Annette
Brooke: I am listening carefully, but could the Minister
outline the process from the point when we introduce the Bill? How will
this new culture—the new regulations—operate in practice?
Some authorities are excellent at dealing with such issues, but the
good practice is not spreading, and I do not feel that simply
introducing the legislation is enough. What back-up actions is the
Minister thinking of?
Beverley
Hughes: That is an important point that goes to the heart
of my response to the amendment. The back-up procedures that we are
putting in place will start to inculcate what the hon. Lady rightly
calls a change of culture, which is what is needed in some local
authorities.
For example,
as part of making the proposals a reality, we published the new volume
1 of the court order guidance in January. The guidance introduced a
requirement that relatives and friends should, as far as possible, be
considered as potential carers in all cases, as part of the care plan
that is lodged with the court at the outset of care proceedings. About
60 per cent. of children are looked after as a result of going through
court proceedings, so we have a potentially strong lever here. The
guidance that the courts now have makes it clear that they are required
to check that the care plan has thoroughly examined and assessed
whether there is a possibility of the child living with family or a
friend. If not, the courts are required to ask why not. That is one
important lever.
Another
important lever, which relates to the proposal in the amendment, is
that all local authorities are now required to use the integrated
children’s system. That is an electronic system or template
setting out in great detail the content of the care plan. Under the
ICS, the care plan for a looked-after child requires the social worker
to record evidence of the wider family’s capacity to care for
the child as one of the family and environmental factors. That includes
the practical efforts that have been made to ensure that such
placements could happen.
Our
intention is to make kinship care a reality in practice, and all of us
on the Committee share that intention. Under the ICS, we are requiring
social workers—this is true of all the care plan, but
particularly where children do not go through the court processes and
the court does not examine these issues—not only to mention
their assessment of the wider family’s capacity to care for the
child, but to give evidence in a particular place in the care plan to
support that assessment.
Tim
Loughton: Can the Minister tell us who that evidence will
be available to?
Beverley
Hughes: It will be recorded in the care plan, so it will
be available to the social worker’s supervisors, but it will
also be available and very clearly evident to the independent reviewing
officer, who will be able to see easily whether the questions about the
potential for family care have been examined thoroughly and, if the
child is not to be placed there, why
not. 4.45
pm
Tim
Loughton: I know that we will address this matter later
during debate on different subjects, but is there a case for making
that evidence available in some version to the potential kinship carers
too?
Beverley
Hughes: The guidance that we produce—we are
rewriting all the guidance—will also require social workers to
notify the parents in writing about the care plan, as well as the
child, other carers, representatives of other agencies involved with
the child and others with a sufficient interest in the child. There is
an intention to notify them, if not of the contents of the document
itself—I will get a specific answer on that—certainly of
the conclusions of the care plan and why they have been
drawn. I
think that we agree completely that the decision-making process
relating to that question needs to be clearly recorded and easily
accessible by the other people within the system, including the IRO,
the court, the child’s parents and carers and the child himself
or herself. Through those two processes—the court process and,
more generally for all children, the requirement to record the care
plan in the ICS—that record will already be included.
However, we
will not stop there. As I have explained, the significance of clause 9
is that we are bringing together all the requirements for care planning
in one set of regulations. As we update the statutory guidance and
develop those regulations to drive forward practice—that is the
issue, as hon. Members have rightly said—as part of the delivery
of the “Care Matters” programme, we will ensure that the
requirements in clause 9 to consider family placements are fully
reflected in the new guidance and regulations and that they mirror what
we have included in the revised court order guidance where children are
subject to family proceedings.
Annette
Brooke: I just want to check whether a particular
situation would be covered in regulations. I have a case involving a
grandparent who is too ill and too old to take on long-term care of the
child. The grandparent accepts that the child cannot stay. The child is
likely to go to foster care and maybe, eventually, to adoption, but my
constituent would like to remain the child’s grandmother
throughout. It has been difficult to argue that with the local
authority. Can Minister tell me whether the regulations can give me any
comfort? It is another layer where a grandparent might lose their
status, and there is no reason why they
should.
