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12.13 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. John Bowis): This is the moment when I have to try to expose my flinty exterior for what it is. I welcome the introduction to the debate by the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn). I also welcome the contributions by the hon. Members for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe), for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook), for St. Helens, South (Mr. Bermingham) and for Darlington (Mr. Milburn) and the brief but important contribution by the hon. Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth).
I have heard much during the debate that I welcome. The tone of it was right. We are here to seek to care for people who need our care in a particular and continuing way. If I have one quarrel with the subject of the debate chosen by the hon. Member for Newport, West it is over a matter for which he cannot be blamed: the fact that we talk about "leaving care." That is the wrong terminology. We should not talk about young people leaving care; we should talk about young people moving, over a period,
from care to independence. The concept of leaving contains the notion of a cut-off, which the hon. Gentleman and I reject--I think that we all rejected it today. Our message is that there should not be a cut-off point, certainly not at the age of 16.
When he and I talk to young people who have left care recently, and who often contribute to our debates and conferences, we do well to listen to their message. They ask, "Who was getting to know me while I was in care? Who was preparing me for the moment when I would leave or move out of care? Who kept in touch with me once I had made that move?" That is the theme of today's debate and it is certainly the theme of my response to it.
We have to use the phrase "leaving care" as a convenient shorthand and I shall prove as guilty of doing so as anyone else, but it is only shorthand. The phrase is familiar to all those involved with the provision of services and opportunities for young people who are looked after by local authorities, many of whom, as we have heard, will have come from disadvantaged backgrounds--the hon. Member for Stockton, North listed some of the disadvantages. The shorthand phrase does not and cannot describe the wide variety of circumstances in which young people are looked after, nor the individual needs that they present as they move from care.
A number of hon. Members have acknowledged the Children Act, which I welcome. That Act probably gave the greatest ever impetus to the provision of leaving care services. We can argue whether the Act is perfect, whether it needs amendment or whether it could be better implemented, but it give local authorities a clear responsibility--particularly under section 24--to provide a range of services and assistance. It also gives local authorities the discretion to provide additional help for young people where appropriate.
Under that Act, the local authorities have the new statutory responsibility to prepare the young people they are looking after for the time when they leave care. They have the power to provide after-care support in certain defined circumstances until the young people reach the age of 21. They also have the power to provide financial assistance in appropriate circumstances.
The Act requires local authorities to advise, assist and befriend young people with a view to promoting their welfare when they cease to be looked after in the legal term. Local authorities also have the power to provide financial assistance connected with a young person's further education, employment and training--that assistance can extend beyond the age of 21 to enable the young person to complete a course. Comprehensive guidance for local authorities and voluntary organisations on all those matters was issued to accompany the legislation.
Section 24 is the key to the Act. The hon. Gentleman referred to the amendments that he would like to see implemented. I sought to intervene towards the end of his speech and I should be grateful if he would give some thought, not necessarily now, to the ways in which he would like the Act to be improved. I shall be happy to listen to his suggestions. The message that I heard today was that hon. Members want the Act to be better implemented, not necessarily changed. However, we can all consider that together.
I believe that the duty placed on local authorities to prepare children for the day that they leave care is of fundamental importance. Whenever I am asked to speak
on the subject of so-called "leaving care", I make a great effort to emphasise the fact that the arrangements for leaving care are not matters that can be left until a few weeks before the young person leaves care.
The day that a young person arrives in care should ideally be the day when preparation for leaving care begins. In one sense, the best preparation is to ensure that the young person receives the highest quality of care and education while being looked after. Special attention may need to be paid to equipping him or her with the skills required for living on their own. That should be integral, not a stand-alone element in the programme of help. I want a seamless range of services--that has been mentioned--to be available for each young person. Leaving care arrangements must be evolutionary and must be put in place, quite often, over some years, but that can be achieved only if the young person receives good quality care. That is why we have taken several initiatives to make residential care a more positive experience for them.
Mr. Flynn:
The main recommendations that we would make are to strengthen duties of local authorities in the Children Act 1989, to make them mandatory on local authorities, to ring-fence those funds for the financial provisions for care leavers and to raise them to an adequate level. I want measures of choice to prevent young people leaving care too young. They will have a great deal of say in that. Most important of all, there should be measures to iron out those disparities that exist between local authorities or care services. We want national co-ordination, to ensure that the level of care provided does not depend on the address of the person who applies for it.
Mr. Bowis:
As I suspected, much of that is to do with implementation rather than changes in the law. I acknowledge that that is what the hon. Gentleman appeared to be saying in much of his speech.
