Annette
Brooke: We are having a very important discussion on the
clause and new clause. This has to be one of the most critical things
that we need to address given the very high percentage of young people
in custody who were in care at some point. Correspondingly,
there may be very low literacy levels and mental health conditions among
that group of people. I heard the other day that data are not routinely
collected on looked-after children in custody. I ask the Minister
whether that is the case. I presume that some data must be collected,
but surely we should have quite detailed work on this if we are to
provide the level of support that young people
need. I
agree that there is a need for a qualified social worker following
through and keeping in contact with the young person. In this case, it
is a question not just of visiting but of the ability to make ongoing
assessments of the young person’s needs. It is very important
that it is an holistic assessment, considering all the issues that
might apply to a young person in
custody. 12.30
pm In
conjunction with the Youth Justice Board, there are now some social
workers based in young offenders institutions, but I still think that
we need a continuity of contact with the social worker, as described by
the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham. If a care order is
attached to a young person in custody, there is a responsibility to
keep track of them to some degree, but if the care placement is
voluntary, I am not sure that the same provisions apply. Nevertheless,
it is an important situation in which we particularly need to give
greater support to children and young people. I would like some
clarification on that
point. Over
the past few years, we seem to have progressed quite a lot in getting
social services even to be responsible for young people in custody. It
has taken High Court judgments to move the agenda on, and the Howard
League for Penal Reform has been very much involved. We have moved on,
but the outcomes for young people who enter the custody system are
still very poor. The Bill offers an opportunity to address every
possible issue.
I
agree that however a child enters the care system, it is important to
work with all the other services to ensure that that young person is
supported when they come out. I spoke to a local youth offending team
early last year. They explained the difficulty of housing young people
who have come out of custody. Because family accommodation is not
available, the traditional route is YMCA accommodation. However, I
understand that such accommodation carries out risk assessments. I
discovered that our local youth offending team has had to place young
people coming out of custody in bed and breakfasts, which I suggest is
undesirable. My plea—there are so many strands to the
problem—is for continuity and an holistic approach. That
approach should include social services, local youth offending teams
and housing services into the bargain and see the process as a
whole.
Beverley
Hughes: I certainly agree with Opposition Members that
looked-after children who then go into custody are a vulnerable group,
and that they can face many serious practical problems getting back on
their feet and establishing themselves again in their local communities
when released. I agree that they are at high risk of reoffending,
although I did not recognise the figure of 92 per cent. given by the
hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham. The one-year reconviction
rate for young people who have been in custody is about 77 per cent.,
which is still very high.
Because of
that, the Government will publish a youth crime action plan before the
recess. One of its central themes will be strengthening the
resettlement process. In terms of that special group of young people
who have been looked after in one way or another, I recognise
absolutely that we need to take the opportunity in the Bill to ensure
and strengthen continuity of contact and what follows from that
contact—it should not just be a social visit but a visit with a
purpose. I
recognise that the amendment is intended to improve how such young
people are supported. I do not think that there is a problem with the
spirit of the amendment, but there is a problem with some of the
detail, and I shall explain that. The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and
North Poole asked me about information on children in care who are in
custody. Hitherto, that has been limited. We have established a system
that tells us how many placements of children in care cease because
they are admitted to custody. The first year’s figures, for
2006-07, will be released in the not too distant future. That will be
the first time that we have had authoritative figures on the number of
children who went into custody from care whose placements have
ceased.
Clause 16
provides a clear statutory framework to ensure that local authorities
maintain contact with all looked-after children, wherever they live.
That includes all the children referred to in section 23ZC(1)(a) of the
1989 Act, proposed in new clause 7. Clause 16 also enables us to ensure
through regulations that the duty to visit is extended to include
children that are provided with voluntary accommodation by the
authority but who lose their looked-after status when sentenced to
custody in a secure training centre or a youth offenders institution,
because they are no longer accommodated by the local authority. That is
all the children referred to in section 23ZB(1)(b) of the 1989 Act,
proposed in the new
clause.
Helen
Southworth: Will the Minister address something that is of
particular concern to me and which we have talked about a number of
times? The clause will be beneficial in many ways. Will she confirm
that it will not do away with the right of young people in custody,
determined through the courts, to have access to a trained social
worker under their entitlement to stay safe? The Minister is well aware
of the successes at Thorn Cross young offenders institute in my
constituency, which for three years has had a social worker based
there. It has seen a radical reduction in the self-harm of young
people, but it has also been working as part of a team to ensure that
young people have good and effective training while there and good
opportunities for effective resettlement when leaving
custody?
