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The Deputy Chairman of Committees: There is a Division in the Chamber. The Committee stands adjourned for 10 minutes.
[The Sitting was suspended for a Division in the House from 4.37 to 4.47 p.m.]
Baroness Barker: Noble Lords may well remember the period when The Times newspaper was not published for a year. On the first day after the end of the dispute when the paper reappeared, Bernard Levin started his column with the words, "As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted".
Before the Division was called I was setting out some of the background to some of the studies that have been done on the subject of private fostering. It is important to look at the Government's response. In 1998 the Department of Health, responding to publications by BAAF, said that at that time the Government did not consider that a new system of regulation was necessary as there was already a wide range of regulations associated with the offences which might occur in relation to private fostering and adoption.
In 1999 the Department of Health said that the Government would take steps to enforce current regulations on private fostering more effectively and that legislation would also be introduced to target private fostering regulations and placements lasting more than 42 days. That legislation has not been forthcoming. However, two things did happen. One was that a leaflet was produced for professional staff, principally for teachers, to make them aware of the existing provisions surrounding private fostering. A leaflet was produced which was intended to inform private fosterers of their responsibilities but, as far as I have been able to determine, the leaflet appeared only on the Department of Health website and, therefore, did not have much currency within the general population.
It is also worth noting that, over this period of time, all other forms of childcare, with the exception of nannies, have come under increasing regulation and this is the one remaining area where children may be away from their parents for an extended period of time without any supervision or inspection by anybody.
One of the categories of children who frequently are mentioned in relation to private fostering regulations are children who come to this country to stay in language schools. However—the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—I believe that language schools now come within the Ofsted provisions and, indeed, in some cases under the provisions of the Care Standards Act.
The reason for moving the amendment, which I fully accept may be deficient in some respects, is to highlight the need to update the law in this respect. The Social Services Inspectorate has produced a document, By Private Arrangement, which is a consultation document setting out inspection arrangements for supervising children in private foster care. It is a document which draws upon much of the earlier work about which I have spoken. The deficiencies of the existing regulatory framework are highlighted quite graphically in that. When the Social Services Inspectorate set out to do this work, it set itself a target of finding eight local authorities that it could examine in detail—it found only five. Therefore, it had to find others and make some extrapolations. The fact that the SSI was unable to find eight local authorities which could provide it with the information that it needed speaks volumes.
There is one other reason which is fairly compelling for considering this matter now. As I said, all other forms of childcare have been increasingly regulated over the past few years; private fostering has not. Sir William Utting, in his report in 1997 entitled, People Like Us, referred to private fostering as a potential honey-pot for paedophiles and people who seek to do harm to children. It is the sincere belief of many of the organisations working in this field that, as regulation is increasingly effective in all other forms of childcare, the potential for abuse within private fostering is increasing. As someone who believes passionately that anyone who wishes to be considered fit to assume care and responsibility of a child has a duty to prove that they are so, I believe that that is a loophole which should be closed, and should be closed now.
I anticipate that in his reply, the Minister will put forward the argument that the noble Lord, Lord Laming, is currently conducting an inquiry and, although that inquiry has been delayed yet again, it will come to public view probably in the latter part of this year.
That report will inevitably appear after we have completed deliberations of the Bill, and I suspect, after it has been further reviewed in another place. If the Committee does not take this step now, when will there be another opportunity in the legislative timetable to address the issue?
I suspect that I will be accused of being somewhat premature in raising the issue now in the light of the inquiry by the noble Lord, Lord Laming. However, I contend that the issues surrounding private fostering have not changed since the 1973 report was put forward; that many of those issues remain to be addressed; that whatever the outcome of the report of the noble Lord, Lord Laming—a report which cannot and will not be ignored—there exists a loophole which enables children to be placed in the most vulnerable of situations. Therefore, it is not premature to consider the issue now. I beg to move.
Earl Howe: I rise briefly to support this amendment which seems to fill a serious and longstanding gap in the law relating to fostering. The problem with private fostering, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, indicated is that we do not know how big the problem is. That there is a problem is not in doubt. Five years ago, the Utting report flagged up some serious concerns about the risks to children who have been privately fostered. While it is perfectly true that local authorities have some powers that they can deploy where necessary, not many do so with any degree of energy.
