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Children and Young Persons Bill [Lords]

I am most grateful to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) for allowing me a couple of minutes to squeeze in my speech at the end of this very consensual debate. I would like to pick out two aspects of the requirement on local authorities to provide suitable accommodation. That will be a great challenge in many cases. Occasionally, I find that 16 and 17-year-olds have been given council tenancies, but these young people do not have the life skills, personal responsibility or discipline to be able to cope with living independently. We need to find other ways of giving them a halfway house between being a child and an adult and giving them the support and back-up of an adult. The other aspect is the requirement to provide respite care for families with children with very special needs. I think particularly of children on the autistic disorder spectrum, whose families desperately need the opportunity for respite care. That accommodation will have to be tailor made and very specific to the needs of children who do not respond well to change and the unfamiliar, with highly trained staff to look after them so that those families can enjoy their respite without having to worry about whether their children are being looked after properly. There are two special challenges for local authorities in providing accommodation for young teenagers who are not really mature enough to live successfully on their own without being a nuisance to their neighbours and in providing respite care for those who look after children with very special needs.