Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Farmer Excerpts(6 days, 23 hours ago)
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Baroness Benjamin (LD)
My Lords, any parent will tell you that raising children is a difficult job. It is important that all families have access to the support they need to help parents be the best they can. That is why early intervention matters; yet, too often, family support services, such as family hubs or centres, are the first things to be closed when funding is tight.
Recent analysis by Pro Bono Economics, on behalf of Barnardo’s and other leading children’s charities, shows that spending on Sure Start centres has been reduced by £1.4 billion since 2010, resulting in the closure of over 1,000 centres. This is why I support Amendment 68, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, to which I have added my name. It would place a duty on local authorities to provide sufficient family support services, including family hubs, for all children and families. This has been recommended by Barnardo’s and Action for Children, but these charities believe that such a change in the law must be backed by sufficient funding. Otherwise, we will be letting down a whole generation of children and their families, and any hope for their well-being.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 68, 68A, 68B, 169 and 171 in this group. I added my name to Amendment 68 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, because it has been my long-standing position that every community in this country needs preventive family support for social flourishing, in the same way that they need GP surgeries and schools.
When the welfare state was founded in the late 1940s, there was a recognition that health and education would not be able to defeat disadvantage without it. Some 80% of children’s educational attainment is determined by pupil-level factors such as family and community, and only 20% by school-level factors. Health-wise, in 2015, Citizens Advice published a report called A Very General Practice, which found that 92% of GPs said that patients raised personal—often family relationship—problems during consultations. This was the top non-health issue they dealt with, and only 31% of GPs felt able to advise at all adequately in this area.
In 1949, one of the architects of the welfare state, Michael Young, called for child welfare centres to fulfil Beveridge’s principle of the preservation of parental responsibility and deal with the emotional cost to children of high post-war levels of family breakdown. These costs persist today. Compared to those who do not experience family breakdown, children who do are at least twice as likely to be homeless as adults, to be in trouble with the police or spend time in prison, and to underachieve at school.
Young’s child welfare centres began to emerge as family centres in the 1980s. These helped parents of all-aged children, mainly in disadvantaged areas, to prevent the need for social services, or they worked collaboratively with those services. Many were run by voluntary organisations such as National Children’s Home, now Action for Children, and many had significant involvement from local authority social services departments.
Promising beginnings led to the requirement in the Children Act 1989 that local authorities should provide family centres. These would have been a base for local authorities to work from in delivering family support. Buildings on their own are not enough but, even in this digital age, there needs to be a focal point in a community where people can find out about the full range of services and support available.
Family centres paved the way for the national programme of Sure Start and children’s centres, which began in the late 1990s and focused on the pre-school years. Although children’s centres were immensely helpful to many parents at this life stage, the cut-off at the age of five became increasingly contested, with a greater emphasis on early intervention throughout childhood. Finally, in 2020, family hubs became official government policy. After 70 years, the family support infrastructure envisaged by Michael Young as being so important for families of children of all ages seems to be emerging. I declare here my interest as a guarantor of FHN Holding, the not-for-profit owner of the Family Hubs Network Ltd.
I have given this potted history to show that good and well-reasoned intentions several decades ago have been frequently revisited but family support still seems to be on a precarious footing, as we have basically heard already. We await the granularity of the spending review later this week. Moreover, a proper family support system in a local authority is so much bigger than the family hub and the network of buildings, people and services around it. The hub has to sit in a bigger web of relational practice that guides how all support for families, including children’s social care, is run.
The Government have made promising progress in implementing the independent review of children’s social care, with the Families First Partnership programme of preventive family support. The programme aims to transform the whole system of help and protection for families so that the right help is there for every family when needed, and it has a strong emphasis on early intervention to prevent crisis. The Families First (FFP) Partnership Programme Guide gives family hubs a good profile as a place where universal services and community-based early help are delivered, and where emerging problems can be identified at an early stage. My aim in supporting the amendment is to get more information from the Government about how they will ensure a rebalancing away from crisis spending towards early intervention across the age range nought to 19, and nought to 25 for those with special needs, and how they will ensure that prevention becomes embedded, cannot be unravelled and is further developed.
