Tim
Loughton: On that point, the Minister will acknowledge
that that is clearly not what I want to achieve. Ofsted’s
figures provide tables concentrating specifically on three or more
placements. That has already been set down as a benchmark by her own
Department for what is not acceptable. We need to set a threshold
somewhere, whether at two, three or whatever, above which it is
absolutely not acceptable. With all the incentives to push it down even
further, we need to start
somewhere.
Beverley
Hughes: I agree with the spirit of what the hon. Gentleman
says. Arguably, if we were setting the national indicator set now, we
might have defined it rather more ambitiously than three or more
placements. He is right that that benchmark is enshrined in the
national indicator set and reinforced in guidance, but
my point was that I would be worried about putting that permanently in
legislation. We need to be more ambitious than that for most children.
Putting it in the Bill might, over time, normalise it as an acceptable
benchmark. We want to ensure that most children’s number of
placements is far
lower.
Mr.
Turner: Surely the Minister is aware from the figures
quoted by my hon. Friend that the number placed twice is far too high.
We know that the figures are low for one, but I am not sure that they
are low enough. Where are the rest? Are they like that or like this, or
somewhere in
between?
Beverley
Hughes: The majority of children who remain in care for
more than a year stay in the same placement. We also know that a
substantial number of children—about 40 per cent., I
think—are in care for a year or less before returning home. We
are talking about a small minority of children, but none the less a
substantial one. As of 31 March 2003, 14.8 per cent. of
looked-after children had had three or more placements. By 2007, that
had fallen to 12.3 per cent. of children in care. It is a minority, and
it is falling, but it is still too many, and we want to reduce that as
much as we
can.
Annette
Brooke: It seems that there are three aspects of a
child’s circumstances that might cause several placements.
Otherwise, the issue is the skill with which the placement is made, and
the pool of foster carers or of social workers, which we discussed in
depth. What is the Minister doing to encourage local authorities to
recruit a larger pool of foster carers, with a wide variety of skills?
That is an ingredient that we
need.
Beverley
Hughes: The hon. Lady will be familiar with those aspects
of the “Care Matters” White Paper for which we do not
need legislation and which we are therefore not discussing here. There
is a wide variety of proposals there, designed to enable local
authorities to recruit a wider range of foster carers, and also to give
foster carers more training and more status within the family of carers
for looked-after children. The hon. Lady raises an important point,
because unless that situation is improved—particularly in some
areas where the situation is worse—the consequences will
ultimately be felt by the children themselves. We are trying to avoid
that. I
remarked that there is a minority of children for whom several planned
moves may be needed, either because of their own circumstances or
because they are in special situations. I met a young man last week; it
was tremendous to meet him. He is in an intensive fostering project and
has been through three carers. He was about to move on from anti-social
behaviour to all sorts of serious crime. Having a series of moves with
trained people, and staying with the last set of parents for almost a
year, has transformed him. That was fantastic to see. There will be
special situations such as that, and we want to ensure that we allow
for those. Such planned placement changes are already required to be
reflected in a child’s care plan. What we need to do here is to
reinforce the clear messages about stability, and as the hon. Member
for East Worthing and Shoreham said, we will do that again in the
guidance that is being rewritten.
New clause 3
will strengthen the reviewing process, to ensure that it is rigorously
focused on whether the care plan that the local authority puts forward
is the most appropriate and responsive way to meet the child’s
needs. I am sure that Members are aware that independent reviewing
officers already have the power to report it to senior managers if
actions from review are not being carried out, including where a change
in social worker is delaying the implementation of decisions made at
review. There is already a requirement for regular reviews: three in
the first year and then every six months. That is a minimum
requirement. The IRO can direct further reviews as he or she thinks
necessary. Therefore I hope that Members will accept that in the
specific context of a child experiencing an unacceptable number of
changes in their social worker, we should strengthen both the reviews
that are already in place and the role of the IRO, rather than focusing
on triggering additional reviews. That will enable those who ought to
be examining those changes for children to do so much more effectively.
