---

Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, my name is attached to the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, clearly set out why it is so fundamentally important, so I will cover only a few of the main issues. We know that children in care are overrepresented in the secure estate population. Approximately 40 to 49 per cent of children and young people in custody have been in local authority care, and about 18 per cent are still subject to statutory care orders. This is a particularly vulnerable group of children who are most likely to experience resettlement problems on release. We on these Benches believe that any child removed from their ordinary care arrangements by the state should be understood to be looked after by the state, both in the spirit of the term and by statute. Even those children who are sent to custody directly from their parental home, without being subject to any current or former care arrangements with the local authority, are, to all intents and purposes, being removed from any effective parental supervision and responsibility. In other words, it should be recognised that they move into the care of the state. The Government will argue that, under current arrangements, the youth offending team will have case responsibility. We would say that the main function of youth offending teams is to prevent reoffending, and that while they are required to take account of the holistic needs of the child, they do not have a primary welfare function. While they were originally established as multi-agency teams, with staff from a number of sectors, over time these links have become extremely tenuous and youth offending teams now often consist of generic youth justice workers. For this reason, we feel that children who are looked after, whatever their status and whether or not they are eligible care-leavers, should continue to have involvement from their own child and family social worker throughout their period in custody. That would be the holistic way to manage them, and it is not currently the case.