on the case made in what I think has been a very important and helpful group of amendments.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I will speak very briefly to this group of amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, again reminded the Committee that vulnerable children in the care of a local authority do not always receive the care that they deserve. We should never lose sight that that should be our goal. My noble friend Lady Spielman put it very well in her remarks and I will pick up on what she said. Local authorities understand their duties in this area. The noble Lord himself cited some of the legislation and guidance on the spirit of their responsibilities. The question, as ever, is around implementation, and I share my noble friend’s concerns about adding yet another duty to local authorities.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak to the single amendment in this group, Amendment 69AB, in the name of my noble friend Lord Watson of Invergowrie. I reflect the concern that has been expressed about the care and support that some of the most vulnerable children receive. The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, acknowledged that too many children have been let down over the years, and I believe that this Bill is a real opportunity to set things on a more constructive path.
I recognise that the amendment has been tabled to add a legislative requirement to ensure that the nature and level of parental care that families strive to provide for their own children is provided by local authorities for looked-after children. A local authority is a corporate parent in two senses: first, it has corporate parenting duties; and, secondly, it stands in the parents’ shoes, having parental responsibility for the children in its care.
As I said, I wholeheartedly agree with the amendment’s goal, and we want to ensure that our looked-after children received the highest possible quality support. However, existing legislative and regulatory frameworks mean that local authorities should already care for looked-after children as good parents would. Sections 22 and 22A of the Children Act 1989 already set out the duties owed by a local authority to any child who is looked after by it. These include duties to provide accommodation for the child, to safeguard and promote their welfare, to promote their educational achievement and to help them access a range of services. I notice that the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, is giving me a look, but I did check that that is indeed the case.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, briefly, I lend my support to these amendments, particularly Amendments 103, 104 and 146 in the name of my noble friend Lord Storey. As we have heard, it has been a very interesting group about the role that kinship care is playing. Okay, the number is somewhere between 100,000 and 142,000 or 153,000: it is an awful lot of children who, because they are in kinship care, are not going into the care system, with all the costs that we know that can bring with it. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson, said in her very interesting and insightful contribution, kinship carers are often doing this at great sacrifice to themselves. Very often—most times—they are doing it out of love, but they are stepping up at a time of crisis to provide that love and care to children who would otherwise be in the care system.
I just want to underline the point that the period when the child moves in can be incredibly difficult and require a lot of support. Often the kinship carer, who would not have planned to have taken on parental responsibilities for one or more children, would have to spend time attending meetings with children’s services, be involved in court proceedings, maybe find a nursery, make arrangements with the children’s school, the GP or whatever. The list just goes on. They are all things that tend to need to be done during the day, during working hours, and they all take time and money, which is why I feel that a kinship care allowance and extending the pupil premium is so important and, most particularly, an entitlement for an individual to be absent from work on care leave at the moment when those arrangements are being set up is critical.
When I was looking at the very helpful briefing that I have been sent, I was reminded that a right to paid employment leave for kinship carers was recommended by the cross-party Parliamentary Taskforce on Kinship Care, the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, which we have heard about this afternoon, and indeed by the House of Lords Select Committee doing post-legislative scrutiny on the Children and Families Act, which I actually chaired. I remember that we came forward with that recommendation, and I think it is incredibly important that we take this opportunity to do something about it.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I start by saying how touched I am, and I really want to welcome the comments that have been made about kinship care in the Chamber this evening. It is such an important area, and I think we all have to put our hand on our heart and say that it is a set of relationships that has not been given its due recognition. The noble Lord, Lord Russell, talked about areas of good practice. I think we could all add areas where we know that places are getting it right. The noble Baronesses, Lady Sanderson and Lady O’Neill, talked about the general background and trying to imagine the situation when you know that a family member is getting into difficulties. As they quite rightly say, this becomes a moment of crisis when the risk to the children we are talking about is at its absolute highest.