When we reach clause 11 we will perhaps talk about some of that in more
detail. Reviews
should always consider whether the child’s placement offers the
stability that they need, with secure attachments. Holding additional
reviews in isolation from the focused activity that needs to take place
in the local authority to recruit and develop social workers, will not
necessarily address the real issue here, which is needing to increase
the number of social workers where there are shortages, and
achieving a range of expertise. As I said on Second Reading, my hon.
Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families
has taken measures outside the Bill to help local authorities address
some of the issues of vacancy and turnover rates of social workers.
There was a package of measures backed by substantial
resources to enable local authorities to do more of the kind of
work that authorities such as Barnet have undertaken with great success
in improving recruitment
and retention. With
those assurances, I hope that the hon. Member for East Worthing and
Shoreham will feel that we agree with the purpose of the amendment. On
new clause 3, I do not think that adding further reviews to an already
demanding set of reviews with the potential for the IRO to demand more
would help with the problem. I therefore hope that he will withdraw the
amendment.
Tim
Loughton: I am delighted and relieved that the Minister is
with us. Her favourite buzz word today appears to be “lever
in” or “leverage”. All of these measures are
beginning to lever in the extra requirements, which is
good. I
do not want to place greater bureaucracy on local authorities or on
social workers. The greatest incentive for local authorities or social
workers not to have to account for multiple placements or the use of
multiple social workers would be that bureaucracy. That is where the
incentive
lies. The
Minister places great store by the IRO. Given that we have not reached
that part of the Bill, I think that we will have an interesting debate
on the exact nature of the teeth that the IRO will be given and how
accountable he or she will be able to make local authorities or social
workers who do not achieve the improvements in outcomes that we
want.
This
has been another useful debate. It has teased out that the Government
are thinking along the same lines as us, but that these requirements
are taken care of elsewhere in the Bill. On that basis, I beg to ask
leave to withdraw the
amendment. Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn. Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the
following: New clause 1— Welfare of looked after
children— ‘When
considering or maintaining placement for a child a local authority or
other responsible body shall have regard in particular
to— (a) ascertaining the
wishes and feelings of the
child; (b) the desirability of
retaining the child in the family home wherever it is the
child’s best interests and that an appropriate package of care
and family support has been made available to that
end; (c) the likely effect on
him of any change in his circumstances and environment, and the
benefits of his remaining close to home wherever
possible; (d) any harm which he
has suffered or is at risk of
suffering; (e) ensuring all
options for kinship care have been explored and an assessment of their
parenting capacity
undertaken; (f) maintaining
contact with siblings and other family members wherever practicable and
in the child’s best
interest; (g) maintaining
continuity of appropriate education, accommodation and standards of
healthcare; (h) the appropriate
level of access to the responsible social worker being
maintained; (i) where the
required changes have been specified and not
achieved.’. New
clause 27—Support for family and friends
carers— ‘(1) The 1989
Act is amended as follows. (2)
After section 17B
insert— “17C
Support for family and friends
carers (1) This section applies
to a person (“P”) who provides full-time care and
accommodation for a child (“C”) for more than 28 days but
who is not— (a) a parent
of the child, or (b) a local
authority foster parent. (2) A
local authority shall assess P’s need for financial and other
support under Part III of this Act to care for C in any of the
following
circumstances— (a) where
the child comes to live with P as a result of a plan made following an
inquiry under section 47 (local authority’s duty to
investigate); (b) where the
child comes to live with P following an investigation under section 37
(powers of court in certain family
proceedings); (c) where P has
secured a residence order or special guardianship order in order to
avoid the child being looked after, and there is professional evidence
of impairment of the parents’ ability to care for the
child; (d) where P has obtained
a residence order or special guardianship order arising out of care
proceedings; (e) where P is
providing accommodation for the child and then secures a residence
order or special guardianship
order.
