Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-56)
DR ROGER
MORGAN OBE, MAXINE
WRIGLEY, MARTIN
NAREY AND
PAM HIBBERT
19 MARCH 2008
Q40 Annette Brooke: May I ask a very
quick question about advocates? I have to go shortly and would
obviously like to follow on from my questioning of the Minister.
In some ways, as I recall, the Minister found it quite difficult
to suggest that advocates would not be introduced in the circumstances
that I mentioned. I picked up the obvious cases of a severely
disabled child, and young people with mental health issues who
may not be able to express themselves. Why do you think that the
Government do not currently accept—hopes in the Commons
obviously—that every child should have the right? It is
accepted that there is a clear role for advocacy. It is almost
as if the Government think that there is much more around than
there actually is.
Maxine Wrigley: As I said when
I came in, if one thing needs changing in the Bill, it is that
one: the independent advocacy rule. I know Roger and Pam agree.
It is that simple idea that in, say, a court of law, you cannot
have the same person represent you as makes judgment on the case.
It is that same thing, I am afraid. Funnily enough, literally
in the past two weeks, A National Voice urgently did a poll of
139 young people and what they thought of their independent reviewing
officers, because I know that the Government are trying to take
that angle, too. One thing we found was that about one fifth of
those young people did not understand the role of the IRO. They
seemed to think that first, IROs were connected to the local authority,
which they are, and I am not quite convinced myself about why
they are called independent reviewing officers, and secondly,
given that the IROs chair the reviews, that they were not able
to speak up purely on behalf of a young person. I know that it
is a thorny issue, but young people at A National Voice have felt
strongly about it for many years. The issue is about having independent
representation, which is different from the people who then make
judgments about your welfare or services.
Pam Hibbert: I support that. The
Government seem to have a lack of understanding. In the Green
Paper, the roles of independent visitors and advocates were confused.
Despite the efforts of several organisations to make it clear,
there is a lack of understanding about the role of an independent
advocate. I support Maxine's view that when key decisions are
made about you, and you are not able to make representations in
your own right, you must have the right to someone who is independent
of that decision-making process. I, like Maxine, do not necessarily
agree that the independent reviewing officer is independent. Further,
they cannot play a dual role: they cannot provide an impartial
view and decision, and advocate on behalf of the child. They cannot
do both.
Q41 Chairman: That reminds me of
our discussions about special educational needs assessment. Roger.
Dr Morgan: Clearly, children see
the independent reviewing officer and the advocacy role as separate.
Currently, if you are a child in care, you have a right to an
advocate only to enable or assist you to make a complaint. There
is a strong case, which children have put to me, for a right to
an advocate in any process when you have a statutory right to
give your views or to participate—for example, in review
processes and so on. That would mean a legislative change, but
children proposed it; I did not make that one up. One that I have,
well, not made up, but which follows that issue, is the concern
of children that they should, as we said earlier, have a means
of challenging their local authority. In some areas, challenges—bringing
court processes into some decisions or referring to section 8
orders under the Children Act 1989, which I have mentioned in
other evidence—are available to some children but they are
not open, or only one of them is open, to and for children in
care, because the local authority is seen to be looking after
them and to have their best interests at heart. From the children's
point of view, if the corporate parent is getting it wrong, for
example over a move of placement that may be contrary to the care
plan, a lack of a care plan, or a care plan with which they disagree,
they need a process. It does not matter whether that means an
independent reviewing officer or access to such orders. They need
a process that will enable them to challenge effectively and one
that they know about and understand. Very few of them understand
what an advocate is, if they have not experience of one. They
also need someone to guide them through the process and metaphorically
hold their hand through it, which is what an advocate does. On
average, about three children a week contact my team purely because
they wish to engage us in taking up issues with their local authority
that they wish to challenge, and we can do that. I am not very
effective in that, however, because it is only the most articulate
young people who are likely to come through to me. They need a
more local service.
Q42 Chairman: I want to move on to
fostering, but because we are talking about such issues, can I
quickly insert something? The NSPCC saw me this week about the
health aspect of care. An amendment to the Bill was moved last
night in the House of Lords regarding a duty on health providers
to provide appropriate health care, but I do not know what happened.
The NSPCC said that many young people, particularly teenagers,
often have mental health therapeutic needs, but that there is
not a duty on the health sector to provide that sort of help.