Beverley
Hughes: My Department, jointly with the Home Office, is
funding a pilot scheme on the provision of dedicated social workers
on-site in a number of young offender institutions, with a view to
local authorities taking up the provision nationally. I shall certainly
correct myself if I am found to be wrong, but I am not aware that a
right of access to a social worker has been declared and enforced by
the courts for young people in custody. However, if my hon. Friend is
thinking of the pilot, then yes it is showing some beneficial
results.
The
entitlement of care leavers to local authority services should be
unaffected by a custodial sentence, and I think that it would be
impossible for a local authority properly to discharge its duties to
care leavers in relation to the preparation and maintenance of the
pathway plan, the appointment of the personal adviser and the
maintenance of contact unless the care leaver is regularly visited by a
representative of the authority. As I said to the hon. Member for
Mid-Dorset and North Poole, that is not a social visit. It is a visit
for a purpose—to assess and to ensure that things that need to
be done for that young person are mobilised and put in place.
We made a
commitment in the other place to use existing powers in relation to
care leavers to require visits to relevant children—that is,
those aged 16 or 17 wherever they may be living—and
that will include the children referred to in proposed section
23ZB(1)(c) of the 1989 Act. We plan to do the same in relation to
former relevant children in due course, as and when resources
allow. The
difficulty with the new clause is that the regulation-making power that
it contemplates is drafted in extraordinarily wide terms. Potentially,
it allows the Government to require visits to be made to any group of
children in any circumstances—for example, those living in their
family home—and because “young person” is not
defined it could similarly permit regulations to require adults to be
visited in specified circumstances. It would put on the statute book an
almost untrammelled power, with the potential to ride roughshod over
the rights of children and young persons and their families. For
instance, it could allow a local authority to visit someone who may
have been in voluntary care for a few weeks when a baby, only for that
youngster to be in custody at the age of 15. One may still want to
visit that youngster, but we need to think carefully about the
boundaries. Not
only does new clause 7 add nothing substantive to the duties and powers
already proposed in clause 16, but it has some significant gaps. For
instance, it would not require local authorities to visit those
children who acquire looked-after status by virtue of being taken into
custody of section 21 of the 1989 Act, for example, if they are
remanded to a children’s home. This group of children, on the
other hand, will benefit from the new mandatory requirement on local
authorities to arrange visits to all its looked-after children. So it
has some very wide powers in one sense but also some significant gaps
in
others. Referring
to other aspects of the amendment, we intend that the person
responsible for visiting a formerly looked-after child in custody will
be an officer of the local authority’s children’s
services and, where possible, a qualified social worker known to the
child and familiar with his or her background. That support will be in
addition to the role of the separate youth offending team worker
responsible for planning how the child will serve the rest of the
sentence in the community.
There has to
be effective co-ordination for this group of children with the shared
support from children’s services and the youth offending teams.
The new visiting requirement now provides a mechanism to ensure that
this happens and puts an essential safeguard in place, so that they are
not allowed to be forgotten by local authority children’s
services.
The Youth
Justice Board and the Prison Service support our intention to achieve a
step change in the quality of support provided to looked-after children
in custody by children’s services and for local authorities to
do for a child in custody what any reasonable parent would
do—visit them and make plans for their release. That is what we
expect local authorities to do and how we expect them to behave when
they have a looked-after child who goes into custody. Clause 16 allows
for that, it requires it to happen. Having heard our approach, I hope
hon. Members will not press the new
clause.
Tim
Loughton: I said that this was a probing new clause to try
to tease out some further detail which the Minister has given
us.
The right
hon. Lady said that it would be impossible in her view for a local
authority to discharge its duties without the responsible social worker
visiting, keeping contact and developing the care plan while the child
was in custody. That sends out a strong message because at the moment
that does not happen. It is important that that expectation is rammed
home loud and clear, that simply because a child is effectively off the
local authority’s patch in the custody and responsibility of
someone else, that the responsibility of the local authority is not
diminished. In many cases it becomes more important to make sure that
they are fully aware of what is happening to that young person within
the young offenders institution, or wherever it may be, and that their
care plan can be adapted to take care of them when they come
out.
