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Children and Young Persons Bill [Lords]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The educational achievements of children who are, or have been, in care are historically poor, compared with their peers. Educational achievement is one of the many strong focuses of this Bill, and it includes provisions to strengthen the arrangements in schools to ensure that the special needs of children with a care background are taken into account in their education. His point reinforces the point that I have just made. If a young person, despite all the obstacles put before them, has made every effort to achieve good qualifications and has the ambition and drive to go to university—or to a college of further education to achieve vocational qualifications to improve their employability—we do not want a weakness in the arrangements for their accommodation to undermine their efforts. I chair the associate parliamentary group for looked-after children and care leavers, and when we had a session on this issue, a foster carer told me about the attempts of a girl for whom she was caring to go to university, which were completely undermined because when she turned 18 she received no support from the local authority during the university breaks, when she came home and wanted to continue to live with her foster carer. In the end, the foster carer gave up being the foster carer—and therefore suffered financial loss—because she was so determined to see the girl through university. That was a commendable and brave decision, but not one that we, as responsible legislators, would wish to force on either of them.