Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I add my support to this group of amendments, which are all extremely important, and I want to make two points. I support what has already been said about adoption. For some children, it works very well indeed, and it is absolutely right that we are supporting prospective adopters and giving all the support and help that children who are being adopted need, but it is not right for everyone. In particular, it is not easy for children over the age of five. We need to understand how it becomes progressively a lot more difficult to adopt children as they become older.

Secondly, I want to add to the wise remarks of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, about local authorities being required to take children’s wishes and feelings into account. I say that as the chair of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, as in my declared interests. Our role, as noble Lords may be aware, is to assist the courts and provide reports to the family courts so that judges know what children’s wishes and feelings are and can make their decisions accordingly. The work that we do there is very important, but it is absolutely vital that all parts of the family justice system—and I include local authorities as a key part of that system—have that first and foremost in their minds, so that children’s wishes and feelings really are what drives the whole process.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, want wishes and feelings to be included in the Bill. As noble Lords know, I am not really very keen on having additions to the Bill. I have taken part in a series of legislative debates that involved discussion of the inclusion of wishes and feelings, but I cannot remember exactly where they are and are not omitted. I have been chair of CAFCASS, and I know that judges have to take wishes and feelings into account. If local authorities had to do that before the report stage, it would save time because, often, judges have to send reports back because local authorities have not carried out the proper work on wishes and feelings. The present chair of CAFCASS, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, is nodding. If such a provision were in the Bill, that work would be more likely to be undertaken.

My other point is about adoption and fostering. At the moment, there is a groundswell among a group of women who feel that they have had their children prised from them into adoption—I hope that officials have picked that up—and a campaign to look more closely at preventive work, with children being kept in their own homes. However, I have to say that, often, these children should be removed from home. Whether they should then be adopted is the question. I raise that issue because good work with the parents might mean the child could return home. However, they are often very difficult children whose parents are on drugs or have alcohol problems, and who are seeking help for themselves but not making it, and the children are in real difficulties. These are the children whom fostering would help. Fostering would maintain the situation until there is more stability. These are the children who in some situations have been placed for adoption, when we have not given the kind of support the Government previously discussed—ongoing care for adopters, adoption allowances and adoption support through the local authority, to ensure no further breakdown. Where is such a programme? There had been very positive thinking about adoption.

The Government have for a long time resisted proper research on adoption breakdown in order to understand why these children are sometimes being placed several times over. Sometimes adoption does not break down just once; it may break down more than once, and that is a total disaster. I have met young people who have been in that situation. The sooner we gain a greater understanding, either through government research or through gathering the research of others, the sooner we can intervene better by preventing breakdown or not placing these children in such situations in the first instance.

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[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, I also support very strongly the amendments tabled by my noble friends and other noble Baronesses and noble Lords in this group. I will speak briefly but very particularly in relation to the points about siblings and grandparents. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, have spoken very movingly about the importance to children of contact with their siblings. The new and rising role of grandparents also means that we have to look at that in terms of policy, as well.

I want to reflect on something that I find quite depressing. Most people in this room now were also participants when we debated the Children and Families Bill, not too long ago. We had extensive debates then about the importance of contact with siblings and the importance of considering kinship care before alternatives were gone towards too quickly, yet it seems to be the default position of the Department for Education not to recognise this in primary legislation. When he replies, I hope the Minister will speak to that, because I thought we had convinced him and his officials then, when we debated that Bill—but here we are again, with other legislation presented to us, that completely disregards siblings and other important family members. As the evidence my noble friend cited from the Family Rights Group and others shows, there is still very poor practice. Unless we put these issues in legislation to demonstrate their importance when the decisions about individual children and families are being made, we will still keep going around in circles. We will come back with another Bill and they will still not be there, and we will still have children separated from their brothers and sisters. Now is the time really to put this right.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My lords, I believe that the latest Ofsted findings show that siblings are being kept together and placed without undue delay in most circumstances, which is extremely good news. I wonder if the Minister could verify that. Certainly, it was what was said at the presentation of the latest Ofsted report and I greeted the news with some joy. However, it does not mean that I do not support this amendment, because the very fact that Ofsted has to report on this and say how much better it is getting shows that we have had to reach a point of changing practice to make sure that children are able to talk to their brothers and sisters. I am delighted that it seems to be getting better, if that is so, but it does emphasise the need for this proposal. I am the very unlikely founder of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Grandparents—they could not find anybody else—but, as people know, I have brought up children and still find myself with my great-nieces and great-nephews for care, and for all the things that grandparents do.

