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Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I was not in Grand Committee when the noble Lord, Lord Rix, moved this amendment; I had to move off and do something else. I do not wish to detain the Committee; I simply want to say that in my experience these children have some of the greatest difficulties in terms of being isolated. If you are in a boarding school and your parents do not visit because they are poor and often very vulnerable themselves, and if you find yourself put in alternative placements not in local authority provision during the holidays because your parents are in difficulties, you are likely to have far more needs than, and yet not be assessed like, most children who find themselves accommodated or most of the children in care whom we have been discussing. Any child in an establishment who is without some sort of intervention and visitation is a child in need and yet has been abandoned. I support the noble Lord, Lord Rix, in his amendment.