Children and Families Bill
Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, I wholeheartedly support the passionate plea of my noble friend. I do not believe that, when the Labour Government brought in the original Bill, their intention was to totally exclude young people with dyslexia from the possibility of ever completing an apprenticeship. I do not believe that it is the intention of this Government either. I accept that it may be a little tricky to sort this out and that this is probably the first legislative opportunity to change the legislation that inadvertently produced this situation, so we must make use of it.
I am very proud of this Government’s record on apprenticeships but they must not exclude talented young people who are able to get through all the practical side of the apprenticeship, often with flying colours, and show tremendous commitment, hard work, conscientiousness and all those qualities that we are looking for, but simply need a little help with written material. That help, once given, will enable them not just to get through the exam but to move on into a career. If we can sort this out, it will also send a message to employers that says, “There are a lot of talented people here who have gone through their apprenticeships with a little bit of help and they will prove to be very worthwhile employees to you if you take them on, post-apprenticeship, as long as you give them a little help”. I think that many local authorities can help employers to do that. What is the alternative? As my noble friend said, they end up with “NEET” on their foreheads. That is what we do not want. It causes the young people and their families a great deal of distress and, in the end, there can be long-term costs to young people from not being in employment, education or training.
These young people have a chance and we must make sure that they get it. It is soul-destroying when they start the apprenticeship, get through all the rest of it, and then find that they cannot complete it and get that important certificate because they cannot complete the written part. We really have to sort this out and we have to do it now.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, several members of my family have varying degrees of dyslexia. All are able and intelligent, and have talents. My daughter-in-law, who has moderate dyslexia, has an excellent degree from the University of Bristol. It can be done but these people must have extra. That group of young people who want apprenticeships will be a loss to the country if they cannot get through the necessary exams. It is a major advantage for the country to make sure that they get through. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, have put this case extremely well. It is a relatively simple matter and I endorse the excellent work done by this Government in many respects, particularly on apprenticeships, but we should not leave out this important group. The funny thing about this is that it is often not properly appreciated that an enormous number of young people are dyslexic. Let us get out there, find them, help them and make them really useful members of society—without, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, “NEET” across their foreheads.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, my amendment is very short and applies to many other aspects of this part of the Bill, particularly anything connected with assessment and further work, which, as my amendment states, should happen as soon as possible. I tabled it because I was disappointed that although this clause has, “Using best endeavours” in its title, there was no reference to a sense of urgency. Urgency is needed, as has been vividly explained by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, because people who have been identified with a possible SEN must be given the opportunity of developing as soon as possible so that their valuable time is not wasted. That is the purpose of my amendment.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I am grateful for the noble Baroness’s comments. I was asked about support for apprenticeships. We amended the Bill following pre-legislative scrutiny to ensure that young people on an apprenticeship could receive support through an EHC plan. This puts people in apprenticeships on the same footing as those in further education.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
I apologise for interrupting the Minister yet again, but we are dealing with an extremely limited point. It is not support during the apprenticeship that we are talking about; it is support to complete the apprenticeship. That is not there at the moment; there is a gap and that is where the problem is. I am not sure that the Minister—with so many of us in this Room—has quite understood the particular problem about which we are concerned and which the noble Lord, Lord Addington, has so very well set out.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, when I have finished my speech, the best thing all of us can do is to read Hansard carefully, but I am not deaf to your Lordships’ concerns. On the other hand, I am not an expert on them either. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, suggested that apprenticeships are not covered by the Joint Council for Qualifications’ guidance. As a point of clarity, the JCQ includes functional skills in its guidance. I or my noble friend Lady Northover would be happy to meet noble Lords to follow up on this.
In addition, the Equality Act 2010 applies to all apprenticeship training providers and employers. They are required to make reasonable adjustments for disabled young people during their apprenticeships. We will promote the availability of reasonable adjustments in apprenticeships more widely, including through the National Apprenticeship Service. We are also currently considering how we can improve data collection to monitor how effectively we are supporting young people with SEN and disabilities in apprenticeships.
More widely, Clause 27 states that a local authority is under a general duty to keep the special education provision in its area under review and consider the extent to which that provision is sufficient to meet the needs of young people concerned. In doing so, it must consult proprietors of post-16 institutions, which would include private training and apprenticeship providers.
Given these existing duties, the additional measures in the amendment are unnecessary. In addition, they risk having a negative impact on apprenticeship providers, including small businesses. There are currently 100,000 employers in more than 160,000 workplaces offering apprenticeships. Most employers use a training provider to help deliver the apprenticeships, and the majority of providers are private organisations.
My noble friend Lord Addington asked me about the requirement to achieve English and maths qualifications to be removed from apprenticeship completion conditions.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I will comment briefly on the amendments and support the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and other noble Lords who have spoken this afternoon. As ever, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, made a very powerful case for quality teaching to identify children with dyslexia and all other specific learning difficulties. It is important that we broaden it and do not just concentrate on the—very important—needs of children with dyslexia.
In earlier debates on the Bill, and again this afternoon, we have stressed the importance of earlier intervention. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, has just done that again. It is important that we identify children at the earliest opportunity so that we can give them the support they need to maximise the opportunities that their education can give them. These amendments clearly build on that theme. However, for early intervention to take place consistently, all teachers should be trained in the technique of spotting where it might be necessary. They need to be aware of the range of support mechanisms that are effective and can make a difference. This cannot be left to chance or to some teachers developing a personal interest in SEN, which is, all too often, what happens at the moment.
For each teacher who is unaware, or fails to act, another child’s life chances are blighted. We very much agree with the mandatory module in teacher training. Leaving it to individual schools to provide the knowledge and skills for teaching staff will leave it too late, and we believe it will result in piecemeal provision if we proceed on that basis. Sorting this provision out is crucial to the success of all other aspects of the Bill when it comes to SEN. If we do not get teacher training right, all the other aspects of support that we are talking about here will fall at the very first hurdle.
We also agree with the proposal that the SEN co-ordinator should be a qualified teacher who has been trained in SEN and specific learning difficulties, and we were pleased that the Minister has now acknowledged that the co-ordinator should be a qualified teacher. These high-level skills are crucial to ensure that the school properly focuses attention on the needs of specific groups of pupils, as specified in the new Ofsted framework. It is an interesting development that, with the Government’s new-found faith in unqualified teachers, special educational needs co-ordinators will be the only posts in a school required to be qualified teachers, but I slightly digress.
This leads to another issue, which is that if the Minister agrees with the amendments with regard to teacher training modules and the status of school SENCOs, we are faced with a considerable knowledge deficit among existing teachers, both qualified and unqualified. What further steps do the Government intend to take to ensure that training for existing teachers and, indeed, existing SENCOs can meet our expectation of early intervention and action? How can we be confident that their knowledge of the latest physical and technical equipment is kept up to date if we are focusing just on newly qualified teachers and new training for SEN teachers? I am echoing the points made by other noble Lords, and I hope that the Minister will be able to address the issues.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
When my dyslexic granddaughter was identified as such in her excellent primary school, it sent someone out to learn about it because there was no one in the school who had any idea of how to deal with dyslexia. It was an excellent primary school in north London, Eleanor Palmer Primary School, for which I have the highest respect. I wonder how many schools, if they had a dyslexic child, would take the trouble to send somebody out to learn. If a school as good as that did not have anyone who understood it, what is going on? It seems to me that these amendments are extremely important.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)
My Lords, there is a Division in the Chamber. The Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes and resume at 6.02 pm.
National Curriculum: Violence against Women
Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Nash
I pay tribute to the noble Baroness’s work on women’s and girls’ rights and opportunities. We support the principle behind her Question, and the DfE fully supports the Home Office’s excellent strategy in this regard. However, we do not believe that the most effective way of doing this is for the department to try to send messages to all girls. We are looking into how best to get information and messages to them. The This is Abuse campaign run by the Home Office is already doing good work in this regard. Later this year, Ministers from the Department for Education, the Home Office and the Department for International Development are to meet representatives from head teachers’ and teachers’ unions to discuss how best to raise awareness among staff and pupils of risks linked to gender-based violence. I am sure that the noble Baroness will also agree that any messages need to go to boys as well as girls.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, has been passionate about the importance of parenting being part of citizenship. If the Government took that on board, the very important issue of domestic violence would fit very neatly into it.
Children and Families Bill
Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Northover (LD)
With the leave of the Deputy Chairman of Committees, I hope it might be helpful to everyone taking part in this Grand Committee if I draw attention to the revised calendar for this Bill, published with today’s edition of forthcoming business. The calendar shows that the usual channels now hope that we will complete the Committee stage of the Bill in 11 sessions in total—that is, seven more sessions including today. It also sets out the clauses that we hope to cover each day so that people who want to take part in a particular part of the Bill can plan their diaries. The calendar is not binding but it has support across this Committee. We hope we can complete our work here on 18 November. Can I encourage everyone here to try to reach the target today, the group led by Amendment 81, so that we can complete the stage in good order?
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, perhaps I might make a point, as a Cross-Bencher, about the amount of time that may be allowed on Report. It is a matter of some concern that this Bill has been committed to a Grand Committee when a number of people who are concerned about the Care Bill would have liked to be here. Those people may well wish to speak on Report when they would otherwise have spoken in Grand Committee. Consequently, we may find that Report lasts a bit longer than the Government would choose. Therefore, it would be helpful if the usual channels took that on board in arranging the number of days appropriate for Report.
Baroness Northover
I thank the noble and learned Baroness for that comment. I will of course take it back to the usual channels.
Clause 15: Care plans
Amendment 65
Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)
My Lords, I will not dwell on this because it rehearses a theme that we spent a great length of time on in discussing Part 1 of the Bill—that is, the importance for children, when their families break up or they are taken into care, of keeping in contact with their birth family as appropriate, particularly with their siblings. The Minister was not the Minister discussing the Bill with us when we talked about Part 1. Therefore, he did not hear the strength of feeling across the Committee on this issue, which was such that the Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Nash—acknowledged it and agreed to take the issue of sibling contact back and look at it. So I hope, when the Minister sums up, that I will not need to rehearse the arguments; I hope he will take that on trust and, similarly, look at it with his colleague, the Minister in the Department for Education, and come back on Report.