Even if one sets aside the obvious risks of private foster carers abusing the children in their charge, and such people are obviously wholly unsuitable to act as surrogate parents, there are other, perhaps less visible, risks.
In 1988, the African Family Advisory Service found that local authorities and private foster carers had little or no knowledge of the children's medical histories, particularly crucial sometimes in West African children who may have sickle cell disorders, for example. It is estimated that between 80 and 90 per cent of private foster placements involve West African children. Privately fostered children were often passed around like parcels from one set of foster parents to another, without any control whatever. There was no formal system to enable local authorities to keep track of where children were, and not a few children disappeared altogether.
Children suffered behavioural and other problems due to unsatisfactory placements, and where West African children were with white foster parents, their cultural and racial identity was not respected or understood. There is no reason to believe that if a similar survey were carried out today, the results would not be identical. One has to ask what possible reason the Government could have for not following the recommendation of Utting that private foster carers, like all other foster carers, should be subject to a system of approval and registration. Even childminders are subject to registration.
There is a vast difference between a situation where a child is entrusted to the care of a friend or a neighbour for a day or two, and the situation where a child is handed over indefinitely to the care of strangers without any prior investigation into the suitability of those people to look after the child. The risks are huge. Indeed, Utting stated that privately fostered children appear to be more vulnerable to
abuse and neglect than children in local authority foster care. Signposts, the report of the 1993 Social Services Inspectorate Inspections, referred to,
- "very real concerns about the welfare of the children".
Against that background, the existing law is weak. It seems crazy that a local authority which wants to remove a child from the home of a private foster carer can do so only if it applies to the court. If an authority wants to remove a child from one of its own foster carers, there are emergency procedures that it can trigger, and the child can be removed without delay. However, a private foster parent, unapproved and unregulated, is in this sense legally on a par with birth parents, and that has to be a huge anomaly.
The status quo should not, I believe, be an option for the Government, and I hope that they will look with favour on this amendment.
5 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Hunt of Kings Heath): I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, for bringing this matter to our attention.
When we debated the passage of the Care Standards Act we had a long discussion on the whole area of private fostering, and I recognise it is an important area of concern. As both the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the noble Earl, Lord Howe, have suggested, it raises concerns about the welfare of children who are privately fostered.
At the moment, private fostering is an agreement where a child under the age of 16, or under 18 if disabled, is cared for by someone who is not a parent, step parent, or has parental responsibility, or is a close relative, for a significant length of time; in other words, 28 days or more. The Children Act 1989 provides a legal framework for notification that requires the private foster carer, and the person with parental responsibility, to notify the local council of the proposed private foster care arrangement.
Once the local authority knows about the impending arrangement, the Children Act requires the local authority to satisfy itself that the welfare of the child is being satisfactorily safeguarded and promoted by others by supervising, regulating and advising it in respect of the private placement. The local authority is then required to visit at specified intervals and to report on those visits. The local authority must satisfy itself that the foster parents' household and accommodation are satisfactory, and it has the power to impose requirements, or if there are serious concerns, to prohibit the fostering arrangement.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, suggested, there are very different circumstances under which private fostering takes place. We know that common types of private fostering arrangements include the practice of African children being sent to England in order to benefit from a good education; or, as the noble Baroness suggested, many teenagers move in with the parents of boyfriends or girlfriends following family rifts, and others stay with school friends, or neighbours following family disagreements, separations, or indeed divorce.
Clearly this is a legislative framework intended to provide adequate protection, but as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, suggested, and as the recently published SSI report confirmed, there are issues of concern. The noble Baroness is right that only five out of eight councils which in a sample survey were asked for information were able to provide a significant sample of children and carers. As a result, a further five authorities were then asked to provide some basic information in order to supplement the inspection task.
