Debate on the Address

My Lords, what an important speech that was. I strongly endorse the Government’s policy of eliminating child poverty, but I want to speak today about another form of poverty that can be equally or perhaps even more disastrous for children: poverty of attachment. I hope that at some time in this Session my Cross-Bench colleagues will give me the opportunity to introduce a debate on attachment as it affects children in families, but this afternoon I want to talk about attachment in the context of children in care. Already speeches have been made on this matter by my noble friends Lady Butler-Sloss and Lord Listowel and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. However, those three speeches covered different aspects of children in care; I intend to cover a fourth: attachment. The care system today does not give the children in its care enough chance to make secure long-term attachments to a responsible adult. That fact may be causally linked to the depressing statistics that show, as we have heard already, that children who have been in care are heavily overrepresented in prison and very often do not get any qualifications in school. My proposition is that a child in the care of the state has no less need of the security of long-term loving attachment than any other child—indeed, perhaps more so. The progress report for 2004-05 on the Children Act 1989, which was published this October, said: "““Children need stability in order to enable them to develop attachments and achieve the outcomes, to which we aspire, for all children””." My noble friend Lady Butler-Sloss mentioned lack of stability and said that children in care have no single point of continuity in their lives. The estimated number of children in this country looked after by the state on 31 March 2005 was 60,900; that figure has been fairly constant over recent years. Of all those children looked after by the state at March 2005,68 per cent were placed with foster carers and 5 per cent were placed for adoption, but the report emphasises that these figures varied widely between local authorities. It is widely recognised that there is often a cluster of reasons why looked-after children in school may have problems, or may end up in prison. The lack of opportunity for long-term secure attachments is the key reason in many cases. Visualise the situation. For nine months a child grows up in the almost total security of his mother’s womb. The relationship with his mother is secure and satisfying—unless, of course, the mother is subjectto domestic violence or there are drugs in her bloodstream. It is a hugely secure environment. Then, suddenly, there is the trauma of birth, and the child finds itself launched into a strange and frightening world. Research shows that at this stage a close and loving attachment to the mother is a key factor in the baby’s well-being. If the baby also becomes gradually attached to another one or two adults, that is all to the good. It is generally recognised that a stable long-term attachment to suitable adults is enormously important for every child during the whole period in which they are growing up. Let us look at how the need for attachment of our children in care is met. First, why do we pay so little attention to the need for continuity of attachment in fostering? The kite mark that the Government have set for stability in foster placements is that a child should have fewer than three different placements every year. Thirteen per cent of all children nationally had three or more placements in the year ending31 March. I ask your Lordships to imagine that you have spent your earliest years in a violent or totally dysfunctional family, conditions so seriously adverse that the state had found it necessary to take you into care, and then the best the local authority can do towards restoring some stability in your life is to send you to three, four or more different foster homes in the first year. Each time you have to begin a new attachment, and each time it is torn up by the local authority. In my view, and I hesitate to say this, such treatment of foster children is simply not acceptable. I find myself wondering, though I do not know whether I dare to say it, whether some local authorities are in fact fit for purpose in looking after the nation’s most vulnerable children. After all, we do not entrust our National Health Service to local authorities, so why should we entrust our most vulnerable children to them? Should the funding needs for the care of these vulnerable children have to jostle with more local issues for adequate funding? The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and other speakers on the subject have referred to the incredible shortage of social workers, to the effect that they are often not adequately trained and so forth. Ultimately it is a question of money, which is not coming out of the local authorities to provide the service the children need. Why do we pay so little attention to continuity in the staffing of children’s homes? Perhaps the most significant emotional problem of most children in care is the lack of an early secure attachment. Do the Government feel that the relatively high level of staff turnover in many children’s homes is satisfactory? Are they sure that children are not being moved from therapeutic homes to fostering in order to balance the budget, rather than in their best interests? I know for a fact that on some occasions they are. There is a difficulty: professional workers need to move on. I had an idea for the restructuring of children’s homes to solve this problem. I have often wondered if there might be a role in a children’s home for a live-in granny, someone who is permanently there for the children and does not change every few months or years. This Government must be greatly congratulated on recognising that, for many children who have been taken away from their families, adoption is and will be the best solution. They must be congratulated, too, on introducing new adoption legislation. A great effort has been made to make adoption available to all children for whom it is the best solution. However, progress for younger children is disappointingly slow. The total number of looked-after children adopted has risen from 2,200 in 1998-99 to 3,800 in 2004-05, a rise of nearly 75 per cent. That is good news as far as it goes but, alas, this increase relates mainly to children between five and 10 years old. There has been virtually no change in the rate of adoptions from care of children under five. Last week I attended a seminar on attachment at the Nuffield Foundation. Two speakers reported studies which showed quite clearly that emotional damage caused by an adverse environment in early childhood increases incrementally—that is to say, with the length of time that the child remains in the unfavourable environment. Do the Government agree that delay in arranging adoptions for younger children may not only damage children but also make it more difficult to help them later? I recognise that it will cost more money to offer all children in care the opportunity to enjoy a secure attachment. I recognise that, in a democracy, extracting money from the public for other people’s children is not easy, but I suggest that there is now enough evidence to show the links between stable attachment and subsequent good citizenship to justify more investment in those children for whom the state takes the responsibility to be their parents.