The amendment is, however, different from the amendment that we talked about in relation to Part 1. It would require the court, at the stage of considering permanence for a child, to pay particular attention to any siblings and where they are, and to continued contact between siblings when making or approving the permanence plan for a child through a care order. Amendment 65 would therefore insert “and sibling placement arrangements” after “provisions”. It is very important that this issue is considered not only by social workers and professionals, as we discussed when we looked at the amendment to Part 1, but particularly at the court stage. Clause 15, as it is worded, does not include arrangements for siblings to be placed together where possible. It does not include anything that requires the court specifically to consider the arrangements for brothers and sisters.
It is essential that this is considered at the court stage because after that, while there are a number of possible opportunities for detailed arrangements in permanence plans to be considered, there are none really to go back and address this issue. Independent reviewing officers, for example, do not have the same authority as the courts to scrutinise care plans and they cannot take the matter back to court directly if they consider that the care plan is deficient in one way or another. They can only refer the matter to a CAFCASS officer who can then maybe bring a claim on behalf of the child if they consider that there are grounds for judicial review or a free-standing claim under the Human Rights Act. In practice, as I am sure Members can appreciate, that power is rarely used. Therefore, it is very important to get these issues about continued sibling contact right in at the front end when the courts are asked to scrutinise the arrangements for permanence when thinking about a care plan.
I will not rehearse all the arguments as to why that is important. I suspect the Minister may appreciate them. I will, though, rehearse one statistic that we used in the previous debate. I hope that the Minister will not say that the courts will do this anyway. The figures that we looked at then suggested that some 63% of children who go into care and have siblings who go into care lose contact with those siblings. Clearly, at various points in the process—in court, through social workers, through the placements—contact is being broken for the vast majority of children who go into care as part of a sibling group. I hope that the Minister will be prepared to look at this and respond positively to it. I beg to move.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I support the noble Baroness in this amendment. At his request, I will also speak to the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern. Is that separate? It is separate, so I will speak entirely to this amendment.
At the adoption stage, Part 1 of the Bill, a number of us spoke about the importance of sibling contact. I made the point—I make no apology for making it again to a different Minister—that the Select Committee on Adoption Legislation took informal evidence from a considerable number of children. One of the points made both by the group who were adopted and the group in care concerned the enormous sorrow they felt at losing contact with the siblings they knew. Very sensibly, one girl said, “I am not concerned about the siblings born after I left the family but I am very worried about my brothers and sisters”. Another child was almost in tears as he was so worried about his younger brother, not knowing what was happening to him and nobody being able to tell him. He said he woke up at night worrying about his brother. That is not acceptable. Therefore, it is important at each stage that those in charge of children or in charge of making arrangements and connections with children have the siblings in mind. The judge may well say that the social workers have given him all sorts of good reasons why they are not going to meet, but it is important that the judge asks. There is no requirement on the judge, or indeed the magistrates in the family proceedings court, to ask that question unless it is in legislation.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, I know that David Norgrove was very concerned that judges spent quite a considerable time reviewing care plans and that might well delay looking at the future of children. However, I cannot see why this aspect should not be looked at. When the judge is looking at the placement of the child before him, he must look at the whole family, the parental position and what is going to happen to the siblings. Although I understand absolutely why David Norgrove felt that the local authority should be the one looking sensibly at the care plans, I do not at all see why the court should not look at the sibling placement.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, with the leave of the Committee, I shall speak in place of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, at his specific request. He was here on Monday, but he was just not reached and is unable to be here today. The noble and learned Lord is making a plea for the Family Law Act 1996. As Lord Chancellor then, he was responsible for its introduction in the House of Lords. A considerable part of that Act has not been commenced, but Governments since then have left it on the statute book.
Clause 18 of the present Bill repeals the whole of that which remains of the 1996 Act. The noble and learned Lord has said that since he was involved he felt diffident about raising the issue, but then he learnt that at least some of those concerned with family law did not know that the Act was to be repealed. He felt that he had a responsibility towards those who had supported him to point to this development. Perhaps the Committee will forgive me if I read the noble and learned Lord’s principal concern. He has written that,
“with no-fault divorce which I advanced on the basis that to require a spouse seeking divorce to make allegations about the other spouse which would not require to be proved was not conducive to the vital task of promoting good relations between them for the sake of the children”.
In other words, “no-fault divorce” means that the parties do not rake up unpleasant things about each other which can only be bad for the children. He adds:
“So far as I know its retention on the statute book has done no harm”.
I would add that Part 1 of the Family Law Act 1996 sets out what I do not believe we get anywhere else; that is, the principles of Parts 2 and 3 of that Act. It states that,
“the institution of marriage is to be supported … that the parties to a marriage which may have broken down are to be encouraged to take all practicable steps, whether by marriage counselling or otherwise, to save the marriage”—
which is admirable—
“that a marriage which has irretrievably broken down and is being brought to an end should be brought to an end … with minimum distress to the parties and to the children affected”.
It goes on like that. It sets out in about one page the general principles of good behaviour between parties to a marriage that has broken down. It is sad that there are issues of reflection and consideration before the divorce.
One might say that all that is old hat. Marriages go on, thank goodness. The majority of people who live together do not get married but a lot do. To have these good principles on the statute book has done no harm and will do no harm. It will at least make available to people the desirable end to those marriages that have broken down, and make some effort to remind them that they should try to minimise distress to everyone, particularly their children. I might add grandparents to that. It is sad that it is apparently necessary, under Clause 18, for this Act to be repealed, which is the purpose behind the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, opposing that it should stand part of the Bill.
Lord McNally
My Lords, one of the perils of being a Minister in this House is that the continuity that is one of its merits means that changes to decades-old legislation may mean that we find the author still with us, alive and kicking. We saw something similar on Monday when noble and learned Lords wanted a rematch of decisions made by Law Lords some decades ago. However, that does not mean I take lightly the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. After our Monday sitting, I had a long conversation with Sir James Munby on Tuesday. I mentioned the point raised by the noble and learned Lord. Sir James was somewhat wistful about the ambitions of the noble and learned Lord to bring in the concept of “no-fault divorce”, which had not progressed as much as the authors of the Bill at that time had intended.
I have listened with great care to the points made on behalf of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. As I have said, I have the utmost respect for the position of supporting the principle of “no-fault divorce”. I acknowledge the expertise of the noble and learned Lord in this area and I know that when he introduced the Family Law Bill in this House in 1995, it was a Bill very close to his heart.
I fully understand that the provisions of Part 2 were intended to save saveable marriages and reduce distress and conflict when it was inevitable that a marriage would need to be brought to an end. While Part 2 retained as the ground for divorce the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage, it would, if implemented, have removed the need to establish irretrievable breakdown through one or more facts. I understand why proponents of no-fault divorce believe that the approach in Part 2 would have helped to reduce conflict and acrimony.
However, there are two separate issues here. The first concerns the principle of no-fault divorce in Part 2, and the second concerns the information meeting and other provisions of Part 2 which were an integral part of that policy. The Government in 2001 concluded that the provisions were unworkable, would not achieve the objectives of saving saveable marriages and reducing distress and conflict, and should be repealed. It is that second issue that led us to include Clause 18 in the Bill.
The decision to repeal Part 2 was made in principle long ago on the basis of extensive academic research by the University of Newcastle. The research looked at six models of information meeting that a party to a marriage would have been required to attend as the key first step in initiating a divorce. Part 2 is built around that initial mandatory information meeting. The research concluded that none of the six models of information meeting tested was good enough for implementation nationally. For most people, the meetings came too late to save marriages and tended to cause parties who were uncertain about their marriages to be more inclined towards divorce. While people valued the provision of information, the meetings were too inflexible, providing general information about both marriage-saving and the divorce process. People wanted information tailored to their individual circumstances and needs. In addition, in the majority of cases, only the person petitioning for divorce attended the meeting. Marriage counselling and conciliatory divorce all depend on the willing involvement of both parties.
Repeal of Part 2 has been awaiting a suitable legislative opportunity. The Children and Families Bill now provides that opportunity. Repeal was part of the draft Bill published for pre-legislative scrutiny in September 2012. None of the written responses opposed repeal of Part 2.
The Government have introduced separate measures in Clause 10 to make it compulsory for an applicant in certain family proceedings first to attend a family mediation, information and assessment meeting—I realise we will be having further debates about that on Report. That provision has some similarities with the information meeting provision for divorce in Part 2 and will, we intend, address disputes about children and finances.
Mediators who conduct the MIAM will check with the parties whether they wish to save their relationship, as well as discuss ways to resolve a relevant family dispute with the minimum of distress, including, in particular, arrangements for any children. However, Clause 10 addresses disputes between both cohabiting and divorcing couples.
Repeal of Part 2 is a long-standing commitment to Parliament. There is no prospect of Part 2 being implemented. Therefore Clause 18 should stand part of the Bill.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, wanted this matter raised, but he does not wish it to be pursued any further.
Lord Nash
The answer is yes.
In developing the guidance, we would welcome discussions either bilaterally or by hosting a round table discussion, whichever is more helpful. Once the draft guidance is prepared, we intend to consult publicly before publishing a final version next year. This will give schools one term’s notice of when the new duty comes into force.
I have listened with interest to the debate on the other grouped amendments. I hope the Committee will agree that the amendment I have tabled will help to support a significant group of children, many of whom meet the Equality Act definition of disability, who previously may not have been explicitly covered by the provisions of the Bill. I would like to reflect further on the other points raised in debate today in relation to the other amendments before us and consider them further. In doing so, I would be grateful for the Committee’s help in providing specific examples of other conditions or other groups of children who are having their educational opportunities restricted, and who are not supported by either existing legislation or the provisions of the Bill as they currently stand.
