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Children

My Lords, in the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, some of the most vulnerable in our society have a passionate and dedicated advocate. I, too, thank the noble Earl for securing this debate on the vital issue of safeguarding children. I also take this opportunity to thank the associated bodies and the chief inspectorate for their thorough report. I must say that I found the young person’s guide especially helpful. Big words and pictures are just the kind of reports that I like to read. How much I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, that safeguarding is also about building self-esteem and confidence in children. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, talked about fostering being in the front line. I agree and think that foster parents and adoptive parents are simply heroes. The noble Lord, Lord Rix, in his customary role as champion of the disabled, gave us cause to feel shame at how children with disabilities and their families are treated. The speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, also gave us cause for serious concern. And who could fail to be moved by the powerful speech of the noble Lord, Lord Laming? Uncomfortable as the remarks of the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun of Abernethy, may have been, a number of people share her worries. If ever transparency were needed, it is in adoption. That is why Theresa May as shadow Secretary of State for the Family and for Culture, Media and Sport has called for an investigation, for the sake of everyone involved. To the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, in her plea for the use of voluntary organisations, and to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, in his call for an accountable action plan, I say, ““Hear, hear!””. To the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, nominations for leadership of the Conservative Party close today, and I think that he would make an admirable candidate. Today’s debate has been as wide-ranging as it has been thought provoking. I would love to have been able to mention every speech, as all noble Lords brought to the debate a wealth of knowledge and insight, and I shall enjoy revisiting it in Hansard. I wish to focus on how we look after children in care, away from their home, and to emphasise the failing status of looked-after children. Looked-after children are being sent hundreds of miles from home, away from their friends and all that is familiar. As the report highlighted, some councils fail to monitor individual placements of children living away from home, especially outside their area. Is it any wonder, therefore, that 45 per cent of children in care aged 15 to 17 suffer from a mental disorder? That figure is over four times higher than that for all children. Yet mental health provision for looked-after children is lacking, in particular for the 16 to 18 age group. It seems that some children have been treated more equally than others. The problem will only worsen. Councils that are dispersal centres for unaccompanied children face an expensive and unknown future. They are to be congratulated on the care that they give to often scarred and traumatised children who have witnessed the most appalling atrocities, in many cases even the murder of their family. Those scars run deep and will require months and years of therapy. As we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, our child and adolescent mental health services are already overstretched. The report tells us that some agencies still give ““insufficient priority”” to safeguarding children. Thresholds of protection differ from area to area, often due to poor application of local resources. Continuing difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff restrict ability to safeguard children. I join all noble Lords who asked for the raising of the status of people who look after our most vulnerable children. The report illustrates that Her Majesty’s Government’s approach to safeguarding children, as shown most recently in the Green Paper Every Child Matters, is well intentioned, but that so far the reality is far from the dream. Likewise, nominally ““looked-after children”” find themselves caught in a nightmarish reality. Up to 13 per cent of the 78,500 children currently in care were moved to a new placement three times last year. Twelve per cent were children under the age of two, when emotional attachment and stability are so important. We all know as adults the stress of moving just once, so we can only imagine how stressful it must be to move, not just from your home, but from the people you had come to trust at the same time. We would not accept that for our own children and we should not accept it for the children in our care. The damage done to such children is unthinkable. BAAF describes it as a,"““legacy of wasted potential [that] is appalling””." I had the privilege to speak at the BAAF fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference in Blackpool. Felicity Collier spoke of something that affected me profoundly. She said how distressing it was to move children, especially babies, from their familiar environment. Babies function at a sensory level, so touch, smell, feel and sound are vital to their development. But if you move them away from the touch, smell, sound and the feel they know, they panic. They panic so much that, research into their brains has shown, some of their neural pathways close down and never reopen. That is a very sobering thought. In both this report and its predecessor, the question of safeguarding children revolves around minimising risk. How encouraging to see in the report that safeguarding children has climbed right up the agenda of local government, the health service and the justice system. Yet it is alarming to consider the extent of work still to be done and the risk posed to children caught in the interim. It is hard to minimise the risk to children, when the places in which they spend time are not properly monitored. There are still no known plans to review safeguarding arrangements for children in unregulated settings. Provisions have yet to be made to register children in private fostering, to register asylum-seeking children, and to make sure that they are cared for. But let us not just settle for adding to the lists of children in danger. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, early intervention is important. It has been shown to reduce the number of children on the child protection register by identifying potential problems before they occur. Although the overall figure has remained the same since 2002, there have been significant reductions where local governments have implemented new policies. In Kent, children’s services have been revolutionised. The local authority has such a ““can do”” attitude that it fills you with hope—I must add that it is a Conservative council. Officials have taken early intervention very seriously. They believe that there are such long-term consequences of children coming into public care that you must take every opportunity to stop it happening in the first place. They have adopted the New Zealand model of family group conferencing, where they invite the nuclear and extended family to get together. They have even flown people in from other countries because the cost is worth it if you resolve the problem. When everyone is together they say, ““Look, this is our problem and it’s your problem. What are we going to do about it?”” Not only is it an amazing process but it throws up amazing results, because it is a cultural shift and it puts some of the responsibility back on the family. They have financially supported extended family members to help. They have also introduced a group of mature women who have successfully raised their own families and who will go to live with a dysfunctional family to help them to sort out their problems and introduce stability. All that is designed to keep the family together. But if at the end of the day it fails, they move swiftly to a presumption in favour of adoption. And they are successful. Against a rising national trend of children coming into care, their figures are falling. So they are using the money that they are saving on keeping children in care to put back into early intervention, so setting up a virtuous circle. What action is being taken to use early-intervention services across the country? Also, what action will be taken to ensure the stabilisation of thresholds, and will alternative provision be made for low-priority cases that come beneath the threshold? What we need most to help solve the terrible spiral surrounding children in care is a clear route map with honest and achievable goals. It is a shame that we do not have the Government’s response to the report before us, as while we wait, some children will continue to be denied the life that they deserve.