What I have learned from working in the north of England, where all my family are, is that grandparents up there are mostly caring informally for their grandchildren. It is only when things go seriously wrong that they suddenly find that they are not adequate to care for those grandchildren, because the assessment says that they have to be moved somewhere else. That is where the two parts of this Bill meet, because we are looking for good assessment by a social worker. Of course, the child’s needs must be paramount; you do not leave a child with a grandparent who does not have the ability to care for that child—but surely it is better, if they have made that relationship and the grandparent is fit to care, that they continue. The recent death of Ellie Butler is an example of that.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I welcome this group of amendments, and particularly welcome what the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, said. It is so important to the young people who come to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children, young people in care, care leavers, and their foster carers and social workers, that they are heard by parliamentarians. They often express their regret that not more MPs and parliamentarians are there. I am so very grateful to the noble Baroness for taking such great pains to listen, record and share with the Grand Committee her experience of visiting that meeting. I agree of course with everything that she said.

I flag up one more time the important role that Delma Hughes has played over the past 10 or 15 years in terms of advocacy for sibling contact. As I mentioned before to your Lordships, she entered care and lost contact with her five siblings; she went on to become an art therapist and practised for many years. On recognising about 10 years ago the lack of facilities for facilitating sibling contact, she set up her own charity, Siblings Together, and has organised workshops over many summers and Easters where groups of siblings who would otherwise be separated have come together to enjoy performing in plays and camping together. She has made a big mark in this area. She met with Ed Balls, the former Secretary of State, to advocate on their behalf, and has been a member of the SCIE consultation group on this area. She has really made a big difference, and I pay tribute to her.

It is encouraging to hear what my noble friend Lady Howarth said about the recent Ofsted findings. To enable siblings to stay together, one obviously has to have foster carers with the capacity to offer the larger placements—so congratulations are due all round that some progress is being made.

I can summarise the last two or three amendments by saying that they are about better supporting special guardians, kinship carers and others. The problem is that local authorities are very stretched for resources. If they have no legal obligation to support such families, who are standing in, those families may get very little if any support. Yet those families save the Exchequer huge sums of money each year by caring for many thousands of children. They often do so at their own expense, not being able to do the job that they might otherwise be able to do. They may have to live in a very cramped housing environment because of the extra child they take in. Anything that the Bill can do to make central government more aware of the duty that we owe those families and of the support, or lack of it, is very welcome.

We recently discussed a housing Bill and a welfare reform Bill in which concerns about the helpful role that these special guardians and kinship carers offer was raised. To some degree, their concerns were answered, but we need always to keep our minds on those people. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, argued in earlier amendments for making Secretaries of State bear much more in mind of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, so that we can look, across all departments, at the impact of Bills on children, whether they are welfare or housing Bills. So often those Bills have other priorities, and there is a risk that different departments will not work together to improve the outcomes of children but work against such outcomes. I welcome this group of amendments and look forward to the Minister’s response.

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[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, clearly there are other organisations that undertake work on behalf of the local authority in some of these areas. They are usually not-for-profit organisations, such as Barnardo’s, the Children’s Society and others. They will wish to continue to work with local authorities in these areas. However, it is interesting that Article 39, an organisation which looks at the legal position of children, stated:

“Research on the first five social work practice pilots (one of which was run for profit) … found mixed views on whether looked after children and care leavers received a better service”.

But the telling point was that:

“Three of the five local authorities involved said the practices had cost more than equivalent in-house services and evaluators noted, ‘Interviews held with local authority commissioners in 2011 made it clear that SWPs were not judged to have been financially advantageous’”.

So if the Government are looking for a way of delivering services that offers value for money, clearly “for profit” services are not necessarily the best way forward.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, I think it is fair to say that this is the most contentious issue to have arisen in our consideration of the Bill so far. We will discuss Clause 15 next week. In passing, I have to say that I am not quite sure why this measure is being discussed at this point. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has stated his views on that, but I wondered why the Clerks did not direct it elsewhere. However, as I say, we will discuss Clause 15 next week. That clause will allow local authorities to opt out of providing some children’s social services. Many people fear that that could pave the way for the privatisation of those and—perhaps, later—other services, in ways outlined by noble Lords in this group of amendments.