(3) The local authority shall provide such support
as is required to meet the needs identified by the assessment referred
to in subsection 2. (4) The
local authority shall appoint a named person who shall have
responsibility for coordinating the provision of support to persons to
whom this section
applies.” (3) In
paragraph 1 of Schedule 2 (identification of children in need and
provision of information), in sub-paragraph (2)(a)(i) for
“17,” substitute “14F, 17,
17C,”.’.
Mr.
Kidney: First, having chided the hon. Member for East
Worthing and Shoreham, it behoves me to say what a wonderful clause
this is. Congratulations to the Government and the other place for
getting it into its current order. It is a very welcome
clause. I
will speak briefly to new clause 27. It goes along with the thrust of
the clause that in future, local authorities should think first about
supporting parents and other family members in caring for children who
would otherwise be in danger of being taken into the care of the local
authority. If local authorities have to step in and use their statutory
powers to take a child into care, they should immediately look at
whether they can rehabilitate the child back to the parents or other
members of the child’s family and that should be done as quickly
as
possible. New
clause 27 draws attention to the one lacuna in clause 9, which is the
practical support that will be given to family members who take on the
very important task of looking after one or more vulnerable children on
behalf of the whole family. It would deal particularly with physical
and financial support when it is most needed. When local authorities
take a child into care, whether they place the child with a family
member, a foster carer or in residential care, the panoply of support
and money is available to the people giving the care. When family
members rally round and take on that responsibility, there is no
entitlement or direct duty for them to be given support and money to do
that important
work. To
ensure that the practical aspect of the enterprise is not overlooked,
new clause 27 would require the local authority to carry out an
assessment of the needs of the family members who are looking after
those children at the outset and see what support, financial and
otherwise, would be necessary to ensure that they could do their job to
the best of their ability. Otherwise, the risk is that the placement
will break down and the local authority will have to come back and
exercise those statutory powers and take the child or children into
care.
6
pm We
have willed the ends in the clause, but at the moment we are not
willing the means to ensure that it is carried through into practice. I
hope that the Ministers can say that they are sympathetic to closing a
gap in what is otherwise an extremely welcome provision to ensure that
families are properly supported by the local authority when they rally
around to take on this awesome responsibility. Local authorities,
instead of exercising their care powers, would be exercising their
ability to support families and keep them
together.
Tim
Loughton: I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman has
said, but I want to concentrate on new clause 1, which is grouped with
the clause stand part
debate. New clause 1 is intended to be helpful and constructive to the
Bill and is based on previous legislation, and I think it is quite a
good wheeze. It would place on the face and at the heart of the
Bill—if it is possible to do both—the equivalent of the
welfare checklist that is enshrined in the Children Act 1989, which
remains as important a piece of legislation as it was when it was
innovated under the last Government. Key to that legislation was the
concept of the paramountcy of the child and the focus of various
aspects of welfare on the wishes and feelings of the
child. The
Bill has been criticised for not going far enough and for not
containing detail that is explicit enough to require local authorities
to pursue the legislation right up to the spirit in which it is
intended. In many cases, local authorities will be reluctant to spend
more or invest more resources than they need to in order to comply with
the new legislation, which is understandable, given the competing
requirements on their budgets from all sorts of other children’s
services requirements. That is the reason for our previous arguments
over the term “having regard to.”
It would be
suitable, appropriate and helpful for the Bill if a welfare checklist
giving the nine criteria set out in new clause 1 was used as a
benchmark against which a local authority could be measured in order to
see whether it had fulfilled the spirit of the legislation rather than
just carried out the minimum requirements. That would be measured in
relation to the impact on the welfare of the child, which is the most
important consideration and the reason we are all here. We thought that
it would be helpful to suggest a welfare checklist that cannibalised
the list from the 1989 Act and was made germane to looked-after
children.