I turn to Amendments 68A and 68B in my name. In the Family Hubs Network’s work with local authorities, we talk to many people who are locally leading the family hubs and Start for Life programme who say they have been somewhat held up by having to implement Start for Life instead of being able to press on with integrating services across the age ranges nought to 19 and nought to 25, as I have said. One council said the family hub part of the programme gets overlooked as the focus has been on Start for Life and on delivering its tight specifications. Some told us that prior to this programme they were doing well on the early years as a legacy of their children’s centres, many of which are still running, albeit that Start for Life funding has enabled them to strengthen this further.
Due to how the funding is structured, some LAs have been in danger of only really shoring up provision in the early years. For family hubs, the greater goal is the provision of family support from pregnancy to 18, 19 or 25 if SEND—as I have said—or care leavers. Boosting family support beyond the early years, vital though these are, must be a key goal, delivered through a range of settings and organisations, the public sector and VCS, with some private sector too, and personal professionals backed by well-trained volunteers.
Amendments 68A and 68B would mean that local authorities with a proven track record were granted more flexibility in how they used central government funding to deliver in their family hubs. Implemented well, family hubs involve a transformation in family support through system change, yet the requirements of the current programme do not adequately prompt local authorities receiving funding to implement system change. They put the focus on funding a minimum offer rather than on a system changed to embed new ways of working using an integrated approach. Collocating services, while beneficial, is not the same as system integration. Without system change, what happens when the funding stops? Mainstreaming any of the funded programmes requires system change.
Another key aspect of family hubs is using funding more effectively, particularly by combining funding pots. Westminster City Council, a pioneer of the first family hubs prior to central government funding, was able to deploy troubled families programme money to develop family hubs because it had earned autonomy from the tight strictures of that programme’s payment-by-results model. If the Government extend funding for family support to the rest of the country beyond the 75 in the family hubs and Start for Life programme, which I very much hope they will, good learning from the original programme suggests that an earned-autonomy approach would greatly help facilitate the desired transformation.
I also support Amendments 169 and 171, already mentioned, as post-removal support for parents to prevent future removals and bereavement support services for children need to be key elements of family support, but they are either vanishingly rare, hard to find or both.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Farmer Excerpts(3 weeks, 5 days ago)
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Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, here we go in Committee and here we have had, probably, our first Second Reading speech from a colleague. I will not make a Second Reading speech; I will address this amendment, which I think is unnecessary. We have a perfectly sensible, comprehensive description of what this Bill seeks to do. We do not need another list in the Bill.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity that the purpose clause from my noble friend Lady Barran has given us to range far more freely than the tightly timed Second Reading allowed. I could only comment on what was in the Bill and pay scant attention to what I sensed was lacking. Part 1, and therefore the first half of the purpose clause, is where my sights are set in this Bill: improving the safety and well-being of children and improving the regulation of children’s homes, fostering agencies and other settings where looked-after children are accommodated. We heard from my noble friend about Professor Eileen Munro’s letter to the Times yesterday. She robustly supports the expansion of early help. It is in the provision of this where the Bill needs strengthening and greater specificity: for example, about the role of family hubs, which are not even mentioned.
A complex system of professionals and safeguarding arrangements is being restructured and key processes changed or removed, without it being clear what functions they are already performing or their place in the bigger picture. I was on the design group of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care—I mentioned that at Second Reading—and my most detailed offline discussions with the review team were on this restructuring, which I can see might be perceived to be finicky and potentially unnecessary. I am hearing concerns from directors of children’s services, and now from Professor Munro, that these reforms could weaken child protection, at a time when we are trying to batten down the hatches with, for example, the single unique identifier. As I will keep saying during Committee, I am concerned, as I was during the independent care review, that we are trying to do by process what we should be doing through relationships between professionals.
Does the Minister agree with the Department for Education spokeswoman, also quoted in the Times, who said that Munro’s criticisms
“demonstrate a lack of understanding of the proposed reforms, which have been widely supported and rebalance the system away from crisis intervention and towards earlier help”?
In other words, does she think that this eminent professor has not grasped her Government’s plans? Can she name current directors of children’s services who are enthusiastic about this restructure?
Child protection is the business of everyone who is involved with families and children, hence my amendments later in the Bill for family hubs to be included in safe- guarding arrangements. Of course, not all local authorities have family hubs yet, but an audit of the family hubs network carried out for Nesta earlier this year found 973 family hub networks in 133 out of 151 upper-tier councils, so the vast majority now have family hubs.