The Bill refers to “different ways of working”, which I think most of us understand is code for exempting local authorities from requirements hitherto imposed by children’s social care legislation. Certainly, Labour holds strongly to the view that child protection and wider social care should not be run by an organisation seeking to make a profit. That is why we have joined with Lib Dem and Cross-Bench Peers, as well as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, demonstrating the breadth of support for that requirement to appear on the face of the Bill.

We do not object per se to outside organisations working with, or for, local authorities in delivering children’s social services functions, but do so where a company or organisation designed to make a profit, as opposed to a surplus, takes on such functions that would expose the local authority—and, by definition, the children under its care—to the danger that the company might for whatever reason fail, and fall into receivership. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of examples of such occurrences since local authorities began to outsource various services.

Equally, if profit were the motive, the company or organisation may conclude after a period of time that the margins were insufficient in delivering those services and other avenues offered better prospects, and as a result end the contract. In either case, the local authority, which would have handed over the role of providing those services, would be faced with having to find another partner to deliver them or to bring them back in-house. Meanwhile, the quality of services provided for social care or child protection would be, at best, jeopardised. That is not a situation that any of us would wish to see. It is, therefore, a situation that should be ruled out.

At Second Reading, the Minister relied on the fact that in 2014 the Government had introduced legislation that prevented profit-making where local authorities delegate child protection functions. However, there remains the possibility of profit-making companies setting up their own non-profit subsidiaries to take over the critical and sensitive function of deciding how best to protect vulnerable children There is a serious risk that the likes of Serco and G4S could create these subsidiaries as part of their wider businesses and, in that manner, these companies could indeed profit from the care of vulnerable children and their families, even if only indirectly.

There will be an obvious conflict of interest because some of these companies will also run children’s homes. That will make it difficult to know how funds might flow between the profit-making and non-profit-making arms. That is why the changes outlined in Clause 15 have caused such concern in the sector, and they could undermine public confidence in the services provided to children and young people. It cannot be stressed too much that effective child protection relies on public trust. The public need to be able to trust local child protection teams so that they feel sufficiently confident to report concerns they may have about a child and to have faith that if they raise a concern the service will act in the best interests of that child.

I invite the Minister to provide answers on two aspects of this crucial matter. First, the provisions of the 2014 legislation notwithstanding, can he guarantee that funds will not be transferred between profit and non-profit arms of a company where the latter is delivering services? Secondly, will the purpose and culture of companies or organisations bidding for the right to deliver child protection and social care services be taken into consideration when decisions are made about delivery partners? When an organisation’s primary aim and main business has nothing to do with children, would it be considered a suitable partner for a local authority?

Nothing can be more important than the safeguarding and protection of children, especially those who are at greatest risk or are the most vulnerable. Organisations prominent in the social care and child protection sectors have registered their anxiety over the exemption proposals in the Bill. At Second Reading, I asked the Minister whether the Government had made any assessment of the risk to children in allowing local authorities exemption from some key duties for keeping children safe. I hope he will now be in a position to let me have his response.

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[Baroness King of Bow]

My Lords, this amendment seeks to prevent the introduction of financial disincentives for adoptive parents. I strongly commend the Government’s stated desire to increase adoption rates where adoption is an appropriate outcome for the child concerned. However, recently passed legislation will have the opposite effect, which is why I have tabled this amendment. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, first brought this to my attention, and the Committee reminded itself this afternoon that if she thinks something is a problem, it is a problem.

At present, if you have one child and you adopt a sibling group of two or more children, you will receive child benefit for all three children, despite the Government’s new legislation that restricts child benefit to two children in all other cases. However, if you adopt your two children separately—that is, they are not in a sibling group, like my three adopted children who are not siblings—the exemption does not apply, so lower-income families which would get child benefit and who already have a child will get child benefit for the first adopted child but not for any subsequent adopted children who take them over the two-child limit, unless the adopted child is adopted with a sibling. This simply makes no sense. The exemption the Government have introduced is linked to genetics, not adoption, yet the whole point of adoption is to circumvent genetics. As my children are mine through both adoption and genetics, I feel very strongly that there should not be a difference, and certainly not one that is put into law.

