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Another gap that we have noticed involves provisions for privately fostered children. According to the Office for National Statistics, at 31 March this year, 1,250 children were reported as being privately fostered, whereby parents make arrangements with someone outside their close family to look after their child for 28 days or longer. No one knows the number of children being looked after in this way but estimates from the British Association for Adoption & Fostering range from 7,000 to 10,000 children or more. What are the Government doing to raise the profile of these children and to extend to them the necessary protection?
Improving schemes for adoption and fostering goes some way to providing the stability and continuity of care that is so important to some of the most vulnerable young people. The British Association for Adoption & Fostering has expressed its fear that children are missing out on permanent new families because of public ignorance about modern adoption. What are the Government doing to improve people’s awareness of adoption and to encourage more people to adopt?
Our primary concern is that the voice of the child is listened to and that his welfare is placed above all other considerations. As has been mentioned, that ambition is most certainly the right one but it is difficult to achieve. We have welcomed the increased provisions for social work practices, and we agree very much with the concerns raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, about proper resourcing for social workers. I hope that social work practices are implemented effectively and in a way that will make wider application possible. We welcome the effort to keep children in stable, local care but hope that mechanisms are in place to allow for important exceptions. We welcome many of the increased powers for local authorities but hope that they have adequate means to deliver what is so seriously needed.
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Essentially, this is much needed legislation but we still need greater clarity in the Bill to ensure that the appropriate and desperately needed changes come to fruition. In concluding, I thank the organisations that have provided me with excellent briefings. They have been very useful and have enabled me to take a much more informed look at the Bill. I look forward to hearing from the Minister.
7.02 pm
Lord Adonis: My Lords, first, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, on behalf of the management for the attempt to dragoon him into speaking in a different debate. He did not say what the subject was but I am sure that it would have benefited from his wisdom in any event. Perhaps he will be encouraged to speak twice in one day. My noble friend Lord Hunt is much looking forward to the noble Lord’s intervention.
I thank noble Lords on all sides of the House for their generally warm welcome for the Bill. I pay tribute to the noble Baronesses, Lady Morris, Lady Verma, Lady Walmsley and Lady Sharp, for their speeches and for the highly constructive approach that they have taken to the measures in the Bill. As they and other noble Lords rightly said, we shall want to return to a large number of issues in Committee and on Report. I can already see significant debates ahead of us and I much look forward to them. Of course, this is an area where noble Lords who sit on the Cross Benches make an especially important contribution to our proceedings. That has been amply demonstrated this evening by a series of extremely worthwhile speeches based on substantial personal knowledge and long engagement in various aspects—for example, the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, on fostering and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, on looked-after children. I could mention all the noble Lords and noble Baronesses who have spoken in that respect. We greatly value their contributions and, as I said, look forward in Committee and on Report to engagement on the issues raised.
There has been a broad welcome for the measures in the Bill in respect of local placement, the voice of the child, the stability of placements, more independent support for children in care and promoting educational performance and opportunity for children in care. I should like to begin by taking forward the dialogue which always takes place between the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and myself on these issues—an extremely friendly dialogue it is too. No one in the House speaks with greater experience of these issues than the noble Baroness. To be brutally frank, I took the essence of her remarks to be whether the Bill is beside the point.
In a sense, the rest of the debate demonstrated that the provisions of the Bill are not beside the point. All its provisions are focused on special improvements to the provision for children in care. The noble Baroness is profoundly right that the Bill on its own will not transform the lot of children in care, and she is also right to say that legislation is not required to put in place a substantial number of important changes that will improve the lot of such children. She rightly highlighted two of the most significant elements in improving the lot of children in care. One is a
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On the issue of social workers, which the noble Baroness raised, I am the first to accept that a great deal more needs to be done. However, since 1995, there has been a 21 per cent increase in the number of whole-time social workers. In our Modernising Social Services strategy, which started in 2000, we set out an ambition to recruit 6,000 extra social workers to close the vacancy gap. In fact, we recruited more than 6,000 but the number of available posts also rose in the same period, meaning that the pressure to fill posts remained as great as it was before, despite the increase.