The noble Lord, Lord Low, gave some specific examples, most of which would be covered by the amendment that I have tabled, but other examples would be helpful. It is always a pleasure to reply to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, who is one of our country’s greatest athletes—
Baroness Butler-Sloss
I have listened to this debate with great interest, very much as a novice in this area, although I have been governor of two schools where we had disabled children. I got the impression from what various speakers have said in this debate that there are problems for all disabled children, not just individual groups. The Minister should take away the problems of all disabled children in all sorts of schools.
Lord Nash
I thank the noble and learned Baroness for that intervention. Clearly, we all got that impression, but we would like help on precisely what category of children are not covered by the existing legislation. I will take away all the points made today and we will reflect further.
Children and Families Bill
Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I am sure that Members of the Committee will recall that last week we debated the importance of kinship care and, unless there are reasons why this should not happen, the importance of children in care keeping in touch with members of their biological family one way or another. This amendment rehearses some of those arguments. Indeed, the importance of family contact and strengthening the potential for family contact for children in care will be a theme that I will return to a number of times as we go through the Bill.
The effect of Clause 7 is to clarify the existing law that any decision by a local authority about allowing a child in care—under a care or emergency protection order—contact with the parents or some other family member is subject to the local authority considering whether such contact would place the child at risk of harm. Obviously that is essential and, although the law probably currently provides for that, we have no objection to it being clarified here in Clause 7.
However, we think that if the Government are serious about the importance of continued family contact, they should go further and require local authorities to give specific consideration to enabling children in care to remain in contact with their siblings. That is the purpose of Amendment 32. We know that sibling contact has not always been a priority for agencies—certainly not the priority that it seems to be for the children themselves. We think that there is a need for the Government to enshrine sibling contact as a priority in the legislation.
There are two main reasons why we think that. First, 63% of children in care whose siblings are also in the care system are separated from them, so the vast majority of children in care who have siblings in care as well are not together. Those living in children’s homes are much more likely to be separated from their siblings than those in foster care, yet the sibling relationship is often the longest relationship in a child’s life, potentially offering the stability that is often absent from other aspects of the life of a child in care. The second reason is understandable: it is that young people in care themselves feel strongly that they generally have too little contact with their siblings. Some 85% of children in care thought it important to keep siblings together, and over three-quarters thought that councils should help children and young people to keep in touch with their brothers and sisters.
This amendment would make that sibling contact a priority in social work practice. I think we can all understand why continued contact with your brothers and sisters when you are in care is fundamental, yet it seems now that in many cases—the majority—siblings are separated and risk losing that contact, stability and link to their biological heritage. I hope that the Minister will accept the amendment. I beg to move.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I strongly support the amendment. As I think I said at our previous sitting, when I chaired the adoption committee we had two meetings with children, one with looked-after children and the other with children who were or were about to be adopted. Each group made it absolutely clear, particularly younger children—the seven, eight, 10 or 12 year-old children—how important their siblings were. They said to us that siblings were more important to them than parents. Some of them would have liked to have seen their parents; they all wanted to see their siblings. It was so sad; one little boy said, “I’m so worried about my brother. I don’t know what’s happening to him. Nobody will tell me and I’m not allowed to see him. I wake up at night wondering how he’s getting on”. That is not acceptable for children. The amendment would alert everybody to the importance of siblings, which is why I support it.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I very much agree with all that has been said. I remember being struck by the strength of feeling expressed by the young people. At our previous sitting we talked about the importance of identity; contact with one’s siblings and understanding that family dynamic is another aspect of identity. I have been impressed by somebody outside the group of people whom the noble and learned Baroness saw, whose feeling of responsibility for her younger sibling was important to her to express and fulfil. By separating her from her younger sister—by being deprived of caring for her—she was being deprived of the expression of her own personality. That was of huge significance to her.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I support what the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has said. I remember him stalking in the Corridor in July; he was very excited and asked whether I would support this. I did not indicate but walked away and reflected on what he had said. I remember my professional circumstances, where foster parents at my school came to talk to me about this issue and how upset they were. It was quite traumatic for them as foster carers to lose children at 18 when they had so much more to offer in those important years. I thought about my own children. At 18 my daughter has just gone to university. It has been a very difficult time for her and she has needed the support of her parents, her family and friends.
We talk about cost but the cost is minimal: there is a saving. Never mind the savings we have heard about in terms of compassion as a society but the savings, as research has shown, in terms of those young people being more likely to be successful in their lives. If they are more successful in their lives, there will be fewer problems that we might have to pay for later on.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I, too, support the amendment. It is so obviously a good idea. I have a suspicion that if it is not part of the legislation a voluntary system will work in a few places and will be disregarded right across the country. It is for that reason that it needs to be made part of the legislation.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, the meeting arranged by the noble Earl brought a number of comments about Staying Put. It was clear that there is a shortage of accessible information—particularly because not all authorities are operating the system—and that there are real complications when there are cross-boundary considerations. That follows on from the point made by the noble and learned Baroness.
Some things were mentioned which really took me aback. When a young person becomes 18, if he or she does stay with the foster parents a tenancy agreement has to be signed. As a couple of the young people we met said, “This does not reflect our relationship. They are our foster parents; they are not our landlords”. It is necessary, I understand, to have a tenancy agreement in order to qualify for housing benefit and income support. I asked how the total income compared to fostering allowances and I was told by the foster carer we met that the total income had reduced by about 50%. He was very enthusiastic about his foster daughter remaining with him. That foster daughter also said—she was part of a sibling group—that she had to be CRB checked in order to stay with her sisters. Something has gone wrong with the system.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
“Provision of accommodation for children
In section 20 of the Children Act 1989 (provision of accommodation for children: general) after subsection (1) insert—“(1A) Where a local authority provides accommodation for a child identified as a victim of human trafficking who has been trafficked into England or Wales, that local authority shall have parental responsibility for that child during the period that child remains in the accommodation of the local authority or until the arrangements for the child have been completed, or both.
(1B) Where another local authority provides accommodation for that child, that local authority shall have parental responsibility for the child during the period that child remains in the accommodation of that local authority or until the arrangements for the child have been completed, or both.””
Baroness Butler-Sloss
This amendment deals with a totally different subject. There are three amendments in this group but I do not propose to speak to Amendments 43 or 234 because I understand that those who tabled them will in due course ask to degroup them. Therefore, I shall speak exclusively to Amendment 39.
This amendment relates to the most disadvantaged group of children who come into this country. Very often, they are children brought here against their will, or certainly without any knowledge of what is going to hit them when they get here. They may be sexually exploited or they may be victims of domestic service or forced labour, such as the Vietnamese boys who run the cannabis farms in rented accommodation. Among them are boys who are trained, Fagin style, to steal, and there are other children who go through appalling sorts of slavery. When they escape, or if they are fortunate enough to be picked up at the border control, they are not as well looked after as adults.
This is an area where adult victims of human trafficking—modern slaves—are quite well cared for in this country in many ways. It is much to the Government’s credit that they have signed the European directive on human trafficking and, indeed, are in the process of implementing it. However, we fall far short of what should be done with the children. They are placed in the care of a local authority, not under care proceedings, which we discussed earlier today, but under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989, which requires local authorities to look after a child in their area. They are placed with the nearest local authority by whoever has identified them as trafficked, and the local authority has an obligation to look after them under Section 20 of the Children Act. I repeat: it is an obligation to accommodate.
We know that very worrying numbers of children go missing from local authority care. Local authorities do not even know why or how some of these children have come into care because it takes anything up to 48 hours to register a child into care, and these children often go missing within 48 hours. In another place, Peter Bone MP sent a message to all local authorities asking how many children who go missing are trafficked children. No local authority responded with any figures at all, and only about eight out of all the local authorities responded at all but they had not identified the children who were missing as trafficked children.
If the children have a mobile phone, as they usually do, they are given a number and are told to ring the trafficker. The trafficker waits outside the care home, or very often the home of the short-term foster parents who have not had time to get organised with this child who is suddenly dumped on them: the child gets the telephone call, goes out of the front door and is never heard of again. Those children are trafficked or retrafficked. Something like 300-odd children have been identified as being trafficked, and that, I suspect, is the tip of the iceberg.
The reasons for asking for a local authority to have parental responsibility are twofold. One is that these foreign children do not have anyone in this country with any responsibility for them until they get to the local authority—perhaps with the exception of those who are trafficking them, who may be relatives. Secondly, the local authority does not have parental responsibility, as defined in the Children Act, for these accommodated children; it simply has a requirement to accommodate them. It is right to say that there is a requirement to look after them but if they do not have parental responsibility—and local authority social services know exactly what parental responsibility means—that is what they receive after they get a care order. Even an interim care order gives them a joint parental responsibility with the family. However, for these foreign children there is nobody with parental responsibility.
Parental responsibility may not be the best way of dealing with this; there are two views on it. I have tabled this amendment because I am concerned that, currently, local authorities are not treating these children with the seriousness that they should. Local authorities are overworked and very often under-resourced. These children are dumped on them at very short notice, identified as having been trafficked and are not given the same degree of care as a child who goes through the care process in this country. It seems that there are two ways forward here. Either the local authority makes a care application, which costs money—and it is getting more and more expensive for local authorities to make care applications—or, as I suggest, there should be an automatic parental responsibility. It would not cost a penny but it would flag up to local authorities the actual responsibility they have for these children who are dumped on them. They cannot just accommodate them and not really take that extra step of being a joint parent.
I am extremely concerned about the standards for the children we have been talking about last Wednesday and today. They are only a small number of children but, my goodness me, we are failing them. It is a blot on the England and Wales system, under which we are failing to deal with them. I do not know whether I really need to declare again an interest as a trustee of the Human Trafficking Foundation or as co-chairman of the All-Party Group on Human Trafficking and Modern Day Slavery, but this is a truly serious matter for a small group of children. One way of dealing with it is to give local authorities parental responsibility. It would hit them with the fact that they have to do something practical about these children.