What do you think of that?
Dr Morgan: First, yes. Continuity
of health care is another issue that is disrupted by moving placements,
such as passing records from one place to another, the continuity
of GPs and continuity of treatment. There is a high level of mental
health support need among children in care. As we know, the provision
of mental health services for young people, let alone young people
in care, is not consistently available. There are some particular
projects, but there is not special access for children and young
people in care, who are particularly vulnerable, to those services.
Maxine Wrigley: Given that young
people in care are statistically five times more likely to have
a mental health need, it is crazy that some of them are on a waiting
list of up to 12 months to see a counsellor, therapist or someone
who can offer support. Those young people need a fast track. It
is recognised in society that they are vulnerable, so I am keen
to do something. It was a disappointing part of what changed after
the Green Paper. We were hopeful at the beginning that there would
be some more mental health issues, but matters have not translated
into that. Perhaps what you said happened last night will make
a difference, but I am not sure.
Q43 Chairman: Pam, are you in favour
of such an amendment?
Pam Hibbert: Certainly in terms
of health departments having a duty.
Chairman: Let us move to fostering,
on which we shall be led by Lynda.
Q44 Lynda Waltho: I was privileged
to be invited to a premiere last Thursday of a film made by Dudley
children in foster care and some of their carers. Their take on
the lack of advocacy, social workers and trainers, which have
been mentioned, is that it is like wearing a uniform on mufti
day and being different from others. I recommend the film to not
only members of the Committee, but others. It was so key; it touched
everyone who saw it and mirrored a lot of things that have been
said. That is my plug for Dudley's young people. I was interested
in Barnardo's telling the Committee about the body of evidence
that suggests that the qualities that make a good foster carer
and contribute to placement stability cannot necessarily be measured
by examination and qualifications, such as warmth, tolerance and
patience. I met a group of foster carers on Saturday who welcomed
the fact that they could get qualifications and saw a need for
them. However, they felt that that often involves ticking boxes
and looking at areas other than the main issues. What factors
make a good carer and a good relationship between young person
and carer?
Pam Hibbert: It is important that
we offer foster carers the opportunity to train, learn and gain
a qualification. If we want to attract foster carers, there has
to be something in it for them. We must work with them as part
of a team, so that they are seen as not only the people who care
for the child, but a part of the overall team who liaises with
the social worker, the school and so on. It is true that it is
very difficult to measure some of these things. I drew again on
research carried out by Ian Sinclair in my comments in our submission
to the Committee. You cannot measure warmth, empathy, tolerance
and the ability to negotiate. However, you can train people in
those things. Going back to Roger's point about risk, I think
that our foster carer training sometimes focuses on child protection
and self-protection and does not necessarily always focus on how
to develop relationships. On adolescent children, I was looking
at a foster care training pack recently, which contained a huge
amount of stuff on child development until the age of 10, but
virtually nothing about it from 10 to 16. We know that foster
care placement breakdowns are most likely to happen in the teenage
years. Those of us with teenage children know how bloody difficult
it can be to live with them and to deal with them. If they are
fostered, there is an added dimension. I think that that is difficult.
This issue comes back to some of the things that we discussed
about customer satisfaction and acknowledging that our foster
carers are our customers as well. At the end of a foster placement,
are we talking to children and young people about their experiences
of that placement, about what was good, what was bad and what
could have been better or changed? Are we also talking to the
foster carers about what was good, what was better and what could
have been changed? From that, we can start to measure some of
those softer things. Some years ago, I sat on a fostering approval
panel. I resigned from that panel because it would not disapprove
some foster carers who were up for their annual reviews. There
was nothing concrete—they had not abused the child and had
done all of the things that they were supposed to do—but
they did not have that warmth, empathy and relationship. Because
we are often short of placements, it is too easy to keep people
on who do not do the job well, even though they tick the boxes.
I think that we need to look at how we recruit, how we get customer
satisfaction and the role of approval panels in trying to tease
out much more those soft measurements as well as the hard ones.
