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Children

My Lords, my noble friend is right to return to this subject in the light of the report from the chief inspectors. The report emphasised continuing difficulties in recruitment and retention of staff, which affect the safeguarding of children. In a briefing, the NSPCC underlined that those difficulties are most acute in social services in London and the south-east. I would like to concentrate, as I did in my noble friend’s previous debate in February, on the difficulties and problems facing fostered children and their foster parents. Fostering is the front line of public care, with approximately 40,000 children in foster homes on any one day. Those children share the problems which the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, then the Minister—I am glad to see him in his place—frankly admitted in the previous debate. They are eight times more likely to have serious special educational needs and 45 per cent of them may have mental health disorders as a result of past experiences. These problems demand special qualities of love, sympathy and understanding from the foster parents. That is why selection, training and support are so important for these substitute parents; that is why it is so important to prevent the breakdown of placements for children who may already come from broken families. It is equally vital to avoid frequent moves from one foster home to another or to a care institution. Stability is everything, except when a child can return to its natural family. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, gave details of these points in our previous debate. Good placements cannot be had on the cheap. I therefore welcome the extra £30 million that the Government made available for fostering last year, with perhaps, I believe, a new increase in this year. Can the Minister confirm that all social services are now offering adequate, or better than adequate, allowances to foster parents for their extra home costs, together with retaining fees between placements and full repayment of necessary expenses—for example, travel costs? Are extra funds generally available for parents fostering children with learning difficulties or behaviour problems? Are all fosterers receiving sufficient to enable them to make some pension provision for themselves? It seems to me that the crude shortage of foster parents is likely to go on as long as their total remuneration is still inadequate. The shortage was put at 10,000 such families in the previous debate, both by me and by my noble friend Lady Howe; the then Minister said it was only 8,000. Can we please be given the latest and best estimate of the extra numbers needed? The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford spoke about co-operation between the Churches in Essex and social services over recruiting suitable carers. Is this still flourishing and has it been extended to other areas? I ask again: have the Government studied a manifesto for change, published by the Fostering Network last December? Do they agree with its conclusions? Will they identify best practice and work to make it general? Improving the rewards, support and training for foster parents will raise their status. Better still, it will reduce the shortage and thus enable children to be placed near their relations, friends and existing schools. It is possible to gain results that are a win for all concerned. When this happens, many subsequent teenage problems of truancy, anti-social behaviour and crime will be prevented. My noble friend Lord Listowel, again, touched on that. Such cost effectiveness must surely commend itself to the Government. I therefore come back to my starting point by saying that retention of competent social workers needs to go hand in hand with major improvements in the conditions and remuneration for foster parents.