Beverley
Hughes: As the hon. Lady will appreciate, it is difficult
to comment on individual cases. I do not know why that child is in
care, whether there were any safeguarding issues with the family or
anything else, but it is in the spirit of what we are including in the
Bill and my passionate belief that we must enable children to keep
their links with their birth family wherever and whenever that is
conducive to their well-being. If that particular case gets to the
adoption stage, issues will need to be worked out about adoptive
parents and how that can be managed. However, in many cases, adopted
children, with the agreement of all concerned, now keep in contact with
their wider birth family. I would certainly like to see that trend
continued and
developed. In
conclusion, I agree completely with the two main arguments put by the
hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham about the importance of
enabling contact and enabling children as far as possible to live with
family members or friends and the importance of maintaining effective
records of decisions. The record should be one of the levers that keep
the system charged
and focused on the importance of the question and of
considering it carefully for each child. Although he was a little
sceptical and thought that I was going to brush aside his comments, I
hope that he accepts that I agree with the spirit of the amendment and
that we have provided for what the amendment would require in the
various recording arrangements that are already embedded in the system.
To require a separate written report outside that system would add to
the bureaucracy and the need to use laptops when we are trying to
streamline the system so that social workers can keep proper records in
a way that reduces the record-keeping demands on
them. Tim
Loughton: Before the Minister finishes, will she give her
view of why such record keeping is not happening now? We can agree or
disagree about whether it will happen after the changes, but why is it
not happening more
now?
Beverley
Hughes: I do not think that I can provide better evidence
than the speculations in the research cited by the hon. Gentleman. The
practice is very good in some local authorities. The reasons that he
cited from the NCH can be felt in some local authorities and one can
feel that it is more difficult for social workers in those authorities.
It is a reality that they have to untangle and make sense of what might
be long histories of relationships between adults in the families.
There may be difficulties between potential carers and the parents.
Within that, the social workers have to determine what is in the
child’s interests. I am not arguing that social workers should
not try to work through those issues, but I can understand that making
good decisions can seem difficult for
them. It
may be that there is genuine antipathy towards family care in some
places. We have to cut through that completely and make a very strong
statement that this is what children say that they want and that this
is what we know is in the best interests of children. I hope that, with
the support of Committee members, we will start to inculcate the change
of culture that is clearly necessary through the provisions of the
Bill. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept those points and my
assurances and will withdraw the
amendment.
Tim
Loughton: We have had a useful, short debate on this
important subject. I am pleased that the Minister shares my enthusiasm
for the concept, if not for the terminology of the
amendment. There
are clear discrepancies in the evidence. I quoted from the Farmer and
Moyers research, which found that social workers initiated only 4 per
cent. of family and friends placements. I have seen other research by
grandparents’ groups, which suggests that it is as low as 1 per
cent. Other research suggests that the figure is 11 or 12
per
cent. There
are also big discrepancies between local authorities, which is a real
problem. This issue goes back to the tables of differential multiple
placement records. A child who needs to be placed into the care of a
local authority faces the same sort of problems whether in Cornwall,
Stoke or Barnet, which are the three authorities that we cited earlier.
The problems may be of a different magnitude, but interestingly, the
research that I quoted suggests that there tends to be a greater
willingness for
extended family members to come forward as potential
carers in more deprived areas. It is a problem on a number of levels
that certain local authorities have different experiences and produce
very different outcomes in how they place or look after the children in
the care system, whether in foster care, kinship care or whatever. That
merits closer assessment by the
Government. I
am assured by the Minister that what I am trying to achieve is already
being put in place. However, it is important that the message goes out
from this short debate that this issue is a priority. It is not just
another piece of paper on which the social worker responsible is
supposed to tick various boxes; it is an important
priority.
Mr.
Turner: Will my hon. Friend remind me of the
Government’s figures that apparently balance his 11 per cent.
down to 1 per
cent.?
Tim
Loughton: I cannot remember what the Minister said. Would
she like to remind us what the figures were, or has she forgotten as
well? [ Interruption.] Anyway, there are big discrepancies among
all the different figures. The Government might like to undertake
research to get to the bottom of it and why it is going on.
[ Interruption.] We will read it in Hansard
tomorrow. A
clear directive needs to go out as part of the guidance within the ICS.
A culture change is required, which is why the thrust of the amendment
was that it must be the default position, without which the responsible
social worker must be forced to make a serious assessment of why it was
not possible. The reason why I also queried whether that should be
available in some form to the parents as well goes back to the Ofsted
study that I quoted earlier. Parents and extended family members feel
very much in the dark about why decisions have been taken. Many of the
cases that we get in our surgeries involve grandparents who cannot
understand why they have been rejected as foster carers or even
adoptive parents when, on the face of it, they are the ideal person.