Dr Morgan: Going back to the point
about matching and choice, from the child's perspective, going
to live with a foster family is a major move. There are minor
questions such as, "What are the rules in this family about
whether you can take something to eat from the fridge to eat when
you are hungry and when you want to? How do I feel about the fact
that this foster carer talks rather differently to me? Should
I try to change my accent? Are they going to try to adopt me later
on or are they happy to stay as long-term foster carers, because
I do not think that I want to be adopted?" Those sorts of
issues are very clearly the things that are in children's minds.
On the issue of choice, children have been saying that they want
to be able to do an exercise of selection for themselves. They
want to meet a number of possible foster carers and not just have
the social worker saying, "We have found foster parents for
you." They want to be able to do visits and to have back-ups
if the first introductions do not work out. It might not be that
the people are wrong or that they should be disapproved, but the
child might think, "I do not feel totally at ease in this
family, can I have a look at a different one, please?" In
considering gradual introduction, the word "gradual"
is important. Children say that they want a lot of information
for themselves. They believe that foster carers need more information
about them, too, before they even start visiting. Children are
saying time and time again, "Why can't I have photos, videos,
video clips etc. about the foster family—their pets, the
other children there, what the locality is like and what the school's
like?" It would assist the introduction. The other point
that I wanted to make is that many foster carers have said to
me that there are two quite different sorts of training. One is
training to be a foster carer, which is basic stuff, but the other
is child-specific training, if a child who may have mental health
problems or some issue for which the foster carers will need particular
support in order in turn to support the child to be placed with
them; that immediacy of training, which helps foster carers with
particular children, is sometimes not available.
Maxine Wrigley: Young people told
us that they wanted a pre and post-contact plan. They wanted to
know that, when they leave a foster placement with which they
were happy but from which they have moved on, they would be able
to stay in touch. Are they able to stay in touch with foster siblings?
Our siblings report reveals quite a lot more about that, and I
am happy to send it on. The introduction to foster caring is exactly
as Roger says. People want to know before they go. "What
kind of family are they? Have they got a dog? Have they got a
cat? Do you have to take your shoes off before you go in?"
So many of those kinds of question need answering. It is a very
difficult thing to go into a whole new family, and we know that
there is quite a large breakdown across placements when those
things are not done properly—there can be a major difference
if they are done, and they do not take that much time. One of
the working groups chaired by Lord Laming discussed the idea of
an anonymous directory, so that people who had been in a place
could leave a visitors' book message—
Q45 Lynda Waltho: A rough guide?
Maxine Wrigley: Yes, a rough guide
to the placement, so that other young people could ask, "So
what did the last 15-year-old who lived there think of that placement?"
Young people quite like that idea. There are lots of ways to make
foster care better, and a lot of them are very simple and easy.
Young people often care very much for their foster carers and
want them to be recognised as professionals, paid well, supported
and trained. On the idea of a 24-hour support line, young people
wanted foster carers to have that as well, because they thought
that having a negative experience with a young person might put
carers off fostering in future. They thought that if there was
someone to let off a bit of steam with, talk to and get some advice
from more regularly—especially out of hours, when things
can go wrong—it might prevent a foster carer from stepping
down from doing it again in future.
Q46 Lynda Waltho: That was certainly
a massive issue with the group of foster carers, as well as not
being able to get adequate respite care or general backup. It
was not about money in their wallets, actually; it was about backup.
That would cost money, but it was not about money for them specifically.
I want to explore whether the drive to get qualifications will
skew what sort of people come forward to be carers or to stay
as carers. One of the foster carers said, "Are we going to
end up in a situation like it was years ago, when only middle-class
people were allowed or able to?" That was a big issue.
Maxine Wrigley: You are absolutely
right. There are a lot of new foster carers who do not necessarily
have literacy skills and so on. It should not be forced at all.
Q47 Lynda Waltho: They have warmth,
love and patience.
Maxine Wrigley: Yes, absolutely.
Foster carers would like to learn more skills and help themselves
and young people. Something that concerned us when we did an education
survey of about 200 young people was that they felt that one of
the barriers to getting an education was that their carers had
not helped with homework. Although I appreciate that we must not
ensure that carers who are not literate cannot foster—I
am not saying that—we must ensure that they are willing
to learn enough to help young people of certain age groups with
homework. Obviously a teenager is different from a child of primary
school age, but it is important that young people get support
from home. Anyone would read to their children; it is that kind
of thing. It is important that such support is available, or one-to-one
tuition to catch up on any school missed. Getting an education
came top, above even pocket money, in a poll that asked young
people which issues, from a list of about 30, were most important
to them. That poll was across all age ranges. It is a myth that
young people do not want to do well in education. They chose getting
an education as the No. 1 issue—above pocket money.