Barnardo’s was given some money—I believe by the Government—to trial having specialist foster parents to look after trafficked children. I was told by one of the representatives of Barnardo’s that it was not taken up. I think that 15 specialised foster parents were trained and that local authorities were told they could have this for nothing. They were not being asked to pay a penny and they did not take it up. I think there were two or three places where local authorities did not do it, which is an indication of the degree of concern that I understand the overworked social services have for this group of children. Something absolutely has to be done. I beg to move.
Lord Northbourne
My Lords, I rise to reinforce, in a way, what the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, has said but also to ask some questions. I should perhaps declare an interest as a council tax payer in the district of Dover. As I see it, the amendment, as tabled, would require the local authority to bear the financial responsibilities of looking after these trafficked children, far more of whom probably come in through Dover than through any other point of access to the United Kingdom.
It so happens that a year or two ago, my wife chaired the Kent Community Housing Trust, which is for old people. During that time they received a panicked telephone call from the county council saying, “We simply can’t cope with this flow of people. Can you help us?”. Luckily, an old people’s home was able to be diverted for that purpose. As the noble Baroness said, it is not easy. In one case a child arrived at the children’s home absolutely white with fear and said that he had just seen a murder and the murderer. The child knew that the murderer had seen him, so he feared for his life. He was kept in the home for 16 days and at the end of that period he slipped down to the village to buy some fags and was never seen again. We are talking about quite a tough world.
What are the financial implications for local authorities which receive an enormous number of young people? My noble friend was being rather critical of the local authorities but they were presented with a very difficult problem at very short notice.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
The local authority has the obligation under the 1989 Act to accommodate children, so there are no financial implications that I understand. The only financial implications would be if the local authority were involved in care proceedings, when it would have to pay for the applications.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
They do it already. There is no difference. They have a requirement under the Act to accommodate. They have had that since 1989, or since 1990 when the Act came into force. I am talking about giving them a parental responsibility order, which is a wake-up call and has nothing to do with finances at all.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. Perhaps I should have said earlier that this was a probing amendment. I see disadvantages in local authorities having parental responsibility, but I never suggested in the amendment that they should hold it exclusively. It would be similar to a care order, where the local authority and the parents share parental responsibility. There is no suggestion that it should be a sole responsibility.
It is important to recognise that asylum-seeking children are not necessarily trafficked. I am talking about a relatively small number of children, in the hundreds, but they are the most vulnerable children coming in from outside.
Baroness Northover
Perhaps I should clarify my comments to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. He suggested that local authorities, because they are dealing with large numbers of asylum-seeking children, were therefore not dealing with trafficked children. I simply wanted to place that in the context that the numbers there are dropping. In case I caused any confusion, perhaps I can clarify what I was saying.
The Earl of Listowel
Just to clarify my position, I was simply using that as an example: that occasionally local authorities are overburdened for one reason or another and we need to support them as far as possible to meet those needs.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
I am talking about a very specific group of children. Some trafficked children may seek asylum, but that is a completely different matter. I am talking about children who have through the NRM been positively identified as trafficked or are going through the process of identification—one or the other. I am not talking about children who might possibly be trafficked but who have not yet gone through that identification.
The reason for tabling the amendment was as a wake-up call to local authorities. I totally understand the extent to which they are overburdened and underresourced—I said that—but this small group of children is slipping through the net. I was delighted to hear what the Minister had to say about missing children, because there is a serious lack of data from local authorities on children who go missing. They ought to be able to identify what sort of children they are. Are they the children who keep going missing from children’s homes? We know that there are children who go missing three, four or five times a week. That is not the sort of child we are talking about. The group we should worry about is the child who goes missing and is never identified again as a child who was in a children’s home or a foster home. Local authorities do not even know. They have to get their act together to know that those are trafficked children.
I welcome the opportunity to discuss that further with the noble Baroness. I have no doubt that the group of which I am a co-chairman would very much like the opportunity to do that, particularly the chairman of the Human Trafficking Foundation, Anthony Steen, who was previously an MP who worked tirelessly for this cause. This children issue is one that we are truly concerned about. I very much welcome what the Minister said and I am happy to withdraw the amendment.
Children and Families Bill
Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Butler-Sloss
“( ) In subsection (4)(d) (matters to which court or adoption agency must have regard), after “the child’s age, sex, background” insert “, religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background”.”
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I have a considerable number of interests that I need to declare, not all of which I have to say I can remember. I am a governor of Coram, a patron of BAAF and of PAC, a patron—I think—of TACT and a patron of the Grandparents’ Association. I am very involved with Barnardo’s, the NSPCC and probably many others. I was also chairman of the pre-legislative and post-legislative scrutiny committees.
I strongly support the Government on the Bill, which in principle is an excellent one. There are, however, as one would always imagine, certain points that need both elucidation and change. Perhaps I may also add how delighted I am with the extra resources that have now been offered by the Government toward the adoption process and post-adoption support. There is an area about which I wish to speak in this debate and that is Clause 2 of the Bill, where it is intended to repeal Section 1(5) of the Adoption and Children Act 2002.
The opinion of the adoption committee that I chaired was that it was right to start with the removal of the words from subsection (5). This is an issue of ethnicity—an issue of race, culture, religion and language. In Clause 2, the Government are removing it entirely from the 2002 Act. That is a step too far. In paragraphs 57 to 83 of the adoption report, we said—putting it shortly—that we agreed that the Government were right to take it out as a separate subsection of the 2002 Act. It was given too great prominence. The evidence that we received as a committee was to the effect that there was a time when social workers elevated subsection (5) to inappropriate heights and therefore they were trying to match in colour in particular where it was not appropriate and moving children from very good families who were not of the same colour, race or background. However, we also had evidence, both from social workers and from the adoption agencies, that that problem had largely receded; it had been far less obvious in recent times and there was a counterdanger that, if it were taken out altogether, the social workers who cared too much about it when it was in would care equally when it was out. They would say, “Now that it’s not in, we have to disregard it. We must not consider race, ethnicity, language, religion or culture”. That is an equally important danger. We had evidence from the social workers and the agencies that there are social workers and other people out there who might take that view. It is a danger and one that must not be disregarded.
We also had informal evidence from children; we had a group of children who had been adopted and a group of children who were looked after who came to talk to me and one or two other Peers at the request of the then Children’s Rights Director. They were extremely interesting groups of children, ranging in age from about seven or eight to about 19. The young ones were very vocal, and at least two of them said to us that the question of ethnicity was extremely important to them, and they were worried about being placed—or the possibility of being placed—with someone who would not understand their background. To me, this was very powerful evidence from the horse’s mouth. I am very concerned about the Government keeping this clause in the Bill, when in fact we made it very clear in our report how concerned we, as a committee, were. Our proposal was that it should not be set out on its own, where it has too important an effect, but in among other matters that have to be considered under Section 1(4) of the 2002 Act.
If my amendment were accepted, Section 1(4)(d) of the Act would require the court or agency to have regard to, “the child’s age, sex, background, religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background and any of the child’s characteristics which the court or agency considers relevant”. It is neatly packaged into a number of other matters.
As I understand it, the Government are saying that “characteristics” includes that. It does in a sense but, unless you highlight the relevant points somewhere, there is a great danger that they will be overlooked. If you look at subsection (4) it is interesting to see the various points that are spelt out because a great many of them could be covered by one word or sentence, but the legislators of the day thought it necessary to explain some of them. I urge the Government to think very carefully about including, neatly packaged in subsection (4)(d), those words as part and parcel of a larger package of what the social workers should be looking at. I beg to move.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, our Amendment 12 is on the same issue and a similar wording to that moved so eloquently by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. We very much support the argument that she put forward and the care with which the adoption Select Committee considered this matter and other issues.
As the noble and learned Baroness pointed out, under the Children Act 2002, the court and adoption agencies must under current legislation give due regard to a child’s religious persuasion, racial origin, culture and linguistic background when making decisions. The Bill removes that wording, but we continue to consider that these are important factors.
No one wants children to be disadvantaged by delays caused by the search for a perfect match, but the evidence of the adoption committee was that while there had been pockets of poor practice in the past, this is not a widespread problem. Indeed, it heard evidence from organisations such as Barnardo’s, which believed that the current legislation was adequate, and Coram, which also argued that, while there might have been a problem in the past, the situation was improving rapidly. The committee also identified that there were several other factors affecting the placement of black and minority ethnic children, including having fewer prospective adopters, the age of the children being put up for adoption and a failure of social workers to promote their availability. We are concerned that too much of the legislation being put forward on this issue is being based on anecdote and there is in fact a paucity of evidence that the wording in the legislation is the cause of black and minority ethnic children waiting longer for placements.
The general view was that the current legislative wording was not a problem per se. We therefore think that the Government have swung too far in the opposite direction by seeking to remove any reference to ethnicity, religion and culture. That is why we believe that putting these factors in the welfare checklist, along with other considerations, strikes the right and proportionate balance in addressing the issue. It would require agencies to have regard to these factors, but they would not be paramount.
In addition, any change in this area would be in direct contradiction to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and, in particular, Article 20 which states:
“Children who cannot be looked after by their own family have a right to special care and must be looked after properly, by people who respect their ethnic group, religion, culture and language”.
We agree with this principle. It is important that parents understand the identity of their child and that they are able to help them feel at ease with that identity. We cannot be blind or neutral to these considerations. I very much take the point that was made in the earlier debates. We sometimes think that we are talking about babies, but we are not. We could be talking about young people—anything up to adolescents—who have a view about these things. That point was made very eloquently by the noble and learned Baroness in her introduction. They have an identity and they want that to be considered and expressed. There may have been overzealous social workers in the past, but there may also have been adoptions that failed because the complexities of a child’s identity were not properly addressed. It is important to get a balance.
The Government have argued that these issues are taken into account in the general welfare provisions in Clause 2, but in fact Clause 2 does not achieve that. It removes the express duty to give consideration to these factors, but we are concerned, in the same way as the noble and learned Baroness expressed, that withdrawing them completely will send a clear message to those involved in adoption that these factors are no longer to be considered.