In terms of our investment, expenditure on children’s social care increased from £2.1 billion in 1996-97 to £5 billion in 2006-07—a real-terms increase of 88 per cent—so we have been taking forward the very important investment agenda, irrespective of legislation. For example, the huge increase in investment in children’s social care made it possible for the average pay of a newly qualified social worker in children’s social care to rise from £24,600 in 2001 to £29,900 in 2005, which is an increase across the four years of 21.7 per cent. Again, the noble Baroness is absolutely right that an improvement in the social work agenda is hugely important. I believe that we have been seeking to get to grips with it, although we recognise that there is more to do. Because we recognise that there is more to be done, we published the Options for Excellence review. The noble Baroness asked me what has happened to that since it was published in October 2006. In June, we published Care Matters, the White Paper that set out a number of proposals in respect of the social care workforce. We are taking those forward. My right honourable friend Beverley Hughes, the Minister for Children, has set up a working group with practitioners to look at a whole series of measures in respect of the social work profession, and we will be producing a children’s workforce strategy action plan early in the new year in conjunction with stakeholders in the sector.
The Care Matters White Paper sets out a number of complementary agendas for improving social work, including improving skills training and support for children and family social workers, increasing the capacity of social workers to support other staff, looking at social work qualifying degrees to ensure that they equip social workers with the necessary knowledge and skills to work in a modern children’s workforce, and reviewing the support and training for newly qualified social workers by, for example, developing a newly qualified social work status—an issue raised repeatedly in the House by the noble Earl, Lord
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In respect of social work practice pilots, I make it clear that this will be—certainly for the early stages of implementing the agenda that I have set out—only a very small part of the work that takes place out in the field. I would not want to exaggerate the important of the pilots but we believe it right to pilot this potentially beneficial reform. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, asked me whether we would publish the results of the pilots. We certainly intend to do so, and I can state clearly that one of the factors on which we will judge their success is whether they bring more and better social workers into the profession for the benefit of children.
In respect of foster parents, the noble Lord, Lord, Hylton, asked me whether it is possible for approved adopters, if they so wish, to adopt from the moment of birth, and asked me to make our policy clear. It is possible for a child to be placed from near birth—a mother cannot give consent to the placement of adoption until the child is six weeks old. The reason for the six-week rule reflects the fact that mothers need to be given time to recover from pregnancy before they make irrevocable decisions, but from very close to birth it is possible for that step to be taken. The reality is that very few babies are relinquished by their mothers for adoption at that early stage, but the noble Lord asked for our statement of policy.
In respect of the great majority of children who go on to be fostered, the most significant issue, as the noble Lord said, is that we have sufficient, well motivated foster carers. That is partly an issue of training; it is also an issue of remuneration in its widest sense. I gave the figures in my opening speech about the increase in funding of about £230 million for children in residential care and £330 million for those in foster care between 2000 and 2004-05, which reflects the reality that significantly larger payments are being made by local authorities than was the case before.
As noble Lords rightly observed, the payments to foster carers come in two elements: the allowance and the fees. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, welcomed the fact that we brought in the minimum allowances. The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, asked me what we would do about authorities paying less than the allowances. I can tell her that we are committed to looking with Ofsted at monitoring allowances paid by all foster providers. In the light of our monitoring of the allowances, we will consider whether further action is necessary at
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In respect of the fees that are paid over and above the allowances, the fee levels of course vary widely but, significantly, funding has been continuously made available to local authorities to strengthen and expand their own fostering services. We believe that the right policy is to ensure full transparency in the payment of fees and the publication of fee rates, which is what we are seeking to do. We do not want to overregulate the actual fees paid, not least because that may discourage some authorities from paying higher fees, which in their own individual circumstances may be necessary to attract foster carers.