I and other Members in this Committee, particularly the noble Baronesses, Lady Armstrong and Lady Longfield —whom I welcome somewhat belatedly, but no less warmly—have been urging all Governments to commit wholesale to family hub rollout across the country. Their propagation is unfinished business from both the founding of the welfare state and the full implementation of paragraph 9 of Schedule 2 to the Children Act 1989, as I have said many times before. Hence I support the proposed new clause from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, which would require local authorities to provide family support.
Health, education, social work and other arms of the state all have to pick up the pieces when families falter. The concept of family support needs presence in a community, so that parents in danger of splitting up have somewhere to turn; ex-partners going through a separation that is beginning to look messy can get early intervention in the form of mediation, after careful triage; and parents losing control of their teenagers can get support before they get drawn into gangs. The support that families need in myriad ways is co-ordinated and accessed through family hubs and their network of buildings and organisations, through a respectful, relational approach.
Of course, there is variability, and only 75 local authorities’ hub networks are funded. They are also tightly managed by the Department for Education’s family hubs and Start for Life programme. Since 2007, I have been working with Dr Callan to implement a hallmark of the family hubs network: its responsiveness to local needs. Many local authorities have a great track record in opening successful family hubs; they have told the family hubs network that they have had to slow down the rollout of services to older children, so that they could dot the i’s and cross the t’s required by the Start for Life programme.
I am a firm believer that family support has to start in maternity, and ideally earlier. That early intervention is far more easily achieved when local family support professionals have built relationships with parents, carers and children from the earliest days. I have amendments later in the Bill that would ensure that parents know where to get that help and support in their local area, by requiring local authorities to publish a Start for Life offer. That support should continue when a mother has, tragically, had a newborn, or often older children, removed from her care. Case files from the family courts show that history repeats itself and that judges can take as many as 14 or 15 children away from the same mother. Our care for the mother should not end when a child is safe, given the likelihood that the safety of future children will also have to be secured.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, as one of the many qualified teachers in your Lordships’ House, I will speak to Amendment 14 in the names of my noble friend Lady Tyler—who cannot be with us today—me and others. Before I do so, I warmly welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, to this Committee. I know that as the Children’s Commissioner she was so very committed to all these issues, and I know she is supporting the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, today.
I was involved with the legislation that set up the UK Children’s Commissioner in the first place and was involved in making sure that the commissioner “must” have regard to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, not “may”, as was in the original version. That is relevant to what I will say about Amendment 14.
The intention of Amendment 14 is very simple: to ensure that those making decisions affecting children and young people seek and take into account their wishes and feelings, if they wish to give them, and to support them to do so. I welcome the Government’s ambition to be a child-centred Government and support the important steps taken in the Bill to strengthen the systems intended to keep children safe, yet there is more that the Bill could do to be truly child-centred. Specifically, it currently fails to embed meaningful consideration of the child’s wishes and feelings. I would like to strengthen it, hence this amendment.
As noble Lords will be aware, more than 30 years ago, in 1991, the UK ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In doing so, we recognised that children have a distinct set of rights that uniquely value all that it means to be a child. Article 12 of that convention sets out the right of every child to express their views freely and to have those views given due weight in all matters affecting them, including the family conferences we are talking about. They must be afforded that chance to express their views, wishes and feelings. The word “should” in Amendment 13 is not quite good enough in that respect.
In short, it recognises that children are experts in their own lives. I believe that children under 16 are perfectly capable of this, so I do not support the bit of Amendment 12 that limits this to over-16s. As long as they have appropriate support and understanding, many young children can be very articulate about what they think.
The amendment seeks to ensure that the systems designed to protect and support children and those who work with them are founded on the basis that we can hope to truly understand what is in a child’s best interests only by hearing and giving heed to their experiences and unique perspectives—the voice of the child, as we often call it.
As we know, in cases of abuse and neglect, giving children the opportunity to express their views is a critical factor in building trust and keeping children safe. Children themselves tell us that they are not routinely heard when decisions are made that affect them. Indeed, research undertaken with children and young people for the Children’s Charities Coalition’s 2024 Children at the Table campaign found that 62% of UK children think that politicians do not understand the issues that affect them, and almost three-quarters feel that children are not listened to by politicians. Let us listen and hear them today.