In his response to the Select Committee on adoption report, the Children’s Minister argued that specifying ethnicity, language and so on would continue to place excessive emphasis on these factors and would therefore distort the way that they were applied. To be fair to the Minister, when we met him the other day he made a similar point. He said that in order to counterbalance the excessive emphasis, we had to go to the opposite extreme to ram the message home to local authorities and adoption agencies.
We do not consider that that is the right way forward. These are important and sensitive issues. Having the factors on the welfare checklist, balanced with other issues, would allow the flexibility needed to make an assessment of all the child’s needs in the proper context, which would achieve the Government’s stated aim. I look forward to other comments and the Minister’s response but we very much support the point made by the noble and learned Baroness in opening this debate and the eloquent arguments that were put in the adoption report in the first place.
Lord Nash
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for enabling me to clarify this point. I am not saying that it is the sole cause at all. It is one of a number of factors and we believe that our approach will be one element in helping to address this imbalance, which is leaving ethnic minority children short-changed.
Social workers will of course continue to pay considerable regard to ethnicity as they and the courts will be required to have regard to,
“the child’s age, sex, background and any of the child’s characteristics which the court or agency considers relevant”,
as part of the welfare checklist. These will obviously include ethnicity. We do not accept that our approach means that this will no longer be considered at all, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister, Lady Hamwee and Lady Benjamin, suggest. Indeed, in her speech the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred specifically to background. “Background” and “characteristics” must include ethnicity. That is a matter of plain English.
There is unequivocal evidence about the negative impact on their development of delay in placing children for adoption. Children need to form attachments with one or two main carers to develop emotionally and physically. There is also clear evidence about delay caused by practitioners seeking a “perfect” ethnic match. Professor Elaine Farmer, in An Investigation of Family Finding and Matching in Adoption, found that of the BME children in the sample who experienced delay, attempts to find a family of similar ethnicity was a factor in delay for 70% of them. A study by Julie Selwyn—
Baroness Butler-Sloss
Forgive me for interrupting, but I wonder if I could have the date of Elaine Farmer’s report.
Lord Nash
The noble and learned Baroness will get that information in a second.
A study by Julie Selwyn, Pathways to Permanence for Black, Asian and Mixed Ethnicity Children found that “same race” placements often dominated the child permanence report over and above other needs and that some social workers were so pessimistic about finding ethnically matched adopters that there was little family finding. She said:
“We found that local authorities were much quicker at changing the decision away from adoption for minority ethnic children than they were for white children. There were a great number of minority ethnic children for whom no families were found and the decision was changed away from adoption”.
Whatever the child may want, would they rather not be adopted at all or adopted late in life so that they cannot form those early attachments that we all know are so important?
The answer to the noble and learned Baroness’s question is 2010.
Amending Section 1(5) of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 does not mean that ethnicity should not be considered. A child’s adoptive family needs to be able to meet the child’s needs throughout his childhood, having regard to all the factors provided for in Section 1(2) and 1(4), rather than simply matching his or her ethnic background or not matching at all. We have published draft regulations on this for your Lordships’ consideration.
We recognise that practice is very important. That is why we are developing a range of training materials and other tools to support the continuous professional development needs of children’s social workers, supervising social workers, team managers and independent reviewing officers working in fostering and adoption. This is part of the Government’s drive to ensure that social workers working in the care and adoption systems have the knowledge and skills they need to get decisions right and weigh the impact of delay appropriately in the decisions that they make about placements for children in care.
Of course, we need more adopters from all ethnicities. That is why we have allocated over £150 million this year to help adoption agencies respond to the pressing needs of children awaiting adoption and a further £16 million over the next two years to expand the sector.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child does not require children to be placed with someone who shares exactly the same ethnicity but someone who respects it. Section 1 of the Act, as amended, will not prevent this. Many children in our society live with natural parents who do not entirely share their ethnicity. I urge the noble and learned Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I thank all those who have spoken on this amendment with a unanimity of support for it. I acknowledge, however, that Amendment 12 is more accurate since it recognises the different position of Wales, whereas my amendment was entirely devoted to the question of what was taken out and did not address the rest of the subsection, so I apologise for that. I think it should probably be Amendment 12 rather than Amendment 11.
The question of ethnicity, culture and so on is not just a question of black, white or brown. I happen to know Kenya quite well and there are 45 tribes and, I think, 47 languages there. It is totally different from Ghana or Nigeria, and so different from Jamaica. It would be very difficult to put a black child from Kenya with a black family from Jamaica. It would be much easier to put them with a white family. I have experienced the difficulties of a black family of whom the son, who is mixed race, is my godson, of whom I am extremely proud, and his black mother in the Cayman Islands had a very rough time because she came—according to the people in the Cayman Islands—who were black, from the trees. So when we are talking about ethnicity, we are not talking about black, white or brown, or indeed people from south-east Asia, whether they are Vietnamese, Malaysian or whatever it may be. What we are looking at is their cultural background, their ethnicity—and the ethnicity, as I say, of one black tribe. Indeed, those who come from certain parts of the United Kingdom are very different from other parts of the United Kingdom or other parts of Africa or Asia. It is important that we recognise that.
One of the most important points that were made in the speeches was about the issue of identity, and that follows very much from what I have just said. It was well put by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, to whom I am grateful. It is underlined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. I very much liked what the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said about respect. I am not quite sure how easy it would be to put into a list of what a judge must have regard to. I am not entirely sure whether we could require a judge to have regard to respect, but it was a very attractive idea and one that we should be looking at.
I take issue with the Minister: we are not suggesting for one moment that there should be a sameness of ethnicity, such that a Kenyan child would always have a Kenyan family. That is impossible and not even desirable. What is needed is an understanding by each of those who would wish to adopt of the cultural differences between them and the child whom they may adopt: the origins, language and culture of the child, as well as racial differences. These need to be understood and recognised, and that is the point of these two amendments.
If the Minister thinks that I am talking about same ethnicity—which is what he has just said—then I hope he will read what I have said in Hansard, both now and in my opening speech, because in no way did I intend that to be. There is a real danger, as has also been said, in replacing dogma with dogma—“I pick it up and adopt it with enthusiasm”—because that, I fear, is what this Government are proposing to do. Having come to the view, which I totally understand and with which I agree, that in the past there have been efforts to put a black child with a black family, regardless of their ethnicity, they are now saying that we must not consider it at all. That is a step too far, and I am very concerned about it. I am grateful to the Minister for saying that the Elaine Farmer report was from 2010, but we had evidence last year that that problem with social workers has largely disappeared.
If the amendment is not given the prominence of being in Section 1(5) but is neatly packaged away, as I have suggested, in subsection (4)(d), it will not get undue prominence. I must say respectfully that the Government are wrong in not listening to the unanimity of this Committee in what has been said today. I hope that they will go away and at ask at every level—not only at the level of junior Ministers but right to the top—whether we are really all wrong. I respectfully say that we are not. I shall bring back the amendment on Report and hope that everyone will support me on that occasion if the Government will not listen, but for the moment I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, it really is important that we do what is best for the potentially adopted child or young person. If we consider this carefully, we can see where some—I would use the word “some”—local authorities have been very poor in this respect. That is in the amount of time taken, the lack of care and attention to detail and the way things are organised. Quite frankly, that is not good enough but it is a very small proportion of local authorities. As we have heard, 80% of placements are carried out by local authorities, which themselves recognise the need for changes to be made in how some of them operate. Many have been hallmarks of good practice and have been highly praised by the Government and the voluntary sector. So the notion that the Secretary of State is given the power to say that all local authorities should cease placement is concerning to me, and I wonder why it is there.
I am not sure that I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, that this is some plot by the Government to privatise adoption—surely they would not—or push everything to the voluntary sector, because we know that the voluntary sector has said, “No, we don’t want to do that, and even if we did we wouldn’t be able to cope with it”. I am surprised that the noble Baroness would even consider such a daft notion. No, I think that this is about the Government. I well remember David Cameron, our Prime Minister, saying in the early days, “Look, I am concerned at the time that some potential adopters have to wait before all the paperwork and the processes are carried out”, and he was right to say that. This part of this wonderful Bill addresses that issue by saying, “Yes, we need to ensure that the amount of time taken is proportionate”.
Still, the notion that you give the Secretary of State—maybe Michael Gove’s successor in two, three or five years’ time—the power to come along with these draconian powers is quite concerning, and actually not in the best interests of children. I hope that, if we want to ensure changes, the Government will look at how we learn from best practice in local authorities and in the voluntary sector—not all the voluntary sector is perfect in this, of course; we think that because the tag is “voluntary sector”, they must be fantastic, but not all the voluntary sector is. We must learn best practice from the voluntary sector and from local authorities, and constantly lift the bar and learn and disseminate those best practices so that we do what is best for our children and young people.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said. I shall read out again one sentence from the conclusion of the adoption committee:
“We strongly encourage the Government to allow sufficient time for the sector to develop viable and achievable alternative proposals, before using the new power”.
Having said that, I have to say that I am not entirely opposed to the Government having this power. However, it should be a power of last resort, not a power that would be up front. The various amendments, if I may respectfully say so, are overly elaborate. I would have thought that it would be a good idea, if the Secretary of State had to give a direction, that such a direction gave the opportunity to the local authority to judicially review the Government if it thought that the direction was out of order under administrative law proposals. So I am not at all happy about these current amendments. I believe that the Government should have some power, but I do not like the way in which the power is framed at the moment. I hope that some sort of compromise might come on Report.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, for a number of reasons, I support my noble friends in their Amendment 13 and on clause stand part, failing the amendment—or something—getting through. I think that this is an excellent Bill in many ways, and I am very proud of it and welcome it. It would be a pity if it were spoilt by one particular little bit that, if implemented, would result in complete chaos in the system.
