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Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

My name is on this amendment also. I should like to ask my noble friend some financial questions that I suspect he might be predicting. What financial help would be available to the grandparents, as outlined by my noble friend Lady Massey? At the point at which children come for an extended stay grandparents will need some lump-sum money for bunk beds, bedding and above all clothes and all the other things that they will not have. That should mean that they ought to have access to and be eligible for a lump-sum payment from the Social Fund—a community grant. I bet that they do not get it. They certainly should. Can my noble friend confirm whether they will be eligible? I realise that this spills over into a different department; none the less, if he cannot answer today, perhaps his officials can write to us. Are such grandparents eligible for a lump sum—£1,000, £500 or whatever—to meet the immediate financial needs of the children? Secondly, the grandmother will probably be in her later 50s, will probably be in work and will have to stop work. What access to an income in lieu will she have if she takes on the children under the scenario of my noble friend? While she was in work national insurance payments were being made towards her pension. Since 2003, as a foster carer, she is automatically eligible for a national insurance contribution towards her pension; but by being a good grandmother and taking on these children, without that status, is she now sacrificing some of her eligibility towards a pension? I suspect that she is. She should not be and we should do something about it. Thirdly, in terms of an income in lieu, will she get income support as well as financial support for the children? Almost certainly not, if she has a spouse who is in work, even though the children will impose an additional financial responsibility. Fourthly, will the grandparents get guardian’s allowance? That allowance was designed for physical orphans. These children may be moral orphans or semi-orphans. This is now a responsibility of HMRC. The grandparents should be eligible for such an allowance; will they get it? I doubt it, but they ought to. Will my noble friend take it up? A fifth element of financial support should be available—the childcare tax credit—which, if those children were being cared for by the next-door neighbour, would be paid to that neighbour. If they were being looked after by the grandparent, the grandparent almost certainly would not be paid. Can my noble friend confirm that the grandparent who should get that money probably is not getting it but probably ought to? Finally, there is the childcare tax credit. That is a supplement to income which normally follows the child benefit book and which may take up to six weeks to materialise. If we are dealing with a long stay with grandparents, that may be fine but if children are staying six weeks there and six weeks back with their parents until the relationship breaks down for whatever reason—addiction, poor mental health, or whatever—then childcare tax credits or child tax credits can almost never catch up with the rights and the needs of the grandparents. Potentially, there are five or six streams of income which ought to be available to grandparents, ranging from a lump sum from the Social Fund, to national insurance protection for their pension, to guardian's allowance, to income support, to childcare tax credit and to child tax credit itself. In my view, grandparents ought to be eligible for each and every one of those, except in so far as they are overlapping benefits. I bet they do not receive any of them. Therefore, I ask my noble friend to take away the issue of financial support for grandparents, particularly in the very difficult situation where the children may fluctuate between parents and grandparents. We know that grandparents will hang on in with children who may be difficult, disturbed or challenging as a result of their parents’ experience in a way in which foster parents may not. They may be the only source of stability to see those children through to responsible adulthood.