The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, also raised the issue of allegations against foster carers. I do not minimise the importance of that issue and the need for effective procedures for dealing with allegations. That is why we have already funded the publication of a range of information and training materials relating to improving the way in which allegations against foster carers are handled, and to support foster carers through the process. However, in addition the review of the implementation of the guidance on handling allegations is currently under way. That guidance relates to anyone working with children and young people, including foster carers. Fostering organisations are among the stakeholders participating in the review, and I can tell the noble Lord that there will be a report to Ministers before Christmas and that the outcome of the review will be published in the new year in time for our debates in Committee and on Report.
The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, raised the related issues of private fostering and the registration scheme. As she knows, the Children Act 2004 strengthened the notification scheme and notification responsibilities in respect of private fostering. There have been only two years of this new regime so far. While we have not ruled out a registration scheme, we believe that the evidence base is not yet sufficient to decide on the merits of such a step and we believe it right to take the necessary time to collect and evaluate information on the current arrangements before we decide whether to proceed with a national registration scheme.
Several noble Lords raised the issue of out-of-authority placements and no arbitrary restrictions. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for saying that she thought that we had appropriate flexibility in this regard. We believe that that is the case. Under existing legislation the local authority has a responsibility to give consideration to placing a child near to home. The Bill builds on that and introduces an obligation on local authorities to place a child in their area, except in circumstances when the use of such a placement would not be consistent with the child’s welfare. I emphasise that last element in the Bill. Clause 8 is very clear that all placements in respect of children in care must be
If it is not so consistent with the child’s welfare to be placed in area, it is absolutely permissible for local authorities to make such placements out of area.
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Why have we introduced that provision? Again, it is because of the startling fact that at the moment, more than a quarter of children subject to placements are placed outside their local authority area, and the statistics on the achievements of such children show that they do notably worse than those placed inside their local authority areas. As to the definition of a local authority area, in some cases it may be close to a border, or if in a municipal authority, have a large number of local authorities. Local authorities will have to be absolutely reasonable in how that duty is interpreted but we believe that the new provisions will give much greater emphasis to local authorities to see that they make appropriate placements in their locality, which will benefit the children in care.
The noble Lord, Lord Rix, raised a number of issues relating to disabled children, of whom he is a champion in this House, and has been for many years. As he rightly said, it usually takes the Government a few decades to catch up with his proposals. He is right to say that what we are doing in respect of short breaks is something for which he has campaigned for some time. All I can say in mitigation is that producing a national short-break service, which in effect is what we are doing in the Aiming High for Disabled Children strategy, which we published two months ago, is an expensive business. We are spending £330 million over the next three years on implementing that strategy, and £280 million of that will go into providing short-break services. We are in discussions with local authorities on how to define what the core offer should be in order to ensure that this additional funding is wholly additional to existing funding and does not simply substitute for existing funding. I chair a working group that is looking into the detail of all these issues so that we can deliver on the commitments that the noble Lord is so keen for us to meet.
Our view is that the improvement in the quality of services is vital. That is what we are concentrating on at the moment. We are not persuaded that new legislative requirements will be a means to bringing about those ends. I hope the noble Lord will accept that that additional funding shows that we are very serious about improving those services. The noble Lord also asked about looked-after children status in 52-week placements. The point to stress is that the basis on which accommodation is provided, and the length of time provided within each year, varies enormously between children and different categories of children. The issue of looked-after status depends crucially on the assessment of the particular needs of each child and the nature of their disability, not simply on a mathematical read-across of the number of weeks that their placement occupies in a year.
We believe that the Bill goes some way to meeting the noble Lord’s concerns because of the new duty in the Bill for children who are in long-term placements to be visited by the local authority—the Clause 16 duties. The new duties strike the right balance between safeguarding children’s welfare without unnecessarily interfering in family life as might be the case if there were a simple blanket extension of looked-after children status to those in whole-year placements.
