Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 12: 12: Clause 8, page 6, line 25, at end insert— ““( ) In fulfilling their duty under this section, a local authority shall consider the welfare of the child to be paramount.”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 13, 14 and 37. I remember saying at the beginning of our consideration of the Bill that I looked forward to working for the benefit of children with colleagues of all parties because it is the welfare of children that is paramount and not political division. That has happened and it has been very gratifying. Significant changes have been made by the Government, which is also gratifying. We have visited the issue of relative and friend carers before and I thank my noble friend the Minister for his correspondence, for his flow charts and diagrams, which are very clear, and for conversations. I am grateful to him and his team for trying to reach satisfactory conclusions, but I do not feel that we are quite there yet and I would like a little more detail. We will be able to tackle the problems faced by family and friend carers only if the laws are changed or firm guidance is issued to local authorities and only if carers know what it all means and are drawn into the system. We need consistent criteria and adherence to specific rules to do the best for children. I would prefer the changes to be in law, but clear and firm guidance may do it. This Government have done much for children and families—probably more than any other—and this anomaly in relation to family and friend carers needs to be, and can be, sorted out. During our consideration of the Bill, expectations for family and friend carers have been raised not only in the children plan but in the recent drug strategy, one of whose key strategy actions is to, "““support kin carers such as grandparents caring for the children of substance-misusing parents, by exploring extensions to the circumstances in which local authorities can make payments to carers of children classified as ‘in need’, backed up by improved information for carers and guidance for local authorities””." Newspaper headlines followed this up with statements such as, ““Grandparents to be paid for looking after children””. That is not quite true. Grandparents, after the initial excitement about all this, are now thinking that this may be much of the same and entirely down to local authorities deciding their status and that of their grandchildren. As we have said before, many of these carers have had bad experiences. We heard in Committee examples of how local authorities are inconsistent in how they treat relative and friend carers, although there is good practice about. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, spoke of a relative being persuaded not to become a foster carer and then not to become a special guardian. That was all to save money, of course, but how short sighted it was. The outcomes for children placed in the care of relatives and friends are often better than the outcomes for those fostered by strangers. How much better would these outcomes be if those carers had more support and spent less time struggling to get financial and other help from local services? We all know that a child who is well looked after is much less likely to get into trouble with the law, get involved with drugs or get pregnant while a teenager. It is a false economy to deny payments to support a child while he or she is young. This false economy will of course rebound. I spoke last week at two conferences, one on drugs and diversity and one on grandparents as carers. I heard from several grandparents emotional and emotive speeches about their cases. My files are full of case studies of relatives and friends who have been denied access to help and support. One grandparent whose daughter died from a drug overdose took charge of three children. She is still, after several years, trying to get decent accommodation. She said: "““Every day there is a mountain to climb. When I should be reading to my grandson I find myself writing some letter to try to get support for me and the kids””." There are many examples of relatives and friends who have given up work and pension rights to be carers. Many now live in real poverty. One grandparent said that she had not been able to send her grandson to school because he had no suitable shoes. What era are we living in when a carer is destined for poverty? I have been told that some local authorities define family and friend care as a private arrangement. You cannot have a private arrangement with someone who is dead, as many sons or daughters are when a grandparent takes over. I asked the child health mapping programme whether children of relative and friend carers came up on its local surveys. Of course they do not, so who is in charge here? These carers are not trying to cheat the system to get money; they are trying to do a good caring job. Surely a prompt assessment of a case, with follow-up, would eliminate any malpractice and protect the child. This would be better than leaving people struggling with a system that they feel cheats them and stands in the way of their caring for their children as they would wish. An NHS slogan says, ““Adding life to years and years to life””. That is not true in the case of many grandparent carers. I know that judgments have been made against local authorities in cases involving not paying until an assessment is made and in cases of other payments to grandparents and other carers. Why is there such inconsistency? What is needed—this is the nub of my argument—is a system whereby when a child comes into the care of relatives or friends, the carers are immediately advised as to their options and counselled. This is not quite covered in correspondence with the Minister. The carer may become a local authority foster carer and be assessed or they may choose other routes such as special guardianship. Whatever the decision, they should be advised honestly on the financial and other support implications and not be bullied into the cheapest option. Becoming a local authority foster carer would clearly be more financially beneficial, but I accept that that might not suit everyone. While those decisions are being made and assessed, it must be clearly understood and communicated that there will be financial support so that the children do not suffer. This requires instruction to local authorities, a named person to deal with the cases and clear information to the relatives and friends, taking into account that they may be grieving, stressed or disoriented. In the long term, this could save a great deal of money and would undoubtedly have better outcomes for children. We could also share and learn from the good practice that already exists. I beg to move.