If new Section 3A(3)(c) were implemented, there would be complete chaos in the system and increased delays in the time that it took for a child to be adopted, because the voluntary sector simply does not have the capacity to take up the other 80%, and could not do so in the foreseeable future either. The Government are going too far too fast, particularly in the light of the changes that are currently being made in the adoption system. I would put a caveat next to that comment, because I think that we all believe that an extra month taken to find the “forever family” for a child waiting on the adoption list is a month too long. We do not want to increase delays; indeed, we want to shorten the period as much as possible, while at the same time getting it right. In the light of the fact that so many changes are taking place—local authorities are working together and the Government have already put changes in place—the clause as it stands should not be implemented until those changes have been allowed a reasonable amount of time to bed in. Subsections (3)(b) and (c) need to be taken out.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I put my name to this amendment. In paragraph 274 of our post-legislative scrutiny committee we said:
“We believe that the exclusion of descendants of adopted persons from the definition of relatives in section 98 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 creates an unfair anomaly in the legislation. This can be a cause of significant distress”.
Indeed, we had evidence to that effect. We continued:
“We recommend that the Government amend section 98 of the Act to bring within its scope the direct descendants of adopted persons. The Adoption Information and Intermediary Services (Pre-Commencement Adoptions) Regulations 2005 should be amended accordingly”.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has already said, there are a number of people in respect of whom this small but important amendment really matters. It came to my attention through a friend of mine who is a lawyer—he is actually present in this Room. He wrote to me including the letter from the lady to whom the noble Baroness has referred. There are others out there; it may be that there will be a number of people who will benefit from this, and we know there are. There may be cost implications, except that they will be likely to pay so it would be their cost.
Perhaps more importantly, this is an anomaly. Other people out there who are related to those who are adopted, and to birth parents and so on, have the right to this information. The issue is not whether it is sensitive or whether people should know. It is why so many groups should be allowed to find out and this group not be allowed to find out. The amendment cuts through this sensitivity and complexity. There is actually no complexity; it is an anomaly which requires to be put right. For the Government to hide behind reasons of sensitivity and complexity when all the information is there anyway for everybody else seems at the very least disingenuous. I strongly support the amendment.
Lord Nash
I thank my noble friend Lady Hamwee, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, for bringing this important matter to the Government’s attention, both earlier this year through the report of the Lords Select Committee on Adoption Legislation and through this proposed clause.
I entirely understand why the descendants of adopted people may want to find out more about their biological heritage, particularly where there may be a hereditary medical condition. The Government are open to the possibility of reform in this area, but we believe that more detailed thought is needed about the implications and practicalities of any legislative change. For example, we must think carefully about how more information might be provided to descendants, and we need to balance this against the rights and wishes of the adopted adults themselves and their birth families.
This is a complex and sensitive area which needs careful consideration before any change to legislation is considered. That is why the Government are exploring with the Law Commission whether this issue might be included within a possible project as part of the commission’s 12th programme of law reform.
The amendment would enable descendants of an adopted person to find out about the adopted person’s background. It applies to those adopted before commencement of the 2002 Act. Such adoptions were carried out privately and secretly, with very little information shared with the adopted child or his or her birth parents. If a mother, who may never have told anyone about an adoption, was approached out of the blue by her son asking about his adoption, that could have a devastating effect on the individual and the whole family.
We fully appreciate the wishes of descendents and there will be examples—
Baroness Butler-Sloss
I apologise to the Minister. Under this proposal, there is no suggestion that there should be any direct relationship between the person seeking the information and the person who has been adopted. It would be done through an intermediary, which is the whole purpose. I urge the Minister not to go down that line because that is not what we are asking for.
Lord Nash
I assure the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, that we are not seeking to be disingenuous about this and we do regard the issues as complicated. My noble friend Lady Hamwee asked what evidence the Government have to suggest that if we make this provision it could open the floodgates or that the new clause would lead to unwelcome contact. The answer is that we do not have any evidence, which is why we would like the Law Commission to consider it and are prepared to provide funds. I hope that I have provided sufficient reassurance on the amendment and I therefore urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Children and Families Bill
Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I am the very last Back-Bencher to speak today. I hope that I am not the least. I welcome this Bill. I think that many aspects of it are excellent. The Government approach to improving the path to adoption and reducing the time taken in care proceedings and achieving the adoption status for children is excellent. However, inevitably, there must be some tweaking here and there, and there are some issues that require amendments in Committee. Much of what I will say will have been covered already. However, as a former family judge, I feel that on a children’s Bill I should, even at this late stage, set out the points about which I have some concern. I do it therefore without apology.
I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for giving me the opportunity to discuss some of these issues with him yesterday. I am also extremely grateful to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, who took the trouble to call me in to discuss these issues some months ago. That was very nice of him and I much enjoyed our meeting. I also wish him well on his first major Bill.
I will make some brief points on Parts 1 and 2 of the Bill, on adoption, private law and public law cases and children trafficked into this country. I am a co-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Human Trafficking and a trustee of the Human Trafficking Foundation. I am also a governor of Coram and have other interests in the register connected with BAAF, NSPCC and so on. The adoption committee, of which I was chairman, supported the Government’s steps to improve the adoption process. However, we raised various issues and I select a few, confident that other members of my committee have already raised the others.
On Clause 1, I am concerned about the provision concerning foster parents leading to adoption, for this reason: it is absolutely crucial that the Department for Education gives guidance on the importance of pre-placement work done by social workers, so that social workers are not seen as placing children with foster parents without having taken care to see whether the parents are capable of taking the children back. I was delighted to hear that families will be consulted first, but social workers must not jump the gun. Social workers need to be aware that they must not breach the human rights of birth parents and children, as has been said, under Article 8 of the convention by not doing sufficient preliminary work before placing children with those fostering with a view to adoption. Early intervention with birth families may make it unnecessary to remove children. I was disturbed to learn that money was being taken from early intervention to support adoption. It seems to me that money is needed for both.
I am also concerned, as many other noble Lords have said they are, about Clause 2. In our adoption committee, we were very concerned about the evidence that we received on the question of ethnicity on the basis that if it is out altogether, social workers may go the other way. We had evidence to that effect, with social workers saying, “Ignore ethnicity—it is no longer there. It has been taken out”. I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, so in our report we recommended putting that factor along with others in Section 1(4)(d) of the Adoption and Children Act 2002. I hope that the Minister will listen on this point, which has been canvassed across the House already. I also put down the marker that post-adoption support is essential. The Government are going some way with the passport but have not yet gone far enough.
In our adoption report, we raised the issue of children from abroad who are in the process of being adopted by English adopters and are living with them but who have, until the adoption process is completed, no actual legal status with that family. I do not think that this has been dealt with yet. Those prospective adopters need some legal status to deal with the children whom they intend to adopt. There was a possibility for a residence order, but in a later part of the Bill that is being got rid of. I am not sure that the introduction of arrangements in their place would give the prospective adopters parental responsibility. The foreign birth family may or may not by then have parental responsibility under our law if the adoption process has taken effect in the overseas country. No one else in this country will have parental responsibility, so it is crucial that the prospective adopters who have children living with them have it in order to deal with schools, health and other such issues. I also put in a plea for the Department for Education to get on to the Home Office to hurry up immigration procedures for children in the process of adoption.
However, my major concern on this Bill, along with others who have already spoken on it, is Clause 11. I hope that the House will forgive me if I dwell on this for a moment as a former judge who tried this sort of case. In the majority of cases where parents separate, they come to a sensible arrangement for the children and the involvement of both parents. In some cases, mediation helps that process but there is a hard core of parents who fight out their failed relationship in the arena of the court over child issues. The relationship has soured and become corrosive. One or both parents become unreasonable and it is difficult to get it through to them that the child’s welfare is the overriding concern of the court and more important than the right that some parents feel they have in the arrangements for the children. Mother and fathers can be utterly unreasonable and vindictive towards the other parent. I have seen it again and again in the cases that I have tried. I take the view that in this highly charged state, parents are the last people who should be making decisions about their children’s relationship with the other parent. Some mothers, for instance, cannot believe that their children love the other parent. How could they, when she hates him?
There is the overriding presumption in the Children Act 1989 that the welfare of children is the paramount consideration. Clause (11)(1) sets up a second presumption, inserted by Clause (11)(2), which is girded around with a degree of protection, if not in the interests of the child. A judge or family magistrate starts none the less with a clash of two potentially opposing presumptions: paramountcy of the child’s welfare and presumption that involvement of the parent will further the child’s welfare. Judges and magistrates may disentangle this, and come to a balanced decision, but this is an area of private family law where both parents will now, in the absence of legal aid, be unrepresented and appearing before the judge or magistrates without lawyers. They will be trying to sort out how to arrange the future of the children in this atmosphere of failure of the relationship and a high degree of tension, and no one other than the court to help them.
Clause 11 is a laudable attempt to involve parents, principally fathers, who might not otherwise be involved with their children. We have to be seriously concerned about a substantial group of children whose fathers have no further, or virtually no further, contact with them after separation from the mother. But the wording of Clause (11)(2), aided by press publicity, which has not always been helpful to the understanding of the intention of Clause 11, has raised unrealistic expectations that in future the parent, usually the father, will be entitled to play a substantial part in the future life of the child, regardless of issues about the child’s best interests. Judges and family magistrates will not of course make orders that do not put the child’s welfare first. In this hard core of cases there will then be a serious gap between expectation and the reality of the court decision.
Family academics, particularly from Oxford, Coram, the NSPCC and other groups with real knowledge of what goes on at the coal face, are expressing their major concern about the insertion of a second presumption in child legislation; I share it entirely. I suggest that the word “presume” should be deleted and the words “pay particular regard to” inserted. This would highlight the importance of the involvement of both parents without the legal problem of competing presumptions and, I hope, lower the degree of false expectations by parents of the degree of involvement that can be achieved. It might also be a good idea to have a definition of the word “involvement” to identify direct or indirect involvement and not to be taken to mean any specific quantity of a child’s time.
