Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Massey of Darwen and Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top

Monday 4th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, those of you who have heard me speak on previous Bills will know that this is something that I keep coming back to. It comes out of working with kinship carers and learning of some of their experiences, but is particularly about the needs of care leavers as young parents. One tragedy is that far too many young women who have been in the care system become young parents themselves. I and other colleagues here tried to do something about that when we were in government. We introduced various programmes that did an enormous amount both to reduce the number of teenage pregnancies and to care for and support young people significantly when that happened.

We know the reality from the social justice commission: that about one in 10 girls leaving care aged between 16 and 21 are either single parents when they leave or very quickly afterwards become single parents. I ended up specialising in adolescent girls when I was working in Newcastle all those moons ago—most of them will now be grandmothers, or great-grandmothers. I remember one young woman in particular, who had been in care all the time since she was a baby. By the time she had a baby herself, I had finished, but she rang me absolutely delighted to tell me that she was now pregnant. She was 16, and everybody knew that she would have enormous difficulty in caring for that child. But she needed something to love—it was as awful and plain as that. Now I work with women with complex needs, many of whom have come through the care system and certainly come through abuse, and so on. Many of them have child after child, who are taken into care. Nobody works with them because they have removed the child, so they go and get pregnant again and that child ends up in care. We simply should not see this.

It goes back to what I talked about the other day in Committee: that we need to do much more work with parents when the child is taken into care. These amendments are essentially about recognising that those leaving care—many of them are still children—and who are pregnant or have a young child demand a specific responsibility on our part, even if they have left care. I remind the Minister that the staying-on provisions do not relate to children who have technically just gone home to their parents or who are in residential care, but they are still children leaving care. As I say, they do not get the additional time or support that we were all so pleased about in the staying-on relationships, which essentially relate to children in foster care.

All these amendments really say is that this is a specific category to which the Government will have to pay attention. It can become a vicious circle if we are not careful. We know that they will need additional support in parenting, although that is not to say that some of them will not in the long term make good parents. As the Minister who introduced the family nurse partnership, I know that even the most vulnerable teenage parents can, with the right sort of support, become good parents. The amendments address the fact that, if you are a child who has spent significant periods in care, you will need extra support. That is sort of self-evident but it is not taken into account in the Bill, and I ask the Minister to take specific account of it.

I have not tabled an amendment on this aspect, but these clauses also deal with adoption support being extended to special guardians who are raising looked-after children. I am really pleased about that but why have the Government not extended that support to special guardians per se? Kinship carers in particular often step in to make sure that the kids do not go into care or become looked-after children. As I have said—too many times, I feel—kinship carers frequently do that not because they have sought to become a carer but because they do not want their daughter’s or sister’s children to go into the system. They end up having quite good outcomes even though they are impoverished, frequently.

I meet kinship carers in the north-east—because we have a higher proportion of kinship carers than in most regions of the country—who have gone through things that you and I would absolutely not want to do to look after the children. They get no support at all. They are not going to get the mental health support for the children or the other support that the children frequently need because they are special guardians, but their child has not technically been in care or looked after. It tells you how old I am when I keep saying “in care” instead of “looked after”, does it not, but because that is not the case, they are not going to get that additional support. I have not put an amendment down about it at this stage but I will come back to it. I want to make sure that the Government think about these sorts of things a little more. In the Bill, we are in the business—I hope—of trying to make sure that we create less vulnerability and less cost to the public purse. I believe that in the long term, addressing these amendments and my question will assist that objective.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Armstrong, particularly on Amendment 61A, but also in what she said about kinship care. I know that the outcomes of children in kinship care are better, in health and academically, than other forms of care. I also know that there are vicious circles which, unless there is intervention, go on being vicious circles generation after generation. The Family Rights Group report on the young parents project has out significant things about young people who are young parents and care leavers. We know that these young parents have multiple challenges—there is also a figure that one in 10 care leavers aged 16 to 21 have a child taken into care—but they are alienated by negative experience of state services. They are judged by their youth and background and have suffered abuse often,

“being in care, mental health problems, exclusion from school and/or involvement in youth justice”,

and so on. The support given often ignores their roles as parents or helps them to safely raise and keep a child. They often have less developed support networks, as compared to older parents, and fewer established systems in place as they move into adulthood. Despite their vulnerability, the particular needs and circumstances of young parents who are care leavers—whose children are not subject to child protection inquiries—are not sufficiently identified. They need a clear pathway plan, which includes all that a pathway plan should include, and certain sorts of information should be drawn upon in formulating these pathway plans.

My Amendments 98AA and 98AB are long and fairly self-evident. They repeat many concerns already expressed about the importance of pathway plans or assessments of need. One other thing that is important in pathway plans is the co-ordination of plans, and of assessments in relation to them, along with the setting up of advice, assistance and support. Again, I would state that these young people are extremely vulnerable, as my noble friend said, and need all the support that we can give. She also said that giving support early can avoid pain to them and also cost to the state, if we avoid these vicious circles that we all know exist.