Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

My Lords, we are grateful to my noble friend Lady Massey for raising the issue of family and friends carers. My officials and I have had productive conversations with her and I hope that I can put on the record some points that meet most of her concerns. Our overarching policy is to ensure a more consistent and transparent approach by every local authority to supporting relatives who care for children, whether the children have looked-after status or not. We intend to do that through a combination of the legislative changes that we are making in the Bill and the regulations and statutory guidance that we will be issuing to local authorities once the Bill is passed. We want to ensure, first, that placement with family and friends is considered as an option for every looked-after child. That is why we are changing the Children Act 1989 by substituting new Section 22C for Section 23. Subsection (7)(a) of new Section 22C places local authorities under a duty to give preference to placements with related carers over any other placement option. Secondly, as set out in the Care Matters White Paper, we will issue statutory guidance to local authorities that will require them to publish a transparent and accessible policy for providing support to related carers, so that carers will know precisely what support they can expect, whether or not the child for whom they are caring has looked-after status. Going to the heart of my noble friend’s concerns is the fact that, where a local authority provides a child with accommodation by making an arrangement for them to live with an individual, that child is deemed to be looked after by the local authority and the carer with whom the child is placed must be an approved local authority foster parent, whether or not they are related to the child or otherwise connected with them. All carers with whom the child is placed by the local authority are therefore local authority foster parents regardless of prior relationship to the child and are therefore already covered by all existing legislation and regulation relating to foster parents, including—this is a key point—provisions of Section 49 of the Children Act 2004 relating to payments for foster parents. Local authorities’ policies on financial payment or other support must therefore not discriminate between related carers and others simply on the ground of prior relationship to the child. We will make this crystal clear in our guidance after the passage of the Bill. Amendments Nos. 13 and 14 deal with emergency placements. We recognise that, when an emergency arises, the person best placed to care for a child is often someone who is already known to them, whether it is another family member or a neighbour. However, that person is unlikely to have prior approval as a local authority foster parent. This situation is provided for at the moment in Regulation 38 of the Fostering Services Regulations 2002, which enables a child to be placed with a relative after preliminary checks to ensure the child’s safety but pending full, formal approval as a foster carer. We intend to use the new powers that we are taking through Clause 8 to regulate the approval of local authority foster carers to replicate the effect of Regulation 38 so that related carers can be granted temporary approval after basic preliminary checks have been carried out. The checks are likely to include, as now, a requirement to interview the carer, inspect the accommodation and obtain details of others living at the address. This will improve current safeguards for children placed in emergency. The effect of current Section 23(3) is that any person with whom a child is placed is a local authority foster parent, which means that there is no immediate legal consequence if the carer is not approved within six weeks. However, under new Section 22C, a carer is a local authority foster parent only if approved as such. As I have said, we will provide for a temporary approval status, which will be time limited. If the temporary approval expires before full approval is granted, the placement cannot continue; otherwise, a local authority will be in breach of primary legislation. The purpose of the proposed legal change is to ensure that local authorities prioritise the need to complete approvals in time and improve the safeguarding of these vulnerable children. It is also to ensure that family carers receive all the financial allowances and support to which they are entitled as foster carers with full approval. They can receive that financial allowance and support from the moment that they are given temporary approval. We recognise that the current six-week limit on emergency placements under Regulation 38 causes some difficulties. This has been raised with us by the regulator during informal consultations on the regulatory changes that we need to make. Before making a final decision on any change to the emergency placement period, we need to undertake a formal consultation with all stakeholders. Setting the appropriate period is a matter of detail that is more suited for regulations than for primary legislation, but we need to strike a balance between the need to keep the process for approving relative carers as quick as possible and the need to ensure that the approvals process is rigorous and safeguards children. Within that overall balance, we are open-minded on whether the current six-week limit on emergency placements is appropriate or whether we should review it. I hope that I have met most of the points that my noble friend set out. I reiterate that we give priority to the needs of related carers. For very many children, it is the most appropriate form of care. We want to see that proper support is available to carers in that position.