There is an issue about getting rid of the words “residence” and “contact”, a brave effort by the Government to cut out words that carry baggage, as did “custody” and “access”, but one that I fear is likely to be ineffective. I also fear that the punters who want to fight out their failed relationship through child proceedings will not be fooled. However, there are issues relating to international relations, for example the Hague convention on child abduction and possibly the Brussels II Regulation, and the need for a parent from whose care a child has been abducted to be able to prove a right of custody in order to invoke the support of the child abduction convention. There are also other people who are not parents who may need a form of residence order and the usefulness of parental responsibility for a child in their care. The word “arrangements” may need to be modified and more carefully defined.
The funding of experts is a major issue that I will not go into at this hour. I have some concerns about the need for a greater degree of flexibility in the 26-weeks care proceedings if social workers do not get their act together quickly. I very much agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield.
My last point concerns an area that is not in the Bill—the protection of children trafficked into this country. These children almost certainly do not have a parent in this country, or if their parent is here, he or she will have trafficked the child. The local authority of the area in which child or young person is identified as trafficked has a duty to accommodate such a young person under Section 20 of the Children Act 1989. Accommodation does not include sharing parental responsibility with the birth parents. Parental responsibility is given to a local authority only after the grant of an interim care order. I do not suggest that every local authority notified that a trafficked child needs accommodation should seek an interim care order because that would be time-consuming and expensive. I suggest instead that when a child or young person is identified by the national referral mechanism as trafficked, the local authority required to accommodate the child under Section 20 should also automatically be granted parental responsibility for that child while the child is accommodated by it. It would cost nothing, but it would mean that someone would take genuine responsibility for that child in this country. The noble Lord, Lord McColl, pointed out how many trafficked children go missing. Local authorities need to realise that accommodated children need much more care than they currently believe they need.
There are many other issues about which I have some concern. They will arise in Committee, and I foresee a lively time. I apologise for taking so long, but this is an area about which I feel very strongly and have some knowledge.
Adoption: Adoption Legislation Committee Reports
Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Baroness Butler-Sloss
To move that this House takes note of the reports of the Adoption Legislation Committee on Adoption: Pre-Legislative Scrutiny (1st Report, Session 2012–13, HL Paper 94) and Adoption: Post-Legislative Scrutiny (2nd Report, Session 2012–13, HL Paper 127).
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I was delighted and honoured to be asked to chair the first post-legislative scrutiny Select Committee on the current adoption legislation. As we went along, we also became a pre-legislative scrutiny committee. Consequently, we published an interim report to express our views on the first two clauses of the Children and Families Bill in December 2012 and our final report in March 2013.
I begin by thanking the committee staff and our specialist adviser, Professor Harris-Short, for their dedication—I use that word deliberately—extremely hard work and the efficiency of their support in the evidence-gathering and in writing the two reports. I am also very grateful for the enthusiasm and enormously valuable input from the members of the committee. It would be invidious to single out any particular organisations among those which gave evidence, and we are extremely grateful to all of them for their invaluable contributions. In writing each report, we felt that we were running to keep up as we received, and had to digest, the Government’s adoption initiatives at short notice. Our committee staff wrote and rewrote the reports to meet those initiatives and our views on the adoption clauses in the Children and Families Bill.
We heard evidence over several months and made a considerable number of recommendations. In the time available, I will pick out several of those that I consider the most important and refer to the Government’s initial response. Inevitably, I shall omit important issues. As we considered the evidence presented to us, we had very much in mind the right of the child to be brought up in his or her birth family, whenever possible, and the right of parents and their children to respect for their family life. Children should not be removed from their birth family unless their welfare requires it, but, sadly, not all children are able to remain with their birth families. The welfare of the child is the paramount consideration.
It was abundantly clear to us from the evidence that there is no need for far-reaching changes to the adoption legislation. The main issues of concern we found were the unacceptable delays in the adoption process, failures of the processes and practice, and the shortage of adopters. Even for babies and young children, who are seen as easier to adopt, the delays are significant. The average age of a child at adoption is three years and eight months, and the average length of time taken from entry into care to adoption is two years and seven months. The longer children wait to be placed, the more difficult the adoption outcome for them and for the adopters.
From the evidence presented to us, we identified numerous failures of procedures and, particularly, of practice contributing to those delays. Consequently, much of the evidence we received focused on those failures and how they might be addressed effectively. Our recommendations have therefore been largely directed to those issues. They are set out at some length in our final report. The initial response of the Government sets out sensible steps to be taken—and steps that are being taken—to reduce delay, but there is nothing much new or that we did not know before we started our investigations.
There is undoubtedly potential for more children to be adopted. Adoption is unique as a change of the status of the child who becomes the child of the new family. The Government are to be congratulated on recognising the importance of adoption and seeking practical ways to improve the situation in guidance as well as proposed legislation. However, there are not enough potential adopters and, further, there are many children suitable for adoption and placed for adoption—that is, ready from the court procedures to be adopted—but who are not adopted for lack of available adoptive parents. In March 2012, there were 4,263 approved adopters and more than 4,600 children who had completed the adoption process and were ready to be matched with adopters. The process of matching is slow. In addition, there were many more children for whom an adoption decision had been made but who had not completed the court process. Until now, potential adopters have been largely recruited by individual local authorities and retained by them on their books. The national register is an excellent initiative and will, I hope, mean that approved adopters will be more widely available, which should improve the matching process from a wider pool.
However, adoption is only one relatively small solution to the large numbers of children entering the care system. For various reasons, adoption is not appropriate for many children. On 31 March 2012, there were 67,050 children in care, of whom more than 60,000 were placed away from their families. Proper provision has to be made for these vulnerable children who need to be looked after away from their birth parents. All these children need to be loved, cared for and provided with stability and long-term security. Most of them may be cared for by other members of their family, friends, special guardianship or long-term fostering. However, a danger was articulated to me by a district judge this week that the 26-week requirement for the completion of care proceedings may concentrate on process rather than on the welfare of the child and may create injustices through the inability of some social workers to make adequate assessments of the birth family and of the wider family who might otherwise be able to take over the care of the child. I therefore stress the importance of early family conferencing throughout all local authorities.
The committee was concerned that the Government’s proper concern with and focus on increasing adoption may risk disadvantaging those children in care for whom adoption is not an option. Improving the outcomes for all children should be the priority. All routes to permanence merit equal attention and investment. In the initial response, the Government have set out a number of steps already taken to improve the fostering process and commissioned research on special guardianship.
The committee believes that early intensive work with birth parents where there is capacity to change has the potential to allow the children to remain safely with their parent or parents and would reduce the number of children entering the care system. There are excellent government-supported early-intervention initiatives, but the committee was concerned that a substantial sum—£150 million—is to be removed from early intervention to help local authorities improve their adoption procedures. The Government’s initial response has, rather surprisingly, been to point out that fostering for adoption is a form of early intervention. That is true, but it removes the child from the birth family. Early intervention, working with the birth family, can be successful and, if so, the child can remain in the family and fostering for adoption would not be necessary. It would be most unfortunate if the potential benefit of early intervention were to be undermined by the greater focus on adoption.
We are told that a significant increase in the budget is being allocated to early intervention. I should like to hear from the Minister how that increase is to be distributed. I provided the Minister with my draft earlier today.
On post-adoption support, most children are adopted from the care system and most of them, other than babies, will have had unhappy experiences in their birth family, which is why they have been removed from the family. Adoption provides the opportunity for the adopted children to have a secure and stable childhood. It does not rid them of the unhappy early part of their lives. Some of these children present major problems for their new, adoptive families and both the children and their new parents often need a great deal of practical help, counselling and therapeutic help. It is much to the credit of the Government that they now recognise the importance of post-adoption support. The adoption passport will be available online to be accessed by potential adopters and sets out the help which may be available to them.
The committee recommended that there should be a statutory duty on local authorities and other service-commissioning bodies to co-operate, to ensure the provision of post-adoption support. The Government have not responded directly to that recommendation—it would be fair to say that they avoided doing so—and I hope that it will be seriously considered when the Children and Families Bill reaches this House.
We invited adopted and looked-after children to come and talk to some of the members of the committee; we are indebted to the Children’s Rights Director, Roger Morgan, for arranging for these children to come. Both groups ranged in age from about 17 down to eight and were most informative, particularly the younger children when they developed sufficient confidence to tell us what they really thought. The two points I pick out today were said by both groups of children. First, they were not consulted. They did not expect that their views would be accepted, but at least they might be asked. Most of them were very critical of independent reviewing officers whom they had not met or who were not helpful to them; to the contrary were one or two children whose independent reviewing officers had done a very good job with them. Some children were critical of their guardians, who neither spoke nor listened to them. I am disappointed that the Government have rejected our recommendation that IROs should be genuinely independent—it is an important issue—but I hope that something effective will be done about the IRO case overload.
The second point the children raised concerned the training in schools of other pupils about the meaning of adoption and the meaning of being “in care”. Much more importantly, however, they focused on the training needed by teachers. Two adopted children told us that they were criticised by their teachers for being unable to complete a family tree. They were actually put in front of the class and told that they were being unhelpful. I cannot believe any teacher could be so insensitive as to tell an adopted child that he or she was not supportive of the class when they were unable to produce a family tree of their new family. I am glad that the Government are looking at this important issue of teachers.
I turn briefly to outcomes and data. The Government have rightly concentrated on the importance of improving processes, but there has not yet been sufficient focus on outcomes. Some adoptions fail, with disastrous results for the child and for the adopters and with considerable additional cost to the state in taking a seriously damaged child back into care. We need much more data and research on breakdown and how it can be avoided. The Government say that they are looking at it. I hope very much that they take some effective steps to find out what lies behind these breakdowns.
It would also be helpful if a child’s passage from the moment of going into care to being placed in adoption, and thereafter, was monitored so that one has a graph of what happened to that particular child, which might also help with the issue of breakdown. We need much more data and research on breakdown and how it can be avoided, and I do not apologise for saying that again.