The recognition of the importance of focusing on the outcomes for children and young people is to be welcomed and needs to be at the forefront of everything that we do. From a local authority perspective, we know that too many children are going into care. As we have heard tonight, this can have a detrimental effect on their prospects and outcomes over a long period. It also has an enormous impact on the budgets of councils, in particular where money could be invested into setting up more support networks in this area.
We are talking about supporting children to stay within their family and friend network, where that is safe and right for them. This is a priority for this Government. There is a general recognition that the support that kinship families have received to date has not been sufficient. We are working hard to address this. It is quite extraordinary that, until now, there has been no legal definition of kinship care. Changing that is something that we can all come together to welcome. As we have heard, access to information for the families involved can be a postcode lottery. Clause 5 is a significant step towards ensuring greater parity in information on the support that is available to kinship carers by requiring local authorities to publish a kinship offer.
Amendment 69B, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, and supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, seeks to ensure that information on support for kinship families, and not just children and carers, is included in the duty to publish a kinship local offer. I reassure the noble Earl that there is mention in the Bill of a review. New Section 22H(7), to be inserted by Clause 5, states that local authorities “must review” and keep up to date their kinship information. We agree that a whole-family approach is absolutely vital, but amending Clause 5 as proposed is not necessary. The list of information about services that can be included in a kinship local offer under Clause 5 is non-exhaustive. This has been done for a reason, and it already includes services relating to relationships which will assist kinship families more broadly.
The kinship care statutory guidance states that local authorities should empower families by prioritising family-led solutions, working collaboratively with family networks to support parents or carers to make and sustain positive changes, leading, we hope, to de-escalation of need or no further involvement with statutory services. Local authorities should engage with family networks, from early help and at every point through the children’s social care system, as set out in Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023.
There are other policies dedicated to families in need of support, which we have heard about already this evening, such as the family help programme, which aims to improve children’s outcomes and respond to needs and the circumstances of the family as early as possible to enable children to thrive and families to remain together. With a stress on family help, multi-agency child protection family group decision-making reforms are being rolled out across England through the Families First Partnership programme, with over £500 million of direct funding for preventive support for children and families.
Amendment 70, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, is on the categories of information listed under Clause 5. We agree that it is important that a kinship local offer should encompass information about the full range of support that is available in the local area. However, amending Clause 5 as proposed is not necessary, for the reasons that I have outlined. Clause 1 already sets out that family group decision-making will be offered, so to add it here would be unnecessary. As I have mentioned before, the listed categories of information about services for the kinship local offer are non-exhaustive and broad, meaning that local authorities can respond to their local strengths and local circumstances, and bring in services available in their area.
The kinship care statutory guidance sets out the expectation that a kinship local offer should set out the legal support that may be available to kinship carers and potential kinship carers, including the eligibility and extent of that support. This involves local relationships—the power of place—and health providers working with local authorities, bringing together all the possible solutions to a particular situation. As the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, has suggested, practical emotional support is absolutely key. We know that there is more work to be done. We need to look at the areas that are doing it well, learn from their experience, and make sure that it is taken up and expanded in every local authority area around the country.
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
I welcome an awful lot of what the Minister said and what His Majesty’s Government are trying to do. My heart sank slightly when I heard the piece about relying on statutory guidance, which was obviously written for her beforehand. I have worked very closely on a variety of Bills over the past four or five years with the Children’s Commissioner, the Victims’ Commissioner and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner. If the Minister were to sit down with each or all of them and ask them about the experience they had of overreliance on statutory guidance, she would get some very mixed messages.
Statutory guidance is effective only if the degree to which it is complied with is monitored; it is of no use whatever if the organisations that are meant to carry it out know that nobody is looking over their shoulder or calling them to book if they do not comply. This again comes back to the variation in practice across the country. So I ask the Minister, her colleagues and the department to talk to some of those commissioners, to understand the historical and the live experience they have in dealing with some of the statutory guidance we have put into some of the legislation that has come through the House in the past three or four years, to see how effective it is and what we can learn from it.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his contribution and reassure him that I was not just reading out a script. I have put a lot of thought into this. I have been in the place of delivering on this agenda, so I do have the experience.