I will raise one other very important issue relevant to this debate. It is also based on my experience of adopting three children in three separate adoption processes. I now have three amazing foster families who gave my kids a home before they came to me. I am linked into all their foster carer networks, through which I have met dozens of foster families. Added to those foster families, I have many others through the work I do with adoption agencies, so in total I have met upwards of 100 foster families. In the vast majority of cases, these amazing families are moved entirely by their desire to help the children they love and foster, so much so that when, inevitably, children with complex needs are not adopted, foster families often step in to adopt. In the case of my daughter’s foster family, the next child placed with them was attacked by her parents while a baby and left deaf, blind and severely brain-damaged. She requires 24-hour care. No family came forward to adopt her. She was going to spend her life being shunted around the care system. Her amazing foster carers therefore said that they would adopt her, even though they had no intention of doing that when they first fostered her. By adopting her, they dramatically restricted their quality of life. They did it because they are truly amazing.

What is amazing is that they had so little to start with. That is when I realised a strange thing: despite meeting so many foster families, I have never met, not even once, a middle-class foster family because on the whole, more well-off families do not foster children, they adopt children. Do professional women like me give up their careers to bring society’s most needy children under their own roof? The harsh but honest truth, which I wish was not true, but it is, is that on the whole, we do not. I would love to see more data on the economic background of foster families which adopt, but from my experience, and I have quite a bit of it, Britain relies on low-income families to bring up our most vulnerable kids, those with complex needs who too often are unfortunately—we do not do it on purpose—left to rot in the care system. It is quite shocking when you think about it, but what is even more shocking is that we are going to make it harder for low-income families to adopt. Taking away child benefit from low-income families who adopt children is literally shameful.

I grant that the Government have not done this on purpose—well, they have done it on purpose but I do not think they set out to do it. I hope the Minister will tell me I am right when I say that I am sure they did not set out to do something so diametrically opposed to their objective of increasing adoption. It is all about that law which we always seem to pass around here without meaning to: the law of unintended consequences.

A failure to exempt all adopted children from the child benefit two-child limit will be particularly perverse for this reason: it will not stop babies without complex needs being adopted by better-off families like mine. If I was going to lose £60 a month for my adopted daughter, it would not actually stop me adopting her. But for kids with complex needs who cannot easily be adopted and who often fall back on low-income foster families, that £60 absolutely will make the difference between whether they are adopted or not, particularly when set against the experience on the ground of the failure of post-adoption support, notwithstanding the Minister’s earlier comments.

It is always the exception that proves the rule. I know of one foster family that is not on a low income. Happily, that family belongs to the Minister of State for Children and Families at the Department for Education, Edward Timpson, whose family has fostered more than 80 children. I therefore have one question for the Minister. I think very highly of him, which is unfortunate because I will be devastated if he cannot help me out with this fairly simple request. I know that he must have enough power to do what I am asking—no pressure—which is this. Please will he meet with his colleague, the Minister for Children and Families, and work out a plan to bring into force this simple exemption in child benefit for all adopted children? I cannot believe that the Government want to increase disincentives for adoptive parents, and I beg to move.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I support the amendment because I argued for it during the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill. When the Minister turned it down then, he did agree to a whole range of other benefits such as kinship carers’ allowance and so on. Frankly, I think he reached the point where he could give no more. The illogicality of saying that benefits could be paid for two sibling children but not for two children who have been adopted separately must have been for the noble Lord, Lord Freud, who is an intelligent man, something to do with the politics of it all. I say that because it was clear at the time that this exception would make sense.

We trying to increase the rate of adoption. We know that the children who are now being placed for adoption are not easy. There are very few if any white middle-class babies being placed for adoption. Most of these children have special needs or they are older and therefore it is much more difficult to find a placement.

I recognise that the Minister here may not have the power to agree to the amendment, but he can go back and talk to his colleagues. We have discussed silos in government at length and how people need to talk across government departments. This is an area in which we could make a real difference to a group of people who wish to look after children and, more importantly, it would offer a better standard of living to the children being adopted. It would be easy and I am sure that it would not be vastly expensive, although I have not yet done the maths.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, there are moments in Committee when we can listen to people with a lifetime of experience in law and the military, but we ignore at our peril someone with experience of adoption who speaks from the heart and makes such an emotional plea. Certainly our side thinks that this is an important issue.

It is not just an emotional issue, of course; it is also fulfils that awful phrase we use constantly—it would be value for money. This obviously makes sense. I had not appreciated how many low-income families adopt children. We should support them and thereby, we hope, increase the number of children who are adopted.

The last time I heard such an emotional plea was when my noble friend Lady Benjamin made a similar presentation and, I believe, stalked the Minister on a few occasions outside his office. Perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady King, could do the same, but I hope the Minister will take note of this issue.