I will
briefly run through the nine criteria listed in new clause 1. Item (a)
states that a local authority should have regard in particular
to
“ascertaining
the wishes and feelings of the child”,
which we are all
familiar with from previous legislation. It is right that children
should be consulted on matters such as the appointment of their social
workers, as we mentioned earlier. Many children feel excluded from
decisions in relation to which they might have views of their own, and
which could be relevant to their being able to get on with their social
worker, which is in turn important for the success of the placement or
of their relationships that they are
building. Item
(b), which deals with
“the
desirability of retaining the child in the family home wherever it is
the child’s best interests”,
would back up the
kinship care priority hierarchy in clause 9, which we have debated.
Again, against the checklist, has a local authority pursued as fully as
is practicable the possibility of keeping the child within the family
rather than taking the child away? Item (b) contains the preventive
measure. As I have said, it is too often perceived that social
workers’ first contact with a vulnerable family is when care
proceedings are about to be initiated, not—as should
happen—when things are starting to go wrong in a family and they
need help and support, resources or
whatever. Community
Service Volunteers, of which I am proud to be a trustee, has piloted a
project using voluntary social workers, whose role is to liaise with
the family as a family support resource, a relationship that is often
difficult when it involves dealing with somebody who also has the power
to initiate care proceedings to take a child away from a family. Social
workers are regarded with a degree of suspicion on the doorstep,
particularly on a first referral, so the role of voluntary social
workers can involve working with the family to ensure that everything
is being done and liaising with the local authority and the official
social worker to ensure that the family has support and can be kept
together wherever
possible. As
a benchmark before care proceedings take place, the new clause asks
whether the local authority has done everything practicable to ensure
that the child can be kept with the family, that the family can be kept
together and that taking the child away from the family, however
temporary or permanent the basis, is not an obvious option. The
desirability of trying to keep the family together with the child in
the family is the second
benchmark. The
third benchmark is
“the likely
effect” on
the
child “of
any change in his circumstances and environment, and the benefits of
his remaining close to home wherever
possible”. Clause
9, although we have not debated it in detail, mentions the desirability
of keeping a child close to a familiar environment wherever possible
and in the best interest of the child and the child’s welfare.
Even though things might have broken down with the family or birth
parents, it is in the child’s best interest to retain some
accord with familiar friends, perhaps at the same school, or with
kinship carers.
Before
taking a child away from their environment, both in terms of their
personal relationships and their physical environment, has an
assessment been done of whether that is in the child’s best
interest? In some cases, it clearly will be, such as if the child is
being victimised or bullied or is under threat of physical or mental
harm by remaining in a very damaging environment. Has an assessment
been made? That is the third
benchmark. The
fourth benchmark will be familiar from the 1989
Act: “any
harm which he has suffered or is at risk of
suffering”. Clearly,
the welfare of the child is the basis for that. The fifth concerns
ensuring, as we have debated at length, that all options for kinship
care in the hierarchy criteria have been explored, including an
assessment of the kinship carer’s parenting capacity. The
Minister has told us that that will happen under the new arrangements,
so that criterion should be quite easy to satisfy.
The sixth
concerns “maintaining
contact with siblings and other family members wherever practicable and
in the child’s best interest”.
Again, it replicates,
but on a benchmark basis, what we have
debated. The
seventh is
“maintaining
continuity of appropriate education, accommodation and standards of
healthcare”. We
have touched on the continuity of remaining at the same school,
particularly in the sensitive key stage years of exams. Stability of
accommodation should also be a factor, as well as standards of health
care, should the child have some illness, such as a long-term condition
or a disability, that would make any move harmful.
The
eighth check
is “the
appropriate level of access to the responsible social worker being
maintained”. Again,
it deals with criteria that we have touched on, whereby the multiple
appointment of social workers is clearly detrimental.
The final
check is
“where the
required changes have been specified and not
achieved.” There
is a lot of repetition on the checklist, but it is meant to be held up
as a benchmark, so that when there is a question mark over whether a
child has received the very best support and ended up in the most
appropriate and beneficial placement, the onus will be on the
appropriate authority to measure its performance against that
checklist. Did it really pull all the right levers and exhaust all the
right possibilities before deciding that the child could not stay with
the kinship carer, or that it should be placed in a completely new or
physically distant environment?
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