Given the
greater cross-departmental working between the DCSF, the Ministry of
Justice and the Home Office—she and I were at the reception last
night for the Youth Justice Board—I hope that in practice that
there will be greater joined-up working between the youth justice
system and the children’s services departments of local
authorities, as I know is her intention. I heard the encouraging words
of the Secretary of State who spoke last night. Unless that message is
sent out loud and clear, that in practice local authorities are
expected to keep a watch on their charges as much when they are behind
bars as when they are in their authority area then it is not going to
happen. It is a useful discussion. We have teased out further detail
than we had in the House of Lords, so on that basis I am happy to ask
to beg leave to withdraw the new
clause. Question
put and agreed to.
Clause16
ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause
17Independent
Visitors for Children Looked After by a Local
Authority Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
Kevin
Brennan: Even though no amendments to the clause have been
tabled, I should explain the purpose of clause 17 to the
Committee.
Local
authorities must already appoint an independent visitor for
looked-after children who have no contact with their birth parents or
those who have parental responsibility. In responding to the
consultation on the
Green Paper last year, children and young people made it clear that they
wanted greater access to the support of an independent visitor. They
have told us that they value having someone from outside the system to
befriend them, to take them out, to be a source of advice and support,
and independent visitors can potentially benefit a much wider group of
looked-after children than currently have access to
one. 12.45
pm Their
potential in helping to support placement stability, enabling young
people to build constructive relationships and encouraging aspirations
and ambitions is considerable, and that is why we want to extend the
opportunity to have an independent visitor to all looked-after children
where they would benefit significantly from such a relationship. Clause
17 will place a duty on a local authority to appoint an independent
visitor where it appears to them that it would be in the child’s
best interest to do so, and where the child wants one. We want those
who are currently eligible to maintain their right to an independent
visitor and will use regulations to ensure under new section 23ZB
subsection (1)(a) that these groups continue to be automatically
eligible for an independent visitor on that basis.
Question
put and agreed
to. Clause
17 ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
18Notification
to appropriate officer of children in long-term
care
Tim
Loughton: I beg to move amendment No. 15, in
clause 18, page 14, line 27, at
end insert— ‘(2A) In each of
subsections (1) and (2), after ‘responsible authority’
insert ‘within one working
day.’. We
now come to the subject of out-of-area placements, which has arisen
already during the Committee, and reflects a concern which I and the my
hon. Friend the Member for Upminster mentioned previously—what
happens with children who are placed out of area in terms of
notification of responsible agencies in that
area A
child would typically be placed in a children’s home and
somewhere around 11 to 13 per cent. of children in the care system are
in a residential home, but it also involves care homes, independent
hospitals, NHS hospitals or residential schools, including maintained
boarding schools, non-maintained specialist schools, independent
boarding schools and colleges, as set out in the guidance. What this
amendment is seeking to do is tighten up the notification
process.
What happens
at the moment is that if Stoke, for example, places a child in a
residential home in my own authority of West Sussex, for
example—I have already mentioned some 700 children in my county
are estimated to be there having been placed by an outside
authority—then good guidance, reinforced by Lord Warner some
years ago when he was the responsible Minister, is that the authority
where that child is placed should be notified that that child is placed
there. That must be good practice on the basis that there is a child
with particular needs who finds him or herself out of a familiar
area.
In Worthing we
now have at least 10 independent children’s homes, many
including children who are from completely different environments and
from quite a long way away. I have to say that things are getting
better and inspection regimes for some of these children’s homes
are improving, but if something goes wrong, it is usually the local
children’s services department who gets put in the frame, even
though that child is not their responsibility, or the local police have
to pick up the pieces, or the local magistrates then deal with a child
who has committed some offence if it has gone really wrong.
I
think I cited earlier in the Committee today, and on Second Reading,
the response from the probation service union, giving an extraordinary
figure of something like over 80 per cent. of children who had appeared
in the magistrates court had been in the care system but placed out of
authority area, and the first the probation service union had heard
about it was when the probation service officers were in
court. That
cannot be any good for all of the local agencies involved who then have
to come forward and step into the breach for somebody who is not
strictly speaking their responsibility. It is not good for people
living in the vicinity of some of these residential homes when things
go wrong, as happened to us in Worthing but, ultimately, it is not good
for the child as well. The child is being let down.
The purpose
of amendment No. 15 is to tighten up the reporting mechanisms so that
when a child is placed in an authority area outside the placing
authority, there is a strict, defined duty of the placing authority to
notify the authority area in which that child is
placed—nominally, the director of children’s services
would be the contact point—that that child has been placed there
and we have suggested that it should be within one working
day.
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