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Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

I welcome the opportunity to raise my concern about child welfare. There are many serious issues. Although I welcome the purpose and intent of my hon. Friend the Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) in proposing the new clause, I have some concerns. I would have preferred the new clause to have been additional to the current legislation, rather than something to be used instead of it. As I understand it—I am subject to correction if I am wrong—article 31(1) of the children order allows independent visitors to be appointed only for children who are in care. Children in care are defined by articles 25(1) and 27(2) as children under care orders. That means that independent visitors cannot be appointed for other children who are very much in need, but who are not fully in care or fully under care orders. Such children may nevertheless need and seek considerable assistance with finding a place to live. They are generally teenage children who are in transition to independent living, but not always. They are known as article 21 children. There is a serious defect because these children are very much in need of support. They are in a halfway house, or no-man’s land, between care and independent living. The new clause would certainly go a long way towards addressing the problem. The new clause would delete article 31(1) and substitute the new wording, but that would create a new problem, because article 31(1) is essential for the protection of children in care. In fact, we need both provisions. We need visitors to be appointed to children in care, but I would claim that we also need visitors appointed to the many children who are not quite in care or under care orders, but at the boundaries. Such children need support as they move from being in care to independent living.