The other recommendations the Government have rejected are likely to figure in amendments to the Children and Families Bill when it comes to this House. I beg to move.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I thank all those who have contributed to the debate for the absolutely fascinating speeches that we have heard this afternoon. They have ranged widely over all sorts of areas of child need and welfare.
I say to the Minister that I personally accept the very good work that is already being done by the Government on adoption and, indeed, fostering, as well as in dealing with children’s homes, as my noble friend Lord Listowel said. However, will the Minister, and particularly his officials, look at the very cogent evidence that we received on the danger of entirely excluding ethnicity from the legislation? We got that evidence from people whom we thought were worthy of listening to and whom we would have thought the Government would think were worthy of listening to. My recollection is that Coram and BAAF were among them. As I think the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, there is a danger that social workers who make ethnicity too important a consideration will say, “Well, now it’s gone, we have to ignore it”. That is what the people on the ground who know about it were telling us. Therefore, I should be grateful if the Minister’s officials would have a look at the evidence that we received. They have all that evidence and it is well worth looking at.
In this debate there have been some preliminary shots across the bow concerning what is likely to be coming in the Children and Families Bill. As we heard from the Minister, that is now likely to be in July—and, I assume, well beyond July. The Minister is likely to be challenged by me, among others, over several issues to which I have not yet referred. I look forward to those opportunities and hope that the Government will be a listening Government on matters which we will press and on which the Government might be well advised to listen carefully.
Adoption Agencies (Panel and Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2012
Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Butler-Sloss
That the Grand Committee takes note of the Adoption Agencies (Panel and Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2012 (SI 2012/1410).
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, in putting my name to this Motion, I should like to make clear that it is not in any way a Motion of Regret, nor indeed any intention to criticise the government policy on adoption. As chairman of the Select Committee on Adoption Legislation, I feel that I should highlight possible implications in relation to the statutory instrument that comes into force on 1 September. I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hill, and Tim Loughton MP for seeing the noble Baronesses, Lady Morris and Lady Howarth, and me last week. We had a most constructive discussion on the statutory instrument and other aspects of the work of our committee.
To start with, I was rather taken aback by the statutory instrument being laid and coming into force so quickly, when we are actually hearing evidence about the duty of adoption panels to recommend whether a child should be placed for adoption. I should correct an error on my part during our evidence-taking, when I suggested that the Government were saying that panels were to be abolished. I was wrong and apologise for saying it. I now understand that the statutory instrument we are discussing today was already in the pipeline while our committee was being set up. However, it raises a rather more important issue in that it will come into effect while we are hearing conflicting evidence about the benefits as well as the disadvantages of this part of the work of the panels. This is evidence that the committee of which I am chairman believes should be brought to the attention both of the department and of all those who are engaged in the adoption process.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
Before I continue, I should, with a further apology, make a correction: I went to see the two Ministers with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee—not the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth. I apologise to the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Howarth.
As a former judge, I have my doubts whether the adoption judge hearing a placement application would be able to carry out a task similar to the panel, and whether they would have the evidence and the opportunity to carry out the detailed scrutiny expected by the Norgrove committee. I have some questions for the Government. On the assumption that the Government go ahead with removing this duty from panels, what will be put in its place? Will an independent person other than the decision-maker pull together all the relevant evidence about the child at an early stage and advise, or will there be a gap, with the potential for drift? Will the whole burden be placed on the decision-maker alone?
Is the department looking at active involvement of the IRO and, if so, recognising that the IRO would have to have a much reduced current case load? The adoption committee has not yet—and I emphasis this—formulated any conclusions on any of the issues that I have raised. However, we are concerned that there is a conflict of evidence and consequently some degree of confusion over the removal of the panel from this task. When the statutory instrument comes into effect on 1 September, the committee is concerned about this degree of conflict and confusion and what advice the department is going to give, particularly to local authorities, to resolve these issues and to avoid drift, lack of momentum and possible delay, with the case not being in order for the judge. I beg to move.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Baroness very much for bringing this matter to the Committee, and for her quite splendid chairmanship of our committee. I thank the Minister and Tim Loughton for the meeting last week. I am very flattered to have been confused with the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, I must say. The meeting was extremely useful and I hope that we made it clear that members of the Select Committee share with the Government the objective of the best possible outcome. We have received powerful evidence about the impact of lack of permanence, particularly in the early years.
Given the jigsaw of interlocking procedures, it is important for the Government to explain why they are taking one step of several steps that may be available, and which I suspect will be taken quite soon, when a number have been identified. It is not always entirely clear why one step should be taken in isolation. I appreciate that one can argue it the other way—that if you have identified a step you should get on and do it—but this is quite a complex area.
The Explanatory Memorandum says that the objective of the regulations is to remove both delay and duplication. Delay is, of course, a loaded term. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, has experienced, as I have, that when one is arguing planning applications in local government, delay does not actually go to quality. She is agreeing with me. Taking time may sometimes be necessary. Taking time unnecessarily is a bad thing, of course. The duplication that the Explanatory Memorandum refers to, as the Norgrove report did, is between the panel and the court. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, will know how long a judge is typically given to read the papers—I suspect less time than a panel is, although I am always amazed at how quickly panels assimilate information.
The Government are not pointing to duplication between the panel and the decision-maker, who does not need the prior work of the panel, in the view of the Government. It seems to me that the decision-maker must need the same information as the panel, and Coram, to which the noble and learned Baroness has referred, regards the panel as providing quality assurance. Coram has given us some very helpful evidence, and the noble and learned Baroness has referred to the possible slippage in quality because of the loss of the independent element.
Coram also talks about adoption decision-making being delegated to less senior staff or the creation of a dedicated role that would not be integrated in the same way that the current post is. It also talks about the removal of independent panel chairs, and we have heard some very forceful evidence, particularly from BAAF, about the contribution made by independent members. The expertise from outside the authority brought to panels is really quite important. Alongside that, we are hearing quite a lot of concern about the lack of experience of adoption work among social workers. We asked the Local Government Association for its comments on these regulations, and, after a moment’s thought, one of the councillors who was at our session more or less said that authorities would invent a structure to replace panels. Admittedly, she might have been thinking about the abolition of panels as a whole, but it was a very practical response. If an authority sees a need to bring in outside expertise, it will find a way to do so.
The Government say that panels add no value, but I wonder whether the converse of that is the risk of abolishing what is excellent practice. We have heard that, in practice, panels meet frequently—weekly if necessary. If they do not meet often enough and are causing delay, their practice needs to be improved. I also wonder whether, if a panel is retained for matching a child with a family, that panel would not need to cover much of the groundwork that would have been covered by the panel dealing with placement.
When we met the Minister, Mr Loughton, he told us about the visits that he has made to sit in on and observe panels. He commented on the amount of material that panel members are expected to absorb, but he did not seem to say that they are failing. There are professionals, sometimes from different professions, who become skilled through the job that they are doing. I have to say that, as a society, we are very lucky that there are people who are prepared to do this job. I am not convinced that they should lose this role.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I thank all the speakers. I am particularly grateful to my fellow members of the adoption committee for having come this afternoon on the last day of term, and to all those who have spoken. I am also very grateful to the Minister for his thoughtful response. I do not at all doubt the commitment of the Minister in the other place to adoption. I very much admire his commitment. I am just not entirely sure that he and the noble Lord the Minister have totally taken on board my major concern, which is about independent scrutiny of the work of the decision-maker. I am not certain that the decision-maker will, pulling everything in together, have quite the same opportunities as somebody else who can advise, assess and monitor. Will the team behind the Minister look at whether they accept that there is a potential gap, and how they might give advice to the local authority on that potential gap, which may not be entirely met by the decision-maker, who will end up with a greater burden?
The points made by Coram, in particular, about the task of the decision-maker—the Minister will see this when he gets the Coram written evidence—are very interesting. I would be grateful if he would reflect, with those behind him, on whether the removal of this particular work of the panel will leave something that will need to be filled at some stage. The inspection by Ofsted will be absolutely crucial. I hope any inspection by Ofsted will move into that area and not simply look at issues of delay, but look more keenly. If not Ofsted, somebody will have to look at it because something is being lost, although I understand the reasons why the Government are doing it. Having thanked everybody very much, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Young People: Parenthood
Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
We should say many things to young children in schools. For all education, my starting point would be the importance of English and maths. A decent grounding in those matters is most likely to lead children to have successful lives, and many of the desirable outcomes that we all want from education are more likely to appear.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, while I accept that English and maths are extremely important, does the Minister accept that the public have an interest in the upbringing of children, because if children are not well brought up we pay for it in all sorts of ways? Consequently, in so far as citizenship or anything akin to citizenship is taught in schools, will the Minister not consider whether parenting should be part of citizenship?
Lord Hill of Oareford
Certainly, I agree with the noble and learned Baroness’s underlying point that we all have a shared interest in making sure that children are brought up as well as possible. It is a point that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, made as well, so we have a common interest. On the specific point about citizenship and the content of that within the curriculum, as the noble and learned Baroness will know we are looking at the whole question of the national curriculum. I will relay her point to my honourable friend Mr Gibb for him to reflect on.
Disabled People: Access to School Examination System
Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, the point about the Sunday Times article, which my noble friend has discussed with me, is that it created the impression that there have been big changes to the system of reasonable adjustments to allow pupils with disabilities to have extra time. In fact, the article was misleading in that regard, in that what the JCQ has been changing is the need for evidence that pupils satisfy the requirement. The reason for that is to make sure that the extra time made available and other reasonable adjustments help those who most need it and to make sure that the system has integrity.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, is the Minister aware that there are genuinely disabled students who have great difficulties with the examination boards, which will not take account of medical evidence? I know of an example of a girl who cannot see properly but the exam board is not providing the exam papers in such a way that she can read them and will not accept her very distinguished medical evidence. It is an extremely serious situation.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, if the noble and learned Baroness would like to speak or write to me about that example, I shall see if there is anything that we can do to follow it up with the individual examination board. These are matters for the individual boards but I should be happy to pursue them.