Pam Hibbert: May I make a quick
point? I agree with Maxine. We have to be careful that we do not
exclude people who would be nurturing, caring, good foster carers
because they do not have one particular thing. We could do more
in the selection process to test people's attitudes rather than
their aptitudes. It is important that a foster carer recognises
both the importance of education and the need to do all they can
to support that young person. They do not necessarily have to
be a genius in maths.
Q48 Lynda Waltho: Foster carers in
one area felt strongly that they were not being invited to review
meetings and that they often found out information only because
the young person or, sometimes, the social worker or natural family,
told them a week later. That might be due to the way in which
the relevant authority, which I shall not name, works, but those
carers felt very excluded. They talked about having the equivalent
of a children's champion—a carers' champion—who could
oversee their rights within the system. They felt strongly that
they were the professionals in the situation as they were dealing
with the children 24/7, day in, day out, and they wondered why
on earth they were not at least being informed about matters,
or invited to contribute and give their opinion.
Pam Hibbert: Some of the structural
issues that we were discussing earlier that would help children
to understand the system better and know where to go also need
to be put in place for foster carers. Clearly, we need to have
checks and balances for front-line workers who care for children,
but my personal view is that we could delegate much more decision-making
responsibility to front-line carers than we currently do.
Q49 Lynda Waltho: There was a definite
feeling that the newer social workers—they said younger,
but we always think that such people are getting younger—were
almost being too professional and that carers were not being given
status. That came from all quarters. I do not know whether that
is specific to the social workers at that authority or whether
it is a general feeling.
Pam Hibbert: Maybe it says something
about our social work training, but I suspect that there is also
an awful lot about risk aversion involved.
Maxine Wrigley: I was going to
say that it is to do with risk aversion as well. We can get a
little too paranoid about risk. It concerns me greatly that young
people have a real issue about physical contact such as hugging.
Workers like me take a risk when they hug a young person; I know
that that could go hideously wrong for me. We are in a strange
world where our young people, who are among the most vulnerable
in society, are the ones around whom people are very nervous of
something like a friendly hug—but that is a whole can of
worms for another day.
Dr Morgan: That underlines, yet
again, that the right decision must be taken for the particular
case. I remember a child saying, "One child in care fell
off a horse, so no children in care can go on a horse now."
You assess the individual situation and make the right decision
at the right time. With foster carers, we must not forget that
members of the child's family—we referred to this earlier—may
also legally be foster carers. Training issues are a totally different
field as far as they are concerned. May I add something quickly?
There is a difference between induction and training. Induction
is about teaching people about the system and who can make what
sort of decision, as well as about their responsibilities and
what the dangers are. Training must be more related to the needs
and requirements of the particular situation, the particular placement,
or your particular career path as a foster carer.
Q50 Fiona Mactaggart: I would like
to take up that point, Roger, about how members of the family
can be carers. It seems to me that there is a conflict here. If
you look at the research, Sinclair's work being an example, sometimes
those family settings are seen as the most successful settings,
because they tend to last longer, and so on. At the same time,
there is a conflict, because the foster carers are less likely
to be literate or in good health, and they fail on some of the
other things that we rate highly. Are there sensible methods to
support family placements, and what do young people say about
them?
Dr Morgan: Young people say very
clearly, "I would like them", and looking at the Green
Paper, kinship care was one of the things that they endorsed very
highly. "I would like the idea of members of my own family
looking after me to be looked at," they said, and then they
used a very interesting phrase: "before I am received into
care." Technically, that might be part and parcel of the
same package, but they were seeing that family placement as a
step in the process of supporting where they are, considering
whether other members of their family could support them and then
considering other care solutions. There are all sorts of reasons
for kinship carers having foster care status, not least because
it can bring all sorts of financial support and other support
that they might not otherwise receive, which would enable them
to look after the child. However, we need to have a test, one
that we can apply to any legislative or guidance system that we
have, that does not preclude a competent parent, who happens not
to be the child's natural parent but is in their wider family,
from parenting that child if that is the best available solution
for that child as far as we can assess, even if they do not meet
some other criteria. There are no deliberate trip wires in the
system, but as we know and as we have said repeatedly today, there
are inconsistencies in people's attitudes. That is why I think
that the issue of what is said in guidance becomes very important,
as much as what is said in the legislation itself.
