Childcare Bill

I, too, support my noble friend Lord Rix, and would not wish to repeat the cogent arguments that he and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, have put forward. However, I add one or two different points. I work in the adult disability field, as well as the child disability field. I am the president of the John Grooms organisation for disabled people, which undertook a review of services for disabled people. This transitional stage between childhood and adulthood—really it is adolescence—is the most dangerous and difficult, not only for young persons themselves but for their carers. This is the stage at which, if there is not enough support at the right time, the young person will be placed in totally inappropriate provision. We know already that there are thousands of quite young disabled adults in inappropriate provision, in adult provision or in hospital, when they could live quite adequately in better placements if they were available and if the assessment was made well at the transitional stage. The difficulty is with families who have had provision for care up to the age of 16 and who have struggled to survive—the noble Lords, Lord Carter and Lord Rix, have said this on a number of occasions—and look after those whom they love, who often have very severe disabilities. My world is that of physical disability, where sometimes people are quadriplegic, which means real physical care is necessary. Their survival depends on their having some form of daycare available. If that daycare does not continue, those families cannot go on. That is the point at which a young person may find themselves placed inappropriately—it is when a young adolescent wants to come out of a house and either go to a college for disabled youngsters or into his or her own provision—because the family has broken down. Often it is not the most economical solution for the nation either, because those sorts of placements are expensive. Therefore, the move to 18 would be beneficial not only for the young people, which is our primary concern, and for their families on whom they depend, but for the nation, in terms of long-term economic value.