Andrew Selous
Main Page: Andrew Selous (Conservative - South West Bedfordshire)Department Debates - View all Andrew Selous's debates with the Department for Education
Kinship Care Strategy
Andrew Selous Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
I too want to congratulate my parliamentary neighbour, the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern), on bringing forward this very important debate, and I agree with every word said by other Members so far.
I will look briefly at New Zealand, because I understand that in New Zealand only 48 in every 10,000 children are in care, and of those 57% are in kinship care. In England, 71 in every 10,000 children are in care, and only 15% are in kinship care. I know my good friend the Minister cares deeply about this issue, so I ask him to look at New Zealand and whether there are lessons we could learn, particularly the use of family group conferences and the legal weight that those have in New Zealand. This is a wonderful country and we do a lot of things well, but we should always be humble enough to learn from other countries that may have something to teach us.
The constituents to whom I have spoken on this issue tell me that they want urgent and really accurate information. I spoke to one quite recently who did not know whether she was entitled to child tax credits. My reading of the House of Commons briefing note suggests that she is, but she did not know that and she had not been told that. I have recently been in contact with another constituent, a grandmother who had to come out of work to look after her grandson when her daughter very sadly died. She needs an urgent nursery place for her grandchild. Again, I have spoken to the specialists in the House of Commons Library about that this afternoon: my understanding is that she is entitled to that free nursery place for her grandchild and to the Government help towards it, but she has not been told that. I have sent her the Library briefing note and I will do everything I can to help, but to me that highlights an urgent information gap.
My constituents have also told me that they are concerned about the cost and the uncertainty of getting a special guardianship order—and the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), who has just spoken very eloquently, told us that in any case that is not a panacea. That is a worry, because the first thing social services has said to some of my constituents is that they need a care order. If they are worried because it is expensive and involves lawyers, or because they have never been to court before, or do not know how it is it all going to work out, care is needed now.
Moving towards some form of financial parity with foster carers would clearly be sensible. We have talked about grandparents looking after grandchildren, but in my last 20 seconds I observe that, in adult social care in Germany, the most popular option for taking the money is for friends and family to look after elderly or frail loved ones. We are mainly looking downwards at children, but kinship care could work for frail family members as well.