The requirement in section 24(1) of the 1989 Act is mandatory, not voluntary. That section says:
I believe that the hon. Member for Newport, West is asking for other things to be made mandatory, such as monitoring. As the hon. Member for Darlington said, that might not be as simple as he suggests. Nevertheless, I will listen if the hon. Member for Newport, West suggests possible improvements. However, if--although I should be surprised if they are--local authorities are telling me that they will do what they are required to do in law only if we make those things mandatory or if we require them to do what is best practice, I shall listen to them. Similarly, if local authorities want us to top-slice the money that otherwise would be given to them to be used at their discretion--to ring-fence a budget for those aspects--we shall listen, but they have not so far asked us to do that.
Mr. Flynn:
It would be impossible to iron out those difficulties in the final eight minutes. Will the Minister agree to meet a delegation consisting of myself, some
Mr. Bowis:
I am always happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and people involved in that sector. I meet them and have met them. I have attended conferences and seminars with them and sat down and chatted to them. I am happy to take that a stage further, if the hon. Gentleman wants to do so.
Some interesting and justified arguments were made about the reputation of residential child care. It is important that we do not allow its name to be muddied by highlighting examples of things going wrong. Too often, perhaps, it has been regarded as an option of last resort, and if people regard it in that way it can become self-fulfilling. I am keen that we improve the standing, status and quality of residential child care. That is why our residential child care support force has travelled throughout the country, under the leadership of Adrianne Jones. It has worked with about 76 agencies in the public, private and voluntary sectors to try to improve the quality of residential child care.
There is evidence from that exercise that authorities are making solid progress in implementing many of the good practice recommendations from the Warner and other reports. In relation to foster care and residential care, we have promoted our looking after children project, which is being implemented in 39 local authorities and has attracted widespread, indeed international, interest. That provides a complete system of planning and decision making, reviewing and monitoring the care of children away from home with the aim of improving day-to-day standards and thereby offering a better chance to a child to fulfil his or her potential in life.
In spite of those improvements, it is true that substitute care can never entirely replace the benefits of a child being brought up in his or her own family. Many of the children in care enter care at a very early age and already have a disturbed and disadvantaged history. Many will experience multiple placements, including perhaps a mixture of foster and residential care. Some, as the hon. Member for Stockton, North said, may have suffered emotional, physical or sexual abuse or neglect, or a mixture of those.
Such young people have different backgrounds and have few of the opportunities that may be afforded to young people brought up in what may be termed a "normal" family environment in which, even after children leave home, they continue to look to their family for support, help and advice. That is why I urge local authorities--and I shall go on doing so--to ensure that there is a continuity of relationship between the young person and key individuals to provide that essential continuum in managing the transition between being in care and adulthood.
Above all, those young people need adults to stand by them; to be committed in the way that we expect parents to champion their own children. "Key workers", social workers or volunteers may play that role, which we consider to be so important for individual young people.
When I visit local authorities and speak to staff, I ask them to consider what they would expect for their own children. It is a simple, effective question, and I have witnessed some immensely positive outcomes from it. Not
so long ago, I visited a London borough that had a policy of positively encouraging young people to return to their children's home for advice and support or to stay for a short time, remembering birthdays and so on. It is all part of that continuum of care, which is a very important message that we bring.
Listening to young people is crucial. The conferences in Bolton and London that the hon. Member for Wakefield mentioned, which attracted 1,000 people from social services and elsewhere, were especially valuable, because, not only were we launching the training pack and the Leeds research, but they showed how important it is to listen to young people and hear their perspective.
Young people contributed to those conferences, and we intend to go on listening to them, not least by including them, as we are doing, in some other social services inspectorate work. They form part of the inspection teams that we send out, and that is part of the monitoring, which I hope is acknowledged and recognised by hon. Members. I know that First Key and other organisations such as the Who Cares Trust and the Save the Children Fund place great store by direct consultation with young people. I know, from meeting First Key, of young people who are members of consultancy teams brought in by local authorities to help them plan their services.
In all those aspects, we need to, and we shall, liaise closely with local authorities and other statutory agencies to effect the changes that are seen to be necessary. Many authorities have developed imaginative, effective schemes for supporting care leavers. That is why I have confidence that we can do better nationally.
However, we need to recognise that provision varies throughout the country. We need to reduce that variation by monitoring and development, and our social services inspectorate is currently preparing a set of standards, which has been asked for, for local policy and good practice, as a basis for its inspection of local authority leaving care services next year. That will be published as part of the report of the inspection and will provide a benchmark against which all local authorities will be able to measure their existing policy and practice.
"it shall be the duty of the authority to advise, assist and befriend him"--
the child being looked after by a local authority--
"with a view to promoting his welfare when he ceases to be looked after by them."
That requirement is certainly mandatory.
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