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Children and Young Persons Bill [Lords]

My hon. Friend knows that we have raised the subject of family group conferencing before. It gained a lot of support from Conservative Members, and I think that other Members also felt that its use needed to be expanded much more. We tabled an amendment to reinforce the desirability of pursuing family group conferencing, but, alas, the harshness of Mr. Speaker's selection process has not allowed it to be debated today. I am sure that he is right in his decision, it is just a shame that we have not been able to debate that amendment. However, we have had an opportunity, through my hon. Friend, to say how much we support family group conferencing and getting everyone around the table: extended family members, close friends and all the agencies and professionals involved. That must be the best way to determine what is the best and most appropriate action for the child, because it means that all the opportunities are explored at the same time and kinship carers who want to put themselves forward can do so at the beginning and all the pros and cons of that option can be investigated, rather than adopting the all too common ““We'll get back to you”” approach. I seem to be lingering too long on a new clause which is not mine, but the hon. Member for Stafford will gather that there is support for what he is trying to achieve. New clause 28 was tabled by the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) with whom I concur about the paucity of information about accommodation arrangements for 19 and 20-year-olds. Once again, we are frustrated by Government replies that say that those figures are not collected centrally, because we need that intelligence if we are to discover the extent of the problem, especially given the fact that it does not exist just to the age of 16 or 18. I am aware that there is an amendment on the selection list tabled by the hon. Member for Warrington, South (Helen Southworth), on which we will reserve judgment until she has spoken about it. I will not try to pre-empt her, as I have the hon. Member for Stafford, but we had advance warning of what he is trying to achieve. Amendment No. 13 is not rocket science and what it proposes is not new. In fact, we went back to the matter on numerous occasions in Committee. Basically, it is about trying to put a cap on placements. I know that that is fraught with problems, but there is a strongly held view that the biggest issue undermining the chances of looked-after children getting a decent second chance is instability in their placements. If they are constantly being pushed from one foster placement to another, for the convenience often of the system rather than for their convenience, because it is easier to take a child in care from one foster parent to another some miles away than to try to provide the support package that that child needs to enable them to stay with the first foster parent—the child may have complex needs—that must be detrimental to that child's ability to get back on the straight and narrow. It must also be detrimental to efforts to secure some stability in the child's education, particularly when a new placement means moving from one school to another. The amendment repeats the principles that we supported in Committee by trying to cap the number of placements that a child can have, other than in exceptional circumstances, particularly for those children who are reaching the last year of their compulsory schooling, when such moves can obviously have a detrimental effect on their capacity to take their exams and to pass them. We know that the educational outcome figures for children in care remain appalling. In school year 11, 64 per cent. of looked-after children obtained at least one GCSE or GNVQ, compared with 99 per cent. of all school children, and 13 per cent. obtained at least five GCSEs or equivalent at grades A to C, compared with 62 per cent. of all children. That gap has been widening. Although the achievements of children in care have been improving, that has not happened at nearly as fast a rate as among children in general. That is unacceptable. The amendment would fix a cap on the number of placements, and if that cap were breached, it would be judged an exception to the rule and the local authority would have to give a full explanation of why that had been allowed to happen and what had been done to prevent a repetition. Fostering is the backbone of the care system. Seventy-one per cent. of children in care are now in foster placements, but a National Foundation for Educational Research report found that 29 per cent. of children in care had had three or more placements during their secondary school years, and 25 per cent. of them had had six or more placements. Some survey work for a report by the Centre for Social Justice revealed that almost one in 10 of care leavers interviewed had experienced more than six placements before they were 16 and that some had been in as many as 30. It also found that 41 per cent. of foster carers thought that stability would make the biggest difference to children in care. As David Holmes of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering has said,"““The one thing that would make a difference to children is having a strong relationship based on strong attachment, intimacy and trust with at least one trusted individual which is going to be there for that child.””" Research has shown the importance of stability and continuity of care and its long-term effects on mental health. In a study carried out by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, adults who had been raised in stable foster homes and received specialist support from a dedicated fostering agency were found to be more socially well integrated.