Childcare Bill

My Lords, I declare an interest as president of the Royal Mencap Society. I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate, in which I want to highlight one issue in particular; namely, the care provided for disabled young people over 16 and their families. I am delighted that the Minister has indicated his willingness to discuss the matter fully some time after Second Reading. I was also delighted to hear the support voiced by the noble Baronesses, Lady Morris of Bolton and Lady Walmsley. All parents should be able to access the childcare they need in order to work and provide for their families. That is the governing principle of the Bill and I am sure it is welcomed on all sides of this House. I am sure also that we welcome the fact that the Bill recognises and accommodates the need of some parents to access childcare for longer than others. While most children will be sufficiently independent by their early teens to look after themselves outside school hours and to manage without formal childcare, most disabled children will not. That, I am sure, is the logic of the distinction the Bill makes between disabled and non-disabled children. As your Lordships will be aware, the Bill gives local authorities a duty to secure sufficient childcare for non-disabled children up to the age of 14, and for disabled children up to the age of 16. The principle is therefore made clear: disabled children need childcare for longer than non-disabled children. But the question arises: why 16? In other legislation designed to help parents to work, the parents of disabled children are supported up to the age of 18. The Employment Relations Act 1999 gives parents of disabled children up to the age of 18 the right to up to 18 weeks’ parental leave, to be used flexibly throughout the child’s life whenever it is most needed, from birth to 18 years. And the Employment Act 2002 gives parents of disabled children up to the age of 18 the right to request flexible working hours to meet their care needs. Why 18? Because families with disabled children still need that support up to the age of 18. Why have a different age limit in the Childcare Bill? Consistency in legislation is generally sensible, but it is not only for the sake of consistency that the Childcare Bill should secure care for the families of disabled children up to the age of 18 rather than 16. Disabled young people aged 17 and 18 are too old to access most childcare and too young to access adult services which are in any case not set up to meet the needs of working families. They fall into what we might call the ““care gap””. We know that that care gap exists for disabled children as young as 12, but the problem gets more acute as they get older. The Sure Start survey in 2003 found that there were major gaps in childcare provision for the families of disabled children aged 14 and older. Many of them were directed towards leisure centre activities that were wholly inadequate for their needs, being insufficiently staffed to cope with disabled children and with sessions which did not fit in with the timetables of working parents. According to Contact a Family’s 2002 survey, Everybody Here, 70 per cent of disabled children aged 12 to 19 cannot attend a club because the facilities are not suitable for them. The care gap makes life difficult for the families of older disabled children in general, but the parents of young people with profound and multiple disabilities have the greatest difficulty finding any kind of childcare. Only in exceptional cases are they able to work when their children get older. They cannot use the informal out-of-school services used by non-disabled young people of their age because the staffing is insufficient. Most childminders will not take them on. Where are they supposed to go, or, to put it another way, where are their parents supposed to go? In many cases, their parents admit defeat. They give up their paid jobs, and devote themselves to caring for their children full-time. We know that 84 per cent of mothers of disabled children are out of work, compared to 39 per cent of mothers of non-disabled children. We know that 55 per cent of families with disabled children are living in or at the margins of poverty and, indeed, that if the Government had only paid more attention to their needs, they might not have missed their target for cutting child poverty. Providing such families with childcare will help, but why stop that help when the child reaches 16? Take the case of a mother known to Mencap in Wakefield, whose 17 year-old son has a learning disability. She used to work, but had to give up when her son left school. He attends a day centre until 3 pm every day, but there is no wraparound care available from 3 pm to 6 pm, or during the holidays, to allow her to continue to work. She would like to work again, but it is impossible for her to do so without the support of a reliable childcare service. So she loses the ability to provide for her family, she loses the ability to do a job she enjoys and for which she is valued, and the country loses her contribution as a worker and—the Government should take note—as a taxpayer. Her work as a full-time carer is invaluable, but it is unpaid work that she does through necessity. Yes, she does it through love, but not through choice. So why not raise the age limit for local authorities to secure sufficient childcare for disabled children from 16 to 18? In a debate in another place the Minister, Beverley Hughes, said that 17 and 18 year-olds might not want to be regarded as needing childcare. Well, maybe not, but for many disabled young people, the service they need at 17 is exactly the same as the service they needed at 14 and 15 and 16. In any case, very few people who provide childcare services, or who use childcare services, call it childcare. Take Dwaine, a 17 year-old young man with a severe learning disability who is fortunate enough to be cared for by a childminder after school five days a week, supported by the local Mencap-run childminding network, while his mother works for Bromley Council. Dwaine never calls it childcare. He refers to his childminder as ““my mate””. But he can call her whatever he likes: the point is that his mother is able to work, and he has somewhere safe and worthwhile to go while she does so. It would be a great shame if, for want of a name, the opportunity was lost for more families like Dwaine’s to get the care they need. The Bill presents a perfect opportunity to provide that care and to close the care gap that opens up when a disabled child reaches 16. It presents a perfect opportunity to help families to work and to help families with disabled children to get out of poverty. It presents a perfect opportunity to harmonise childcare legislation with other laws that provide support to working families with disabled children. All in all, it presents an opportunity not to be missed, and I hope the Minister will agree that the Bill should cover disabled children up to the age of 18. I shall certainly move an amendment to that effect at a later stage, unless the Minister and the Government decide to pre-empt me. Given the Minister’s opening speech, I am sure they will give my heartfelt pleas every sympathetic consideration.