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[Lord Storey]

My Lords, this is an important amendment that is worthy of serious consideration. There must be something worryingly and seriously wrong when mothers constantly have their babies removed from them. We have seen social services almost having to get care orders in place as the child is born, and it can happen three, four, five or six times. Obviously in all circumstances the interests of the child must be put first, but there also must be a realisation that something must be done to support the mother. Are there mental health or emotional issues at play? This constant removal of children safeguards those children, but it does not safeguard the mother. We need to try where possible to look at why this is happening.

This is an issue of which I do not have any experience and, indeed, I have not considered it. The amendment asks in a sensible and supportive way for us to look at therapeutic support and so on. There is also the cost aspect. If a child is taken away from its natural family and we as a society have not considered effective treatments that could reasonably be made available to keep the parent and child together, then surely as a society we are failing.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I simply want to mention the organisation Pause, which has found a way of intervening with these families. I know that the Government hope to set up a unit looking at what works and that there are programmes that work in this field. I do not think this is a legislative issue. I think it is again an issue of spreading good practice through all local authorities. Sometimes the voluntary sector develops the best ways forward, and I hope the Government will do all they can to promulgate these programmes. I have removed children at birth from their mothers. It is a traumatic and appalling process to have to be involved in when working in social services. The follow up has always been poor for the mothers. We now have an opportunity to do something about it. We know how to do it.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords, I very much support this amendment. We have already heard in previous debates about the danger of the repeat performance—women who have been in care becoming mothers and having a problem with children being taken away. It is a vitally important matter. My noble friend Lady Howarth mentioned Pause as one of the organisations offering practical help in this respect. It certainly could be called on. I hope that in this instance we will be able to get support from the Minister so that this can be looked at rather more seriously than, perhaps, in the past.

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[Baroness Pinnock]

My Lords, I will respond to what the noble Lord, Lord Watson, has said. I totally agree with him that the proposals in the Bill are so important that they ought to be subject to the statutory instrument procedure that he defined. In particular, the chair of this safeguarding review panel should be appointed after a public hearing with the Education Select Committee has taken place. The noble Lord has our support.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, which is particularly concerned that the national panel is too closely controlled by the Secretary of State. The association believes that that risks politicising the serious case review process. If reviewers are to identify the root cause of safeguarding failings, the association believes that they must be fully independent of government control to ensure that they are able to consider without undue influence whether changes are required at both the national and the local level. The association also believes that to ensure that reviews of national significance are able to pass comment on the impact of national policies without undue influence, they must be able to identify these root causes, again without undue political interference. I therefore support Amendments 101 and 102.

It is important to recognise that the Local Government Association, which wants to work with this process and take some of it forward, has these concerns. We are in this position as a result of having so little time to look at these amendments. The basic principles are probably ones with which we would all agree but there are some fundamental flaws in the way the process is being put together.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, for their amendments relating to the arrangements for the new child safeguarding practice review panel set out in Clause 11, and for the observations of the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Howarth.

Amendment 101 raises an important issue, which is that both Houses should have an opportunity to scrutinise regulations in secondary legislation where it is appropriate to do so. Noble Lords will be aware that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has issued its report on the clauses within the Bill. I hope that noble Lords can be reassured that while the DPRRC commented on other clauses, it raised no concerns about this one. The arrangements that will be made in respect of the establishment of the panel set out high-level matters that relate to the processes, arrangements and administration of the panel rather than matters of substance that the Houses would need to debate. This clause covers processes and arrangements. I will turn to the question of regulations in a later discussion on the functions of the panel. This clause provides for the making of arrangements that are necessary to enable the functioning of the panel which may include clarity around such matters as reporting and its day-to-day operation.

Amendment 102 seeks to involve the Education Select Committee in the appointment of the chair. I would expect the appointment of the chair to be subject to a full and open Cabinet Office public appointments process involving advertisements for the position, applications and formal interviewing. Panel members could also be subject to this process if that were deemed necessary. I would expect the number of panel members to be sufficient to enable the effective operation of the panel and for the chair to be able to draw on the expertise that he or she considers necessary for the right decisions to be made about individual cases. We would of course welcome any views that the Education Select Committee may have, but we do not believe that we should prescribe a pre-appointment hearing. In view of this, I hope that the noble Lord will feel sufficiently reassured to withdraw the amendment.