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My noble friend Lord Judd raised the Clause 13 duty on local authorities to ensure that visits to looked-after children are conducted by social workers and asked why we did not specifically put that it should be social workers in the Bill. This was to allow local authorities the flexibility to appoint a member of their staff who is most appropriate to undertake the functions that will be set out in regulations. However, statutory guidance will make it clear that, in most cases, the visitor should be a social worker. It may be the case, however, that others are able to undertake the function under appropriate supervision; the statutory guidance will make that clear.
Similarly, I was asked whether the designated member of staff in Clause 17, responsible for the educational welfare of looked-after children, will be a teacher. That designated member of staff will be a teacher, and that will be set out in regulations. Of course, it is important that schools ensure that there is no stigmatising of looked-after children. The fact that there is a designated teacher does not mean that there will be any revelation—of the names of looked-after children in a school, for example—in any stigmatising way.
Lord Judd: My Lords, my noble friend is giving encouraging replies. On this specific point, if there is to be a specially designated teacher, is it not crucially important that one of their tasks is to stimulate a sense of responsibility in the staff as a whole?
Lord Adonis: My Lords, I absolutely agree with my noble friend; that will be a prime responsibility of the designated member of staff who will be a teacher. However, it will not mean that names of looked-after children will therefore need to be revealed, or anything of that kind which would be stigmatising within the school.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, asked why the Bill does not itself include the duty for local authorities to secure sufficient and diverse provision of quality of placements within their local area, the White Paper having made this commitment. We remain committed to the White Paper proposal, and the effect of the Bill and its provisions will be to ensure that local authorities make sufficient diverse provision to meet the needs of children when they are looked after. When read with existing legislation, there will in effect be a requirement on local authorities to provide a range and level of services appropriate to the needs of children in their area and to facilitate the provision of services, including accommodation, by others.
The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, asked whether Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child ought to have led us to introduce independent advocates. Article 12 does not impose any duty or expectation that any child should have an independent advocate. Instead, it imposes a requirement that children should be consulted and their views respected when decisions that affect them, whether administrative or judicial, are taken. The United Kingdom Government comply fully with this requirement. There are express statutory duties to consult, and local authorities already have access to a range of trained adults capable of consulting and listening to children. For court proceedings, there is also the children’s guardian.
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The noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, stressed the importance of support for children on the threshold of care and their families. I strongly endorse everything she said on that: it is vital that we do all that we can to help parents and families in that situation. I agree with the noble Baroness that there are good projects on this in the voluntary sector. We are taking forward a number of pilots; for example, there is currently an ongoing pilot to provide more support for families of adults with drug and alcohol difficulties so that parents get the help they need to care for their children. There is also a pilot on intensive intervention for families with complex needs to keep adolescents in their families where possible. This is being successfully developed in the United States; we are piloting it in 10 local authorities here. I can send the noble Baroness more details on those two pilots as examples of work we are doing on this.
However, when children need to be placed, my noble friend Lady Thornton asked whether there was proper consultation with them beforehand. All local authority powers under which kinship placements can be made include an express statutory duty for the child’s view to be ascertained and taken into consideration before such steps are taken.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote: My Lords, I have a further question. I am a little confused about independent advocacy. I should have thought that the point of having a completely independent advocate was that they could point out both to the child and, from an independent perspective, to the local authority that that child had a right in certain circumstances not only to disagree but to have the plan for wherever he or she was next to be directed changed.
Lord Adonis: My Lords, I can set this out for the noble Baroness in correspondence, but that the voice of the child is adequately supported is enshrined in a whole series of other measures, including the independent reviewing officers which I was just about to come to. Taking all of those measures together, there is sufficient support for the voice of the child without having the specific figure of the independent advocate which has been raised by the noble Baroness and others in the debate, but I am happy to set that out more fully.
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