That is why I consider Amendment 14 to be so important. It would ensure that local authorities, in offering family group decision-making, are required to ascertain children’s wishes and feelings and give them due weight when making decisions related to that decision-making. It would also provide for a clear entitlement for the child to be supported to participate in the family group decision-making meeting. Where this is not in the child’s best interests, it would provide for the local authority to ensure that the child’s wishes and feelings are appropriately represented, for example by an independent advocate. Some effort will have to be made by somebody who really understands these things to ascertain those wishes.
The Bill currently requires local authorities to seek the child’s views. I welcome the Government’s recognition of the importance of listening to children in the context of family group decision-making, including by the Minister in response to a similar amendment in the other place. But this duty falls short of the gold standard of the Children Act to seek and—importantly—give due weight to the wishes and feelings of the child in different contexts, including children in need assessments, child protection and any decisions relating to a child in care, or possibly going into care. We know from serious case reviews and inquiries that where children are not listened to, it can have devasting consequences.
Wishes and feelings are broader than views. Amending the Bill in this way would mean that those children who choose not to express their views—perhaps they are younger or shyer, are non-verbal or lack capacity—will still have their feelings taken into account when decisions are being made about their safety and where they might live. Passing Amendment 14 would do all that.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 18 in my name and to Amendments 7 and 14, which have just been ably spoken to by the noble Baronesses, Lady Armstrong and Lady Walmsley. Amendment 7 is also supported by the noble Baronesses, Lady Longfield and Lady Drake, and Amendment 14 by the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle and Lady Tyler of Enfield, who is not in her place.
This group is primarily about family group decision-making, so I will speak to Amendments 7 and 14 first. The Government have avoided referring to family group conferencing per se, presumably because they want to allow for evolution of good practice of the family group decision-making model. But as I said at Second Reading, the evidence base on which they are relying for this legislation assumes faithful implementation of what we know makes a difference.
One key aspect of family group decision-making is that it is not a one-off meeting. If it were, this could become a token effort to bring together all those with family or other close relationships to the child. Currently, however, the Bill makes provision only for the offer of a family group decision-making meeting.
Rather, family group decision-making involves a process with careful preparation that typically goes way beyond a single meeting, as Amendment 7 would require. When the child is supported to be involved in an initial meeting, as Amendment 14 specifies, they might flag that key people are missing, or their input might throw up previously unforeseen issues that need attending to before important decisions are made concerning their future.
Support is required because many children will be daunted by being involved in a family group decision-making meeting. They might even say that they do not want to be there but regret not being involved later on. When there have been long-standing difficulties in a family, they might be concerned about revealing secrets, getting into trouble or making things worse.
Safety planning—a key aspect of any process involved in rehoming a child—can also be delicate and difficult and should certainly not be rushed. The pressures on local authorities are unlikely to ease anytime soon, and the legislation should not be written in such a way that short cuts are taken and the family’s involvement is marginalised to speed things up. That cuts across the spirit of the whole approach, which is the coming together —and, we hope, the strengthening and developing— of a relational network for the good of the child at the centre.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Farmer Excerpts(3 weeks, 5 days ago)
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The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to speak to Amendment 5 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, who has considerable experience in this subject. It is similar in purpose to Amendments 7, 8, 9 and 11, and we need to follow key principles to make sure that the family group decision-making model is implemented effectively. The LGA said in its written evidence to the Bill Committee in the other place:
“It would be helpful to make clear in guidance the elements of the model that make it particularly effective so that these can be built on locally”.
As we have heard from other noble Lords, the Family Rights Group is very experienced in this area, and there is considerable evaluation and evidence which needs to be followed, so that the meetings are seen as safe and trusted by families and do not inadvertently become seen as heavy-handed state intervention. I would be grateful if the Minister reassured the Committee about how cases involving domestic abuse will be handled, since there is clearly the potential for coercion of the adult victim and other family members.
The other issues have been picked up by the noble Baronesses, Lady Armstrong and Lady Longfield, such as the importance of having an independent co-ordinator who receives proper training. We should not underestimate how skilful a job this is.
The Family Rights Group has been clear that there needs to be private family time, and the meetings must avoid introducing any ambiguity into the local authority role. They need clarity to help families make decisions to provide care and support.
