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Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I support the amendment, particularly in relation to payment for kinship care. I have had huge experience of the wide variety of practices between local authorities in determining whether certain family members should be made foster parents. There are criteria in all local authorities for their particular fostering schemes, which are obviously made for stranger foster carers. Some local authorities apply those same standards to kinship care, where there are clearly different criteria. The physical amenities may not be the same as you might be looking at in a stranger situation, but the children concerned will be used to what their grandparents are able to provide. We recognise that the emotional security that they will be given will be far greater than any material gain but what is important is that the welfare needs of the children are met. Therefore I agree with my noble friend Lady Massey—I am not sure whether I am allowed to call her my noble friend as she sits on a different Bench, but I will do so—that it is vital that we pay grandparents appropriately right from the beginning of the child’s sojourn with them. I recognise that there is an issue about whether the state should interfere in family life and that there are certain circumstances in which families will wish to care for the children who have come into their care without necessarily being given financial or other assistance. Those families simply will not ask for it. I became the unlikely founder of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Grandparents and Extended Kin, simply because I listened to the stories of dozens of families who from the heart told of losing their grandchildren to stranger foster parent placements because they did not met the criteria of the local authority; and yet they cared deeply and passionately for their grandchildren. I think that the Government want to prevent that happening where they can give appropriate care, but to do so they need to make sure that there is emotional and financial support at the right time. Therefore, I support the amendment.