We have to be careful that we are not too prescriptive at every level, because that can absolutely confound and take up more resource. But I do acknowledge that statutory guidance has to be adhered to, monitored and dealt with with the same seriousness across the piece and, where it has not been adhered to, it has to be called out. The most important thing that all of us can do is make sure that there is an awareness of the rights and responsibilities of the different organisations involved and that they live up to them and, as we have said all the way through, put the needs of some of the most vulnerable children in our communities at the heart of everything we do.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who made valuable contributions to this group. The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, talked about improving the visibility of kinship care, and he is absolutely right. My noble friend Lady Sanderson talked about acknowledging the role of the whole family in terms of kinship families and gave us three live, worked examples of why this group is so important. The noble Lord, Lord Russell, reminded your Lordships’ Committee that there are 153,000 children in kinship care and that we are so lucky to have kinship carers—which I believe all noble Lords would agree with and which emphasises again why this group is critical. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, referred to kinship carers as a priceless asset and he is entirely correct. I believe several of these issues merit further discussion on Report, but, for the time being, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment standing in my name.
Baroness O'Neill of Bexley (Con)
My Lords, I will be even briefer, because much of what I intended to say has already been said. Obviously, I deal with this pretty much on a daily basis, back at the base in Bexley. As explained earlier, kinship care tends to have to be done much more quickly than a foster care placement. A foster care placement can go through a due process that will take much longer and will be very thorough, but kinship care tends to have to be much quicker.
There are things that you might need to look at for a kinship care placement that you would not for foster care. Obviously, the kinship carer is seeking to look after a child they know. They are not looking to foster any child, which would mean that they would have to have a wide range of experience and therefore, no doubt, training to go with it. They may already be in a home that they will take the child or children into, so the accommodation might not meet the needs that a foster care panel might want it to. They may have a job, as has been said, and that will need to be worked around. They will not necessarily have made arrangements to take on a child, especially if it is a grandparent at an older age. All these things need to be considered.
Frankly, kinship care and fostering arrangements are very different, which is why I support these amendments. This really needs to be looked at in a different way. I promised brevity, so I will now sit down.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
My Lords, I appreciate noble Lords’ concerns about ensuring that children grow up in safe, stable and loving homes within their family network. I reaffirm that the Government are firmly committed to enabling children to remain safely with their family whenever it is in their best interest, and, alongside that, to removing unnecessary barriers that may prevent this from happening. I recognise the assessment of the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, of the contribution of kinship carers, which adds to our debates earlier in Committee.
I turn to amendments relating to the removal of unregistered status and requirements under fostering regulations for kinship carers: Amendments 73, 75 and 76A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. We agree with the noble Baroness that we must tackle the barriers that currently make it harder for people to become kinship carers. We fully appreciate that that process of becoming a formal kinship carer can feel intrusive or burdensome at times, and we recognise that there is room for improvement in how these assessments are carried out. It is vital that they are conducted in a way that is supportive, respectful and sensitive to the unique circumstances of kinship families. At the same time, these assessments play a crucial role in ensuring that children are placed in safe, stable and nurturing environments. They also help local authorities identify the right support for carers so that they are not left to manage alone. Getting this balance right is essential.
Whenever a child can no longer live safely at home with their parents or anyone else with parental responsibility, the local authority has an obligation to complete a robust safeguarding assessment. The approach to doing this is set out in the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010 and the Fostering Services (England) Regulations 2011. Removing these assessments, as suggested by Amendments 73 and 75, risks undermining the assurance of the safety and well-being of children moving into kinship care arrangements.
However—to address some of the concerns that have been raised—the kinship care statutory guidance makes it clear that fostering panels should not make negative recommendations solely based on prospective kinship foster carers not meeting the fostering national minimum standards during the assessment. If the placement aligns with the child’s best interests, the prospective kinship foster carer should still be considered for approval to foster the child and then supported by the fostering service to attain the standards. Statutory guidance recognises that the assessment of kinship foster carers may differ from that of mainstream foster carers. Local authorities are permitted to adopt a tailored approach in presenting assessment reports for kinship carers, taking into account the unique dynamics of family relationships, safeguarding considerations, accommodation suitability and any relevant criminal history. Additionally, fostering panels reviewing kinship care applications are expected to include members with specific expertise in kinship care to ensure informed decision-making.