We look forward to the contributions from all noble Lords. I beg to move.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I added my name to this amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran because I am also deeply concerned that children benefit from the right level of expertise in the family group decision-making process. I have already mentioned Eileen Munro’s commentary on the Government’s reforms in the Times yesterday, where she warns against the shifting
“of child protection responsibilities to less-qualified family help workers. Although they offer support, many are not trained to detect hidden abuse such as psychological harm or coercive control. Supervision by overstretched social workers is no substitute for expertise, especially with workforce shortages and rising caseloads”.
These comments, although focused on a different part of the child safeguarding system, also seem highly relevant here. Bringing together family members and others who are important in the life of a child means engaging with a family system that can be highly complex.
Many here will remember the case of Shannon Matthews from West Yorkshire, a few months after the huge publicity following the tragic disappearance of Madeleine McCann. In February 2008, nine year-old Shannon was reported missing. She was eventually found in a house belonging to an uncle of the boyfriend of the kidnapped girl’s mother. The kidnapping was planned by Shannon’s mother and her boyfriend to generate money from the publicity and the sizeable reward, which her mother planned to split with the uncle when he “found” Shannon and took her to a police station.
Perhaps noble Lords are already very confused about these family arrangements, and there is no doubt that the protagonists at the centre of this case were highly unusual. I am not sure whether Shannon’s mother would have been offered a family group conference, not least because of the involvement of other family members in the crime.
When the police initially investigated Shannon’s disappearance, they had to look first at the extended family. What they found was such a complex web of interrelationships, such as children of different fathers in the same family and the same fathers in different families, that they described Shannon’s extended family tree as a bramble genealogy.
To reiterate, this was a highly unusual case, but it illustrates that kin altruism cannot be assumed. Those with a biological relationship to a child may not be committed to a child or be best placed to discuss the sensitive issues inherent in family group decision-making. The Bill already and quite rightly gives the local authority discretion not to offer family group decision-making in extreme cases, but even in dark family situations, very often there will be responsible, kind, dedicated family members who want to act in the child’s best interests. However, there will also surely be many times when it is not clear where family dysfunction begins and ends.
Those involved as family group decision-making co-ordinators must, as my noble friend’s amendment says, be independent, trained and experienced. They need to be able to spot signs of potential psychological harm or coercive control. They are a key last line of defence against future harm coming to vulnerable and traumatised children.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, I support Amendment 5 in the names of my noble friends Lady Barran and Lord Farmer. I hope the Minister will agree that this is a sensible amendment aimed at ensuring that all families who need it have access to a family group decision-making meeting that is underpinned by strong evidence that it works, without being overly prescriptive.
Family group decision-making is a broad, generic term without clear principles and standards about what families can expect, and there is concern among charities and organisations supporting vulnerable children on the ground that approaches unsupported by evidence may proliferate at a local level as a result of the current drafting of the Bill.
In its briefing on the Bill, the Family Rights Group says that it is
“already seeing evidence of local authorities claiming to use such approaches, including reference to ‘family-led decision making’ to describe meetings which are led by professionals and where family involvement is minimal”.
It also points to the experience of Scotland, where a failure to be more specific and clearer in legislation about what FGDM should be offered has resulted, 10 years after it was enacted, in a third of local authorities still having no actual offer. Obviously, none of us wants to see that, and it is clearly not the intention of the Government in bringing forward this new duty on local authorities.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak briefly to my Amendments, 21, 22 and 23. First, because these three amendments are explicitly focused on family hubs, I declare my interest as a guarantor of FHN Holding, the not-for-profit owner of the Family Hubs Network Ltd.
These amendments are probing because, as I have said previously today, I am interested in hearing how committed this Government are to local preventive family support in every community. More importantly, dedicated teams in local authorities and their partnership organisations up and down the country also need to know what they can expect. Including this infrastructure in safeguarding arrangements makes complete sense because, as I said in my explanatory statement, family hubs support families as the primary means by which children are safeguarded. This can easily be forgotten when we talk about who has responsibility to keep children safe.
This is also important in the wider discussion of the Government’s social care reforms: how do the Government see the role of family hubs in the landscape of the more preventive, early-intervention approach which I support? Families need to experience non-stigmatising and seamless support. Family support staff, perinatal clinicians, mental health professionals, even mediators around the time of couple separation: any professional based in the hub can spot problems early that might need bringing to the attention of social services. This is presumably how schools and childcare agencies will function in their safeguarding arrangements.