Pam Hibbert: I welcome the focus
of the Care Matters report on kinship care. For a lot of
children, it is a really good option and it should be explored.
One slight caveat is that there is some concern among some of
the children we spoke to about why the decision is being made
and whether it is being made on financial grounds. Certainly,
one striking case illustrates that issue. A 19-year-old who had
been in care herself was put under a lot of pressure by the local
authority to become a kinship carer for her younger sister, because
that would have stopped the local authority having to take the
younger sister into care. However, the local authority was not
offering the right package of support. We just have to be a little
wary. Going back to Roger's point, we should ask whether it is
the right decision for that child at that time and whether we
will support it adequately.
Maxine Wrigley: I echo what Pam
and Roger have said.
Q51 Fiona Mactaggart: One of the
old chestnuts about care issues is about the ways in which social
workers decide on cultural matching and placements. I wonder how
important those matching issues are to children themselves. I
have seen quite a lot of research about outcomes, but not very
much research about what children themselves say about matching.
Maxine Wrigley: There has been
some special work done on that issue. I think that Roger would
be best placed to speak about it.
Dr Morgan: We have asked children
that question. The answer from children, basically, is "It
is important that my foster carers and I have a lot of things
in common," but they do not list the standard things that
we might look at, including race, class or whatever it may be.
Those things may well be on the child's list, but there may well
be other things that are just as important. Earlier, I referred
to a child whose overwhelming concern about matching with their
foster carers was the fact that the child had a very strong accent
and, rightly or wrongly, they were worried that that might make
it hard for them to fit in with people from a different part of
the country. Whether or not that is correct, that was the commonality
issue, far more than the things on the standard list. Issues in
common are important to matching, rather than always the standard
issues that we might put at the top of that list, as professionals
or politicians.
Q52 Fiona Mactaggart: To return to
a theme that worries a number of us on the Committee, which is
the provision for older children, I think that the evidence adds
up to saying that we are not doing as well by them as we might
be beginning to do for other children. What could we do differently
to make us do better by them? Is it an issue of social worker
training or of leaving-care support? Is it an issue, for example,
of having family intervention and parenting support that deals
with teenagers, rather than with just getting your baby to sleep?
Are those some of the things? Is it just training? I do not know
what it is that would change this significantly enough.
Maxine Wrigley: I think that there
is a crisis with teenagers generally in England. From the recent
United Nations report, our young people are not feeling that well
understood. Maybe there is a generational crisis, which I think
is magnified in the care system. One of the things that Martin
and I talked about in the future of the care population working
group is that sometimes teenagers do not want to go to another
foster family. It is always seen as the best option, and for the
past 10 years there has been a real push towards foster care—the
majority of people are placed there. Sometimes teenagers do not
want to do that. If they have had a few placement breakdowns already
and they feel that they are getting nearer to that age of getting
their own flat and having supported accommodation, they do not
necessarily want to try another foster family. That is something
that needs to be borne in mind. Often social workers will try
and push down the road of foster families, but if you have already
had a few broken ones, you will probably not want to carry on
with that. Residential care and different options around independent
living in supported accommodation are really important. The aspirations
of the Children (Leaving Care) Act were good, but they need revisiting,
because in lots of cases it is not really working. The issue is
that teenagers—particularly teenagers we come across, young
people who may have had many placements that have broken down—have
become disillusioned with the whole care system. I understand
why young people may run away, or may not want to be associated
with the care system any more. They feel that it has failed them.
It is very sad, but a lot of them end up homeless or with drugs
and lots of other horrible things. The whole thing for us is about
making sure that these young people know that there is a safety
net and somewhere to come back to. It is a kind of unconditionality,
so that they are able to come back if they want to—people
are there for them—right up until the average age of leaving
home. There is an element of, "You are going to be kicked
out of the care system at 16 anyway", so if you are 14 and
it is not that much longer to go then you may as well go and hang
about on the streets for a bit. That seems to be the attitude
that I hear from young people. If they felt that there was going
to be a corporate parent there into their early 20s, they may
feel that someone wants them more and that there is some support.
