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Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

My Lords, by way of declaration of interest, I should say that my first job as a social worker after training was as a family case worker, my second as a childcare officer in the London Borough of Lambeth children's department. Ever since, I have worked with children and families in one form or another, including in regulation, and now as deputy chair of CAFCASS. I have known children in care—some throughout their lives, others for brief episodes. All that the Government are aspiring to do in the Bill is to be welcomed and is laudable. It may be my long experience or a bad cold that makes me bring to this debate a little less cosiness in my welcome. I ask myself why many of the things aspired to in the Bill have not already been achieved under the legislation that we have had since 1948—certainly since the preventive act of 1963. Why have we not yet reached the Government’s aims of giving children and young people in trouble a better chance? At the moment, I remain deeply pessimistic about outcomes being achieved by legislation. Of course, there has been much progress and, like the noble Baronesses opposite, I commend social workers who work in the field, especially those who work in residential care with many of those young people. When I was an assistant director of social services, I had 1,400 children in my care, so times have certainly changed and there is improvement. What could have been achieved by other things not needing legislation is the right practice, training, resources and focus. Perhaps the Minister is trying to bring focus through the Bill. What more is there in local authorities to ensure that all that comes together in future? We have spent a long time talking about partnerships and working together. Do we really need more bureaucracy and more legislation? Take, for example, Part 1, enabling powers for social work practice pilots. The Government should not underestimate the complexities of managing private provider contracts—I speak from experience both as a provider of services struggling with local authorities to achieve decent contracts and as a user in CAFCASS, where we manage a large body of private social workers providing the services of court officers and guardians. Achieving contracts of enough length to enable the contractors to give quality while keeping costs at a proper level is a delicate balance. We know that CAFCASS was partly created because the costs in local authorities had become out of control. Local authorities need to ensure value for money, but often in the contracting culture that has led to short-termism and has seen costs driven down to a level where decent providers—often in the voluntary sector—have moved out of the market. How many voluntary childcare providers remain in the residential field? Maybe those are the issues that the so-called pilots will consider, but we already have a mass of evidence in childcare and know what is needed now. My main concern about the pilots—this does not mean that I do not think that we should move ahead with them, but there are huge issues—is that they will divert local authorities generally from continuing the huge push that we need in every local authority for better social work care of every child in care. We know well that that can be achieved anyway. The noble Baroness talked about the NCH and the kind of social work provision that it has been able to provide through one of its projects. Certainly, continuity is vital for children and young people. We know from the large body of research into child development, from listening to the youngsters themselves, and from the Children’s Commissioner, the Children’s Rights Director, the Children’s Society and many others how strongly young people feel about this. Work needs to be done on this in every local authority now, without the diversion of any further restructuring. There are exciting glimpses in the Bill of the Government listening to children and reflecting this in the legislation. I am delighted that in Clause 14 a child has a clear say about who should be their independent visitor. Although many children and young people benefit from the emphasis of a placement with family and friends, I will look to the Minister to add the phrase, ““taking into account the child’s wishes and feelings””. I deal with many families with whom children would rather not be placed, and they have a right to say so, just as they have a right to say whether they want to keep their kinship placement. It would of course be easier if children in care had the right to an advocate to help them to voice their concerns, and I am sure that others will speak more on this. The charity Voice is looking at what this might cost, but the chief executive, John Kemmis, says that although it may be expensive, getting it wrong is costing an absolute fortune. We know that many of these children, who have not been able to voice their concerns, end up in extraordinarily expensive placements in another system—the criminal justice system. Among my concerns about the Bill is my belief that it lacks the wider strategic vision of the wider Every Child Matters agenda. These children are not one similar set. There are huge variations, some of which have been outlined by other noble Lords this afternoon. Almost half of them will return home within six months, some only to be reaccommodated, so what counts is what goes on around rehabilitation and prevention. Social workers complain continually—this is due partly to the turnover—of having no time to work with families to prevent a care episode. Of course some children will need to go into care for their own protection, and for them the right placement is crucial. The suggested family payments are welcome, but where the child needs a foster carer, I ask the Minister to say what he thinks of the 17 local authorities in England that continue to pay below the national minimum standards. The Fostering Network reports that foster carers continue to dip into their own pockets to subsidise the state or let their foster child go without, which of course they seldom do. Do we really need a Bill to do something about that? How does this square with the extra revenue which the Minister mentioned in his introduction? For many children and young people, there are complex social, educational and emotional needs, to which my noble friend Lord Rix referred. Here I declare a further interest as chair of the charity Grooms-Shaftesbury, which cares for people with complex needs. I have also been briefed by the Children’s Services Development Group, which provides specialist education and care services for users, so I shall not repeat the issue of children who have 52-week care but who do not get the kind of care that another child would get on a two-day visit. We should remember that 27 per cent of looked-after children have a statement of special educational needs, compared with 3 per cent in the general population. Sometimes I am really concerned about the target that we set for GCSEs. For many of these children—I met a number of them last week—learning is to eat, to say a basic sentence, and to achieve control. Getting anything like a GCSE is not a remote possibility, but they can achieve with different targets. As has already been said, Clauses 8 and 9 could pose a real threat to children who need a specialist package, and I shall look in Committee for reassurance that the Bill does not result in children and young people having restricted access to the specialist care service that they need. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, put it absolutely clearly when she said that the placement should meet the child’s needs, and that there should be no other considerations. We know only too well—I have been a director of social services and have been faced with this issue—how easy it is for cost to become the driver. I have time for only one further point. The provisions around education and training are to be welcomed, especially further assistance to pursue education or training up to the age of 25. As has been said, these provisions will be for the more able young people—to whom, yes, we want to give every encouragement. But could we not extend the transition stage to others? For example, the transition stage for children in long-term care could be extended until well into their 20s. In particular, those who face greater difficulties, find employment a problem, have mental health issues and find new relationships hard need more support and independent living projects. These are the youngsters who we find in prisons and mental institutions when we have failed them. I am struggling to get through my speech because of a few germs—perhaps they are making me feel so jaundiced about the Bill. Perhaps in Committee we will make it better. The most important thing about this Bill is that it must be a wake-up call for everyone responsible in some way for a child in care. Ultimately, it is not the legislation that will make the difference, but the implementation. This Bill may be considered a triumph of ideology over realism; we should work to make the ideology real for every child in care.