Families’ engagement with social workers, even in quite complex interventions, can take place in family hubs or in the wider family support network of buildings and organisations connected to those hubs. When social workers begin to see progress in these families, it is vital that there is ongoing support and lower-level input, including from volunteers in the community, and that they are not just left to flounder.
Active prevention of cycles repeating themselves can also happen by stepping the family back down into what I will loosely call family help. This was how the Isle of Wight came to pioneer family hubs. Its social services were taken into special measures because so many children were not receiving the assessments that they needed, because social workers were so deluged by actual cases. Hampshire County Council, the overseeing council drawn in to help it reform, was very impressed by this solution. Early intervention hubs, also known as family hubs, were set up within existing budgets to help hold families waiting for social services assessments, so risk was managed. They also prevented many families coming to the point when an assessment was deemed necessary: when a child was returned to a family or the parents had received social work help so that their child dropped below the threshold of need, they were stepped down into family hubs. None of this could have happened unless these family hubs were operating skilfully in safeguarding.
Lord Meston (CB)
My Lords, we should pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, in his promotion of family hubs. They are places where families can be offered a range of services and integrated support and information. In my assessment, they have transformed the picture of family law and family practice. They are increasingly widespread and have an important role in the modern functioning of childcare. To that extent, I support the noble Lord’s amendments.
I have a boring technical legal point. A hub is a place, not a person, which uses volunteers and community workers, as well as professionals. If the noble Lord’s Amendment 21 were to be accepted, we would need some clarity on who exactly, under the legislation, would have responsibility on behalf of the hub.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Farmer Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I will focus my comments on Part 1, particularly on areas recommended or inspired by Josh MacAlister MP’s independent review of children’s social care. I was on his design group, and Josh’s emphasis throughout was on relationships and prevention: preventing children going into local authority care in the first place or being further damaged in the care process. Enabling them to maintain or develop good relationships while in care is a key protective factor to that end.
I welcome Clause 1 on family group decision-making, but will the Government strengthen it? The Family Rights Group points to the impact of the 2016 Scottish legislation mandating every local authority to offer family group decision-making. Its lack of clarity and precision meant that a third of local authorities in Scotland still do not offer FGDM.
The requirement to offer this is based on evidence from family group conferencing, so reproducing its benefits requires implementation fidelity to this model. For example, older children and their families must be in the driving seat when determining who is involved. Neighbours and family friends can be fictive kin, referred to as aunties and uncles. Others in the support web around them are vital for children’s welfare. Their voices should be heard when the family says so.
Also, legislation needs to ensure that FGDM represents a process, rather than a one-off meeting, to avoid this becoming a mere formality that local authorities go through. This process does not always mean that a child goes into kinship care, but it does increase the likelihood of it. Where they end up in local authority care, FGDM should lead on to and facilitate another highly beneficial process referred to as Lifelong Links. Lifelong Links builds rather than breaks relationships and enables children in the care system to have a lasting support network of relatives and others who care about them.
All those involved in the FGDM and others important to a child should not simply disappear from their life when they go into care. Capturing contact details of former foster carers, youth leaders, teachers and others in the community who have been kind or caring towards them means that they have a wealth of family and other connections when they leave care. Knowing that they matter to people, being invited to Sunday lunch, and having a family to spend Christmas Day with and a source of advice throughout the year all makes a massive difference to their sense of identity and stability. Lifelong Links runs in more than 40 local authorities, in 22 of which it is currently funded by the DfE. Will the Government consider referring to it in the Bill and including it in regulation or guidance?
Next, Clause 11 ensures that children deprived of their liberty are housed in “relevant accommodation”. Even in good surroundings, they are often far from their families and communities, which can further dent already fragile mental health. Will the Minister ensure that improving the experience of children deprived of their liberty will include concrete steps currently missing from the Bill to help them maintain key relationships?
Finally, I have concerns about a single unique identifier. The Bill is concerningly vague about how it would operate and whether it would need a new computer system at major public expense. Using the NHS number would overlook those children, often at higher risk, who were born outside the country and have no NHS or state education involvement. They would escape the system. More generally, can the Minister assure us that the SUI will not reinvent the failed contact point database abolished in 2010?