I worry that young people, the ones we come across at the sharp
end, feel that there is a cut-off, a cliff, where the care system
may just end, and that is the end of that. That can be a very
distressing concept.
Pam Hibbert: It is interesting
that David referred earlier on to the youth taskforce action plan.
I have not had time to read it in full yet, but there seems to
be a lot in there to commend it—about supporting families
where children are at risk of poor outcomes, particularly getting
involved in criminality. Are the measures in that going to apply
to children in care, because they are one of the most at-risk
groups in terms of criminality and other poor outcomes? That issue
goes back to the local authority's responsibility. Are the things
that local authorities and others are putting in place to support
families with children at risk going to be there for children
in care who are also at risk? There is particularly an issue around
leaving care, about not necessarily making the most of the other
support networks that young people leaving care are able to have.
Obviously we need to improve our leaving-care services and make
sure that all the issues mentioned around gradual transition are
dealt with. However, young people often have their own support
networks—their own families may still be involved. We have
been working in Northern Ireland using group conferencing. That
is frequently used to stop children coming into care and to provide
support for families at that stage. We have been using it to support
children leaving care and looking at other existing networks that
can support them and that do not rely only on the professionals—social
workers, ex-foster carers or leaving-care teams.
Q53 Mr Chaytor: Returning to the
question of children's voices being heard, I want to ask Roger
about the report from September 2006 and about children's views
on standards—I found that quite interesting as there were
a large number of statements from children. I have two questions.
First, which of the views expressed are likely to be the most
difficult to implement? Secondly, is there not something self-selecting
about this? It occurred to me earlier when you said that children
had contacted you recently to make such and such a point. Surely
it is only a narrow group of the most confident children who know
how to get their views across. Is there an issue of some children
being completely under-represented? Are we missing a big area
of experience, or do you think that the views of those who are
most confident and have the best access, adequately reflect the
views of all children looked at?
Dr Morgan: I will take those issues
in reverse order. When I referred earlier to children contacting
us, it was in the context of that discussion. As far as possible,
the reports are based on a representative and random selection
of children and young people. We randomly select which children's
homes and authorities to invite children from, and we then take
the children in the order they wish to come. Earlier, a reference
was made to consultation fatigue. There are certainly some children
who are consulted over and again—they tend to be the articulate
ones. In my team, we have a principle of trying to give a voice
to the quiet child, the one who does not like to talk—that
was originally a request from a group of children. As you will
have seen in some of those reports, we give those children alternatives
and different ways to feed in their views: mobile phone text panels,
written formats, web survey formats, discussion groups and so
on. Sometimes, they can join a group or write their views on a
piece of paper and hand that in, or do both—whichever they
want. The views that we have been expressing, and that I have
drawn on in those reports, are, as far as possible, representative
and not exclusive. It depends on total numbers. Some reports have
larger groups of children than others. There are some areas where
we need to improve, and I referred earlier to children with communication
problems. We are working on that, but we have not got there yet
and we need to improve the inclusion of those groups. The first
part of your question was about which areas of children's expressed
views and requests are most difficult to implement. There are
two answers to that. The straight answer is that it is those areas
that rely most on the attitudes of individual people and children
having somebody who they can trust and who listens to them. It
is difficult to legislate for that, and it impinges on all sorts
of areas such as recruitment, training, monitoring, support and
so on. Those are the most difficult areas, but others are not
at all difficult. Often, children do not request a new system,
project or idea, but ask for things that can be found in existing
legislation or guidance. It is a matter of the linkage between
the intent and the implementation. Initially people's concern
about Care Matters is, "Great, but will it happen
for me?" That implementation chain comes back to the monitoring
process and again to all those softer issues about support, training,
monitoring, staff supervision and so on.
Q54 Mr Chaytor: May I ask Maxine
and Pam about the situation at the local level? I am interested
in the best examples at local authority level of systems that
are in place to give a voice to people in care. Are you aware
of particularly good local authorities that are leading the field
in that?
Pam Hibbert: Generally, in my
experience, looking at the local authorities that we work in,
it is those that have a children's rights service, a children's
rights officer, a children's participation worker or that sort
of service.
Q55 Mr Chaytor: What proportion of
local authorities have that kind of service?