Regarding Amendment 76A, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, specifically, the requirement for temporary kinship foster carers to be fully assessed as a foster carer is not a barrier but an important safeguard. It ensures that the placement is not only safe in the short term but sustainable and well supported in the long term. Under Regulation 24 of the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010, local authorities may grant temporary approval for a connected person to care for a looked-after child for up to 16 weeks, where it is necessary to place the child urgently and the carer has not yet been fully assessed. This provision allows for flexibility in emergencies, but it is time-limited by law to protect the child’s welfare.
Temporary approvals are intended to facilitate urgent placements but must be followed by a full assessment to ensure that the child’s needs are met and the carer is properly supported. This includes a thorough evaluation of the carer’s capacity to meet the child’s needs in the long term; ensuring that the carer receives the same entitlements as mainstream foster carers, including financial support, training and an allocated social worker; and establishing a clear and stable care plan for meeting the future needs of the child. Removing this requirement unnecessarily increases the chances of a breakdown in the kinship placement. This is because it removes important safeguard checks for children placed with a kinship foster carer and removes an opportunity for the services to build a clear understanding of the kinship foster carer’s strengths for tailoring the right support—resources that are vital to enable carers to provide safe and effective care.
It is important to recognise that kinship foster care is not the only route to kinship care. Many children are successfully supported through other legal arrangements, such as special guardianship orders or child arrangements orders, which can offer greater stability and permanence outside the care system. These routes can be less stigmatising and more empowering for families, and we are committed to ensuring that all kinship carers, regardless of legal status, receive the support that they need.
On this basis, and reflecting on the comments that have been made, I kindly ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I thank all noble Lords who contributed to this debate. I must say that I was a bit more optimistic about the noble Baroness’s response because none of these amendments would cost the Government any money. They simply seek to improve the system that, as we have heard from practitioners and others—including my noble friend Lady O’Neill, who deals with this on a daily basis—is not working as well as it could. The noble Lord, Lord Meston, rightly raised in his remarks the position of the Law Commission review. There is no reason that one could not sunset these clauses if, in however many years’ time, the Law Commission comes forward with a more coherent plan.
Forgive me if I missed it, but I was not sure that I heard responses to my Amendments 74 and 76. Maybe the noble Baroness and I can both look at Hansard and double-check.
On Amendments 73, 75 and 76A, the noble Baroness said that these need to feel like supportive assessments for foster carers. The point really is about finding the balance between the familiarity and security of someone you have known all your life versus any shortcomings that they might have personally, where they live, or any of the points I raised earlier.
In reality, we know that directors of children’s services are having to make choices today to leave children with a kinship carer where they judge that the fostering panel would not exercise the discretion that the noble Baroness outlined, thereby putting themselves in a pretty impossible position vis-à-vis Ofsted. No director of children’s services wants to be in that position.
In relation to Amendment 75, we need to take great care over approval, but the point of Amendment 75 is that the family group decision-making process has already agreed that the kinship family or the member of the child’s extended family is suitable to care for them. The question is why we have to do that twice.
I will go away and reread what the noble Baroness said about temporary placements—I think that that may have been more reassuring. I did not pick up, and forgive me if I missed them, her remarks on the other two amendments, particularly Amendment 74, but we can follow that up separately.
The only other thing I would challenge, with respect—I know that the noble Baroness has enormous experience from her previous roles—is that I do not think one can describe either a child arrangements order or a special guardianship order as more secure and more stable, certainly in relation to parental responsibility. They are not as secure or stable as other alternatives.
We all want the same thing. I thought that these amendments were a simple, constructive way of taking steps forward on some of the things that have been flagged as the most problematic from the point of view of practitioners and leaders. I hope that the noble Baroness will go away and reflect on that. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.