Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Howe of Idlicote and Lord Judd

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Tuesday 18th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords, I too begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for his amendment on mental health and the corporate parenting principle. I tabled an amendment on this issue in Committee and I am pleased to see that our concerns are being addressed. Ensuring that the mental and physical health of children in care reaches a point of parity is a welcome amendment. It represents an important statement of principle and I am pleased to see steps being taken towards achieving the ambitions set out in the Government’s Future in Mind strategy.

Principles are important, but so too are actions. I should like to use the remainder of my time to speak in support of the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. There are currently more than 70,000 children in care in England—70,000 children who no longer live in their family home and who are reliant on the support of the state for all their needs. We have a duty to care for their physical safety, but we have a fundamental responsibility to care for their emotional well-being as well. It is not enough to remove a child from their family home and hope that this will be enough to change their lives. We must aim higher than this. We must aim to provide them with homes that are far better than the family homes they have just left.

It is vital that we find proactive ways of supporting children in care. The first step in this process is to identify the types of support from which a child in care would benefit most. To do this, we need to introduce mental health assessments for children entering care and throughout their time in the care system. The point at which they enter care is crucial, as other noble Lords have said. If a child’s first experiences of life in care are positive—if it becomes a space through which their mental health and emotional needs are attended to—then they will be so much more likely to thrive and have the confidence to take advantage of the opportunities afforded to them. If problems are left unidentified, this can have particularly grave consequences for looked-after children.

The research report, Achieving Emotional Wellbeing for Looked After Children, published by the NSPCC last year, highlighted how children are particularly vulnerable when they experience poor emotional well-being while in care. This report illustrated the way in which poor mental health can lead to placement instability which, in turn, leads to a further decline in emotional well-being.

A teenage girl called Emily told the NSPCC about the impact that placement instability was having on her emotional well-being. She said:

“I can’t cope any more. I have been in care my whole life and have been pushed around between foster families and adopted families. I feel so let down, broken hearted and like I don’t belong anywhere. No one wants me to be here so maybe I should do them a favour”.

What a horrible thought to come from anybody, let alone a child of that age.

Sadly, many children who enter care come from chaotic circumstances. Often they have never known what it was like to live in a safe, stable and secure family home. Entering care should be about giving them this stability but, sadly, this is not the experience of many looked-after children. Having the right support in place to help children make sense of their experiences from before they entered care is crucial. If we can find ways to help them manage their emotions in a safe way, many of the challenging behaviours that often lead to placement breakdown could be avoided. We can, and surely must, do better by these children. This strikes me as an eminently sensible place from which to start.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I too support very strongly this group of amendments. I am very glad that issues about emotional stability, and that dimension of life, have been stressed in this debate. They were stressed particularly powerfully by the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin.

I have always thought that structures and systems themselves never achieve anything. They can be very effective in supporting and providing the right context, but what matters are the values, principles and sensitivity of the people working within the system. This again emphasises the importance of the emotional dimension. I was very glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, had the strength to be prepared to use the word love again. It is a word we should discuss more often in our considerations of these matters, because the tragedy is that so many of these children have never encountered love. The other terribly important thing is that they should be able to form stable, lasting, enduring relationships. Ideally, such relationships are there in the family. But if you are dependent upon a system, they are not obviously there, and therefore continuity of relationships is terribly important.

I want to make one point which is not in any way to argue against what the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said so powerfully. We should be careful about exonerating the formal educational system from its responsibilities. It is often in the context of formal education that things begin to be noticed. There therefore needs to be an excellent working relationship between the formal educational system and social services. There should be a natural opportunity for people to share notes and responsibility for how the situation might be resolved. When our approach to education emphasises achievement all the time, I sometimes worry that the community dimension of education is being obscured. What matters is that there are space and resources within the education system to make allowances for children who have special needs. Again, that depends on a close working relationship between social services and the formal educational system. In a comprehensive school near where I live in Cumbria excellent work is done in this area. What I really admire about it is that this has become the concern of the whole staff. All the staff are involved. When children have special needs the staff ask what the school is doing to meet that situation, provide care, love and relationships within the school and enable other students to take their share of responsibility. We need a very close working relationship between the formal educational system and social services.

Armed Forces Bill

Debate between Baroness Howe of Idlicote and Lord Judd

Wednesday 27th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, at the outset I declare an interest: I had a short service commission in the RAF and later in life—I always feel nervous about remembering this, with my noble friend sitting right in front of me—I had the joy, privilege and excitement of being Minister for the Royal Navy when we had such service Ministers. I thank my fellow sponsors, who have stayed throughout all the debates to be here, which I appreciate. I also thank most warmly all those who have helped me to prepare my input for these deliberations and, of course, not least, Child Soldiers International. I do not always agree with it on all its objectives but, my goodness, it does some first-class work, as I think everyone who has come across it would agree. I also thank my own Front Bench for the co-operation, advice and discussions we have had together.

The Minister has been most courteous throughout, which I will refer to in a moment. I also want to put firmly on record my appreciation of the committed—and on occasion inspired—work done by those within the armed services who have had responsibility for putting into effect the arrangements which are in place in the three services. What I have to say is in no way a criticism of them but simply a matter of how we can get things better and right.

