Immigration Bill (First sitting)

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Before we move on, let me say that seven Members want to ask questions so perhaps the witnesses could try to keep their answers a little bit shorter.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

Q 14 I have a quick question for Judith, going back to something that you said earlier with regard to the Children Act. Obviously, you have to have valid reasons for removing children, but most children get removed because of neglect, and if a family is left destitute they cannot feed and clothe their child. So do you not envisage child protection departments removing children on that basis if support has been withdrawn?

Judith Dennis: It would not usually be the first step. A social worker will try to resolve the issues that arise out of the family’s situation, depending on the causes and the actors who are playing each part. We have seen, from their recourse to public funds, families who are supported by local authorities. Often social workers will engage with the family to try to help them to resolve their situation. We certainly would not expect social workers to be stepping in and taking people’s children away in the first instance.

Social work ethics mean that you have to resolve the situation and try to keep families together where possible. Most of the social workers we speak to would not feel comfortable about taking people’s children away on the basis that the Government have made the family destitute and forced them to neglect the needs of their children.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

Q 15 I used to be a child protection social worker myself, so I totally get what you are saying, but social services departments are overstretched and are really sinking because the resources are not there. If they cannot fill the gap and help that family, that child will go hungry and will be neglected, and it is easier to pay for a child than to pay for the entire family, so could we see some perverse outcomes, with children being removed from their families? Is that a risk at all, do you think?

Judith Dennis: It could be, further down the line. I hope that it would not be. My understanding is that it is much more difficult and costly to take a child into care than to provide basic support such as the asylum support regime does, as has been mentioned before. The support is basic and is to avoid destitution. Taking the child into care means that you have to pay another carer to look after that child when the family are perfectly able to do so. The ethical argument and the economic argument mean that we hope we would not see that, but it is—

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

There is a chance, down the line, that that could be the case. I just wanted to clear that up. Thank you.

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

Q 16 Two quick questions from me. The first is on what happens at present to engage with these families. Mr Kaye, you were just saying that the longer we do not engage with them, the more there is a problem; yet, as I have just heard it, Ms Dennis, you were outlining the current process and saying that it was chock full of engagement. Will the panel comment on the ways in which current engagement is different from what happened under the 2005 process, which I understand hinged largely on corresponding with people rather than engaging with them, perhaps as happens at present?

Judith Dennis: The 2005 pilot took away support, or threatened people with taking away their support if they were not taking steps to remove themselves. Partly as a result of the lack of success of that programme, and of hearing from some families in parliamentary work done by various agencies about the complexity of the situation, this programme was established. There are several stages at which family conferences take place, and specialist family engagement managers who understand the process invite the families—parents and sometimes children—to meetings. They are invited to think about whether or not they want to go and they visit the family, and those kind of things. There are lots of steps. Most of the process is designed to help people think about voluntary return, because there are fewer barriers to removal if someone agrees to go rather than being forced to go. So measures that just take away support, rather than put in more support, have been found not to work, and those that put in more support have some more success.