Are they just getting the brush-off from a social worker who may be
lazy, risk-averse or completely stressed out for all sorts of other
reasons and unable to give the priority suggested in the
directions? On
the basis that the Minister has said that there will be a culture
change and we will hopefully start to see a radical improvement in the
figures, which in turn will lead to greater stability among the
placements so that there will be fewer placements with fewer different,
unconnected bodies, I am happy to take her at her word. I beg to ask
leave to withdraw the
amendment. Amendment,
by leave, withdrawn.
Tim
Loughton: I beg to move amendment No. 7, in
clause 9, page 7, line 37, after
‘sibling’, insert ‘or
siblings’.
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the
following: Amendment No. 8, in clause 9, page 7, line 38, leave out
‘to live together’ and insert
‘or siblings to be placed
together and maintain that placement for as long as is reasonably
practicable and in the interests of
C’. New
clause 4—Sibling
contact— ‘After section
34 of the 1989 Act
insert— “34A
Sibling contact (1) Where it is
not consistent with the child’s welfare to be accommodated with
a sibling, the local authority shall take all reasonable steps to
ensure the child can maintain contact with his or her sibling on a
regular basis.
(2) The local authority shall take all reasonable
steps to ensure the child can maintain contact with any other
siblings. (3) Subsections (1)
and (2) shall not apply if the child or the sibling objects to it and
the authority is satisfied that the child or sibling has sufficient
understanding to make an informed
decision.”’. New
clause 30—Sibling contact (No.
2)— ‘(1) The 1989 Act is
amended as follows. (2) In
section 34(1) after paragraph (a)
insert— “(aa) any
sibling of his;”. (3) In
Schedule 2, paragraph 15(1) after paragraph (a)
insert— “(aa) any
sibling of
his;”’.
Tim
Loughton: It is me again, I am afraid. The amendments all
deal with clause 9, but now we move to the also vital subject of
siblings. Again, we may bandy around figures, but one thing is
accepted—the Minister alluded to it just now, as did
I—about connections with birth family members: it is absolutely
essential that wherever possible, a child should be able to benefit
from continued contact with a sibling, whether or not they are taken
into
care. As
we know, in certain families, some children are taken into the care
system and some remain with the birth family. In the worst
circumstances, children can be spread among different care placements.
Surely it must be a fundamental principle that wherever possible, if
there is more than one child, it is in the children’s best
interests that they should be placed together. That puts great pressure
on foster placements. If four children are taken away from a family, it
is not easy to find a specialist foster placement for them,
particularly if they have challenging behavioural problems or learning
disabilities or a particular ethnic background that needs to be taken
into account. However, surely the preferred position—it is what
is supposed to happen—must be that those siblings should remain
together. The
clause and proposed new section 22C(8) give a hierarchy of priorities.
A child should be able to be kept near their home and may be
prioritised for placement with a sibling wherever possible. The
terminology could be misconstrued. That is why amendment No. 7 suggests
adding the words “or siblings”. Technically, my reading
of it is that subsection (8) refers to only one sibling even if a child
is part of a group of three or more siblings. For completeness and to
avoid misinterpretation, we suggest that subsection (8)(c) should
state: “if
C has a sibling or siblings for whom the local authority are also
providing
accommodation”. That
is the technical purpose of amendment No.
7.
5
pm I
turn to amendment No. 8. Subsection (8) refers to siblings being able
“to live together”. What does that mean? Does it mean
that they are together for one day? Does it mean that they see each
other occasionally, that they are close by but are still
“together”? That, again, could be misinterpreted. What is
meant by the subsection is that the children should be placed together
in the same placement, with the same foster family or in the same
kinship arrangement, in the same premises. We therefore suggest that
instead of the siblings living together they should
be “placed
together and maintain that placement for as long as is reasonably
practicable”.
Under
a strict reading of the provision, an authority that put those two or
more children together for a day or a week would have fulfilled that
qualification. I am sure that it is the Government’s intention
that they should be placed together for as long as possible, in order
to provide stability.
Those are
points of clarification. The amendments would not take anything away
from the Bill, but they would make what is intended more
evident. Mr.
David Kidney (Stafford) (Lab): The hon. Gentleman is
uncharacteristically ungenerous in not admitting that the clause is a
good development. Can he not bring himself to say that, with or without
his minor amendments, it is really good that we want to put children
with their parents or other family carers and, failing that, that they
should go to the most appropriate placement, which includes living with
their siblings, if they have any, whenever
possible?
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