The Minister has, quite rightly, from time to time emphasised the importance of substantiated evidence. This very day, I came into possession of a letter sent by a very distinguished former serving officer in the Royal Navy, Commodore Paul Branscombe, who was the deputy controller of the well-established Armed Forces welfare service, SSAFA. He has given evidence both to the Defence Committee and the Armed Forces Select Committee in the other place. He writes:

“I served in the Armed Forces for 33 years and have worked in Armed Forces welfare organisations for 15 more years. During this time I have become convinced that 16 is simply too young to be recruited. At this age recruits are not emotionally, psychologically or physically mature enough to withstand the demands placed upon them. Furthermore, the developing nature of the adolescent mind in regard to risk-taking behaviour makes it questionable whether their consent in this is fully informed in a genuinely meaningful rather than purely technical manner. This mental immaturity also makes them highly vulnerable to malign influences and culture. Many of the welfare issues I have encountered amongst Armed Forces personnel during and after service have been related to enlisting too young, not just in terms of the immediate impact on individuals but also in the transmitted effect upon families, which can continue long after service ceases”.

That is an important comment to share as we discuss this matter.

My own position on the issue of 16 or not is ambivalent. I can see arguments in favour, but there are huge challenges, which we must all take very seriously indeed. Those who discard the validity of 16 must also face up to the fact that we are talking more and more about engaging the young in full responsibility for citizenship with the vote at 16—this is widely advocated—and that has implications for what we are debating. I also realise that it is very easy for middle-class people like me to be concerned about an issue, but when you look at the social conditions from which many recruits come—the real social conditions and the real culture within which they grow up—it is necessary to ask what alternatives we are proposing that give some opportunity for preparing for stability and responsibility in life. That is an important issue.

In addition, if we come down, even on points, as in my own case, in favour of the present system, we have very heavy duties of care. We were pioneers of the UN convention on children—not just participants and signatories but pioneers in framing and drafting that convention. We need to live by what we were advocating, and that needs to operate in all spheres. My noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe put it very well in Committee when he quoted from Article 1 of the convention:

“‘For the purposes of the present Convention, a child means every human being below the age of 18 years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier … In all actions concerning children … whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration’”.—[Official Report, 3/3/16; col. GC 162.]

Therefore, they are in the services—there can be no doubt about that, and we have been discussing many of the things that will affect them there. However, we cannot, especially in Parliament, escape our responsibility of care for them as children. That just will not go away, and nor should it.

These amendments are not about eliminating recruiting at 16, although, as I have said, I have great respect and time for those who believe that we should take this course. These amendments are about taking our responsibilities of care seriously. Here, I hope I will be forgiven if I quote what I said in Committee. I was very struck by what happened back in September 2011 when the Minister speaking for the Government, the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, said that,

“the noble Lord, Lord Judd, seeks to include service personnel under the age of 18 as being within the group covered by the Armed Forces covenant report, which is a laudable objective. However, the guidance accompanying the Armed Forces covenant, which we published on 16 May, is quite explicit. It states that: ‘Special account must be taken of the needs of those under 18 years of age’. I can assure noble Lords that we will not forget this aspect of our responsibilities for service personnel. The Armed Forces covenant report is to be a report about the effects of service on servicepeople, so as regards Amendment 6, minors under the age of 18 are already within the definition of servicepeople in the clause. I hope that the noble Lord will accept that”.—[Official Report, 6/9/11; col. 39.]

I accepted it, and I looked forward to seeing what the response would be. I was therefore somewhat surprised, as I indicated to the Grand Committee, that in the covenant report last year there was not a mention of this particular group of young people in the armed services. I just do not believe that that is fulfilling the spirit of what the Government—I am sure in good faith—said on that occasion. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond more reasonably and positively today.

Since the Committee, the Minister has written me a long letter. It would take far too long at this stage to go through it all, but I think it raises, in many ways, more questions than it answers. I hope, therefore, that he will put a copy in the Library, together with his other correspondence to me, so that those who are concerned about this issue can see it—it is quite important.

I will conclude my arguments tonight—time is running out—by saying that I do not doubt the Minister’s good intentions. However, duty of care means duty of care. We spend many hours in this House discussing this issue. It affects, for example, the police and society as a whole, and we cannot simply shove the very real responsibility in the armed services to one side. My amendments seek that Parliament should be kept fully informed by reports, and I cannot for the life of me see why the Government are not in favour of this. The amount of information that the Minister has given me in correspondence spells out that they accept that there are a lot of issues that need to be addressed. I rather thought when I put the letter down, “Thank you; that is a very good case for an annual report”. We could build a very interesting annual report on this which could then be debated and disputed, as it would be in some respects in the form of the letter the Minister sent to me. Therefore, I urge the Minister to think very carefully about why this would not be helpful, and so that we are not only doing what we should be doing but are transparently doing it for all to see. Then, when corrections and improvements are necessary, we can all set about constructively achieving them. I beg to move.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords, I should perhaps declare an interest, as I have quite recently acquired two grandchildren who seem to be aiming their way into the armed services.

I am very happy indeed to support Amendment 7 from the noble Lord, Lord Judd. The UK has long been a champion of children’s rights internationally. To retain its integrity and credibility, it really is essential that the UK maintain the highest possible standards in this area. The minimum age for enlistment in the UK armed services, at 16, is the lowest legal limit in the world. The UK shares this policy with fewer than 20 other countries. No other state in Europe or on the UN Security Council does this; in fact, no other major military power sets its age for recruitment so low. Globally, we are seeing a positive trend towards adult-only armed forces, and two-thirds of states now set the age of 18 in law as the minimum for voluntary enlistment. It is commendable, certainly, that the Government actively encourage this trend internationally, but rather regrettable that they set a lower standard for themselves.