This report confirmed the lack of awareness by carers to notify the arrangement to local authorities, and also highlighted the lack of awareness by local authority social services departments of their responsibilities to privately fostered children. I well understand the importance of this issue. I accept that Amendment No. 69 would require local councils to keep a register of private foster carers in their area. It would also require the council to be satisfied that the premises are suitable and that the person,
- "is fit to act as a private foster parent",
Under this proposed new clause, potential private foster carers would be required to register with local councils prior to entering a private foster arrangement. Private foster carers failing to register would commit a criminal offence. This matter was discussed not only during the debates on the Care Standards Act, but also during the Report stage of this Bill in another place.
I should outline the Government's position on a registration scheme. We are looking most carefully at it, although it is fair to say that we remain to be convinced that a scheme as proposed by the noble Baroness would solve all the problems that currently exist. Some of the discussion that is taking place is essentially as follows. If a heavy-handed regulatory approach were adopted, it might succeed only in pushing private fostering further underground. It would not solve the significant obstacle of the lack of notification of private foster arrangements, which is one of the key issues that we face at the moment. Nor does it seek to overcome the problem that private foster carers do not currently see any benefits themselves in registration and, therefore, would probably continue to operate without telling the local authority.
A blanket approach to registration may not work as successfully as suggested by the noble Baroness. However, I readily acknowledge that there is no doubt that the current arrangements are unsatisfactory. That is why my honourable friend Jacqui Smith announced a government review of the situation earlier in the year. There is a wide range of stakeholders involved, including Members of Parliament and private foster carers. The review is focusing on the existing arrangements within Part IX of the Children Act, and will consider whether they are robust enough to protect vulnerable children while they are living away from their parents.
We have had meetings involving the major stakeholders, and other government departments, covering issues such as notification of private arrangements, and standards and thresholds of involvement in private fostering arrangements. Private foster carers, those who are being cared for privately, and their parents, are being interviewed. An account of their experiences will be used to further the process of reaching conclusions in terms of the review.
In addition, as the noble Baroness suggested, we anticipate that the findings from the Climbie˙ inquiry in the autumn will also be very relevant to our deliberations as to how we should take the process forward. I understand why the noble Baroness presses us on legislation at the moment; that is entirely consistent with what she has been saying over the past two years. However, it would be unwise to rush into legislation without knowing the conclusions of the review, or, indeed, of the review of the noble Lord, Lord Laming. As I said, that inquiry is due to report in the autumn.
As I promised during the passage of the Care Standards Act, we have taken this opportunity to send reminders to local authorities as regards their responsibility. As the noble Baroness suggested, we have produced leaflets in order to raise public awareness about this issue. The leaflet went wider than the Department of Health website, though I recognise that there is always more that can be done. In the light of the noble Baroness's comments, I shall look into how effective we are being and consider whether we need to improve our efforts in that direction. I also recognise the point that she made about language schools. I understand that language schools are not classed as schools and therefore are not regulated by the DfES or Ofsted. We are trying to encourage a voluntary accreditation scheme as one way forward.
I know that the noble Earl, Lord Howe, raised the issue of the contrast between the regulation of private fostering and regulation in other areas such as child minding. I fully acknowledge that child minding has been treated differently and that was the subject of our debate during the Care Standards Bill. It reflects to some extent the differing circumstances in which child minding operates. Child minders tend to undertake their duties on a self-employed basis in expectation of regular payment. That is significantly not the case in the vast majority of private foster care arrangements. I can assure noble Lords that as part of the current review of private fostering, we will examine the arrangements surrounding the child minding registration scheme in order to evaluate how effective it is and whether elements of the scheme could usefully be applied to private foster care.
On the point raised by the noble Baroness as to whether there will be another opportunity to legislate on private foster care, she knows that I cannot anticipate future legislative opportunities. However, in my four years or so with a remit in health and social care, we have already taken two Acts through the legislative process. The Adoption and Children Bill
will be the third if it is enacted. Without giving any commitments, I am sure that there will be further opportunities for legislation in the future.
I can assure the noble Baroness that the points she makes the Government accept are important. We accept that the current situation is unsatisfactory. We do not think that a blanket registration scheme is necessarily the answer, but we will, of course, look at that carefully in the light of the current review and the conclusions of the noble Lord, Lord Laming.
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