Pam Hibbert: I cannot answer that
question, but I can find out for you from our membership. May
I find out and let you know?[11]11
Going back to consultation fatigue, those authorities tend generally
to be the ones where children and young people feel not only that
they have been consulted but that they have actually had some
feedback and that something has changed. Obviously, that cannot
always happen, but it relates to the customer satisfaction that
we have been talking about. In local authorities where there is
that sort of service system person, there seems to be a higher
degree of real consultation. Children get to give their views,
and, importantly, they are recorded. I may be wrong—Roger,
you might help me with this—but, as far as I am aware, the
legislation that relates to our duty to take into account children's
views and opinions says nothing about recording those views and
opinions. I have heard young people say, "I did say that,
and they said they took some notice, but it was not in the notes
of the meeting. It was not in my review report, so how can anything
that happens be monitored?"
Maxine Wrigley: To echo that point,
the Children's Rights Alliance for England suggested amendments
around that. It is really important that young people's views
are recorded, or, if they are not recorded, the report needs to
say why they were not recorded. Pam is right: many times young
people will say, "I definitely said that, but it was never
written down." Given that the pathway plan is the only legally
binding contract between the young person and the local authority,
things need to be written down and adhered to properly. On local
authorities, the children in care council idea is a fabulous one,
but young people feel that unless there is some legislation behind
the pledge—they call it a pledge, but it is a promise—nothing
will happen. The council will have no teeth, it will be exactly
what we just said. It will be for the most articulate young people,
but it will not be representative or accountable. We really should
not miss this huge chance for local authorities to set up local
children in care councils, but only if the councils have real
teeth and are not just some guidance kind of thing. It was quite
disappointing to find out that the councils would not have the
backing behind them that we were all excited about at the beginning,
when the Green Paper came out, yet such councils would make a
big difference. On listening to young people, 600 young people
spoke to the National Children's Bureau and the Children's Rights
Alliance, and one quarter of them said that they did not feel
listened to, generally. Most of them said that they had a pathway
plan, but only half felt that somebody actually listened to them.
Even when we listen to young people, I am not sure that they perceive
that we are.
Chairman: We are running up against the
time. Paul wants to ask a quick question and get quick responses,
because people are keen to get to Prime Minister's questions,
which begin at 12.
Q56 Paul Holmes: This topic has been
touched on several times during the past couple of hours. Near
the start of the session, Douglas Carswell reflected one view
that people have, that there are many people who would love to
be foster parents but who are being turned down because of political
correctness, bureaucratic procedures, whatever. I believe that
Pam said that we were 8,000 foster parents short. From your point
of view and your different perspective, are local authorities
too politically correct and bureaucratic about who they approve
to be a foster parent? Should they be fairly cautious about what
they are doing?
Maxine Wrigley: I am not sure
whether Mr Carswell really understands the care system at all,
given the way that he spoke about it. His terminology told me
that he thought there was a difference between public care and
foster care. I know that the general public tend to think that
children in foster care are not in care, so that might be what
was going on there. There is a shortage of foster carers; otherwise,
people would not be constantly moved around, looking for decent
foster carers. The case is simply that local authorities need
to recruit, train and support more foster carers, but I do not
think that it is through lack of effort that that is not happening.
Pam Hibbert: We have to have protections.
I do not think that the shortage is because of political correctness,
and I do think that the bureaucracy for selecting and checking
foster carers is about right. There is a cultural thing about
people's willingness to become foster carers, which may say more
about the way in which society in general is moving. Back to Roger's
point, we must ensure that we get the right foster carer for the
right child, and that is a real issue.
Dr Morgan: I do not think that
the explanation is bureaucracy or political correctness. There
is a shortage, and certainly there are not sufficient carers to
give children a choice according to the sort of matching criteria
that we discussed earlier.
Chairman: May I say in conclusion that
this session has been extremely valuable. We got tremendous value
from the answers to our questions, and I hope that you think that
we have asked some of the right questions. We would like to continue
the relationship. I did not mean to say that any of your organisations
have not given evidence—you have—but some people behind
you did not give evidence, and I believe that they have now left.
Pam, Roger and Maxine, will you stay in touch with us. We are
keen to make this the very best inquiry and report that we possibly
can. We will need your help to make it even better.
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