I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to the debate on this important subject, many of which were contributions from positions of considerable expertise and experience in this field, working with children, families and foster carers, and on adoptions. I will not rehearse those contributions as Members of the Committee have heard them. In concluding this debate, perhaps I may draw some threads from them.
I am very grateful for the support of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Walmsley, and my noble friends Lady Massey and Lord Ponsonby, particularly their support for Amendment 10. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, asked me some specific questions about the phrase,
“unless emergency action is required”.
That is just a reference to the fact that in situations of urgent child protection it may not be possible to make these offers. She also asked me a technical question about the implications for Section 47 of the Children Act, and I would like to get back to her on that if I may.
However, I think all those contributions testify to the importance of trying to maximise the possibility of kinship care and of recognising that, while at the moment the law requires that local authorities give preference to such an option, the reality is that—often for very good reasons, as I and others outlined—those possibilities often become evident, if at all, too late in the judicial process to act upon them. That is why Amendment 10 specifies pre-proceedings work. It is important that that is done in a structured way under the stewardship of an experienced professional. It involves handling very difficult issues within the family, and family group conferencing has been proven to be the safest way to do that.
I would say to the Minister that Amendment 10 does not in fact make offering those pre-proceedings activities and family group conferencing compulsory; it would simply require local authorities to offer them in those circumstances. Therefore, it does not put a compulsion on that issue at all.
While we are on kinship care, the Minister—and perhaps he could write to me about this—did not clarify whether the Government’s wording in the
amendment is a weaker prescription for local authorities than the current legislation; that is, whether the requirement for local authorities to “consider” the kinship care option is weaker than “giving preference to”, as specified in Section 22C(6)(a) of the Children Act 1989. Perhaps he could clarify for the Committee in writing whether he regards the current formulation in Amendment 1 as a weaker prescription, because that was one of our most important points.
I turn to the points about fostering for adoption. Again, I am grateful for the contributions from, in particular, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, my noble friend Lady Armstrong and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth. They speak from great experience. My noble friend Lady Armstrong made a point, which echoed my own, about concurrent planning. At the moment, it is restricted. You see adverts in newspapers and in the trade press from local authorities offering concurrent planning, and it is all for babies aged nought to two. Coram has a restriction of age two. In fact, the evidence that I cited showed that in practice 95% of babies who have been referred and placed through that route have been under one year old. This is not a situation in which one can imagine that a seven or eight year-old or a teenager will present the same issues. A great deal is already known about the babies who have been placed by that route. They are very young, so they are unlikely to have a lot of negative experiences as older children may have done, and there is therefore a great deal of certainty from the outset about the child whom the fostering for adoption parents are taking on. That would not be the case with older children or children who are known to have had difficult experiences.
The Minister responded to the question of whether we should have a specific trigger for fostering for adoption placements. In relation to that, one issue that we have not touched on is: what is the perspective of the foster carer approved to adopt in all this? Certainly at the moment, the foster carer approved to adopt is hoping for an adoption.
When it comes to placing children, a direction of travel and a change of culture are being signalled here. Putting all children on a pathway for potential adoption is not appropriate. It would be putting children on a pathway to adoption; that is what the adopters themselves hope will be the outcome of this. As my noble friend Lady Armstrong and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, have said, once cases get to court, judges will be very reluctant to disrupt a situation that they feel a child has become accustomed to and embedded in, where they have started to develop relationships.
Secondly, the Minister replied to the comment, “What does ‘consider’ mean?”, by rehearsing the arguments in the draft guidance that it can mean different things to different local authorities in relation to different children. Another way of saying that is that it can mean almost anything at any time. I worry about that, because for the local authority to have to consider a fostering adoption placement for all children, including those going into care voluntarily, is a very serious change. He said that adoption might be one of several options; there might be a list of options and adoption might be on it. Why, then, if there is a list of
options, is fostering for adoption the one that the local authority has to consider first? That is the effect of the Government’s amendment.
The comment that concerned me most was what the Minister said about matching. He said—I wrote this down and I hope I have got it right—that in a fostering for adoption placement, the local authority is not required to consider matching in the same way as it does for adoption. If the fostering for adoption placement looks like it might proceed to adoption, then it will undertake the formal matching process—by which time the child will have been there for perhaps six, nine or 18 months. Given that this is supposed to be a device to minimise disruption to children and to place them early with parents with whom they may remain if they cannot return home, that seems to be totally counterproductive. I urge the Minister to think again, certainly in framing the guidance, about what is said about matching. Clearly, if children can stay in a placement that started out as fostering for adoption, then matching needs to take place right at the outset, otherwise there is a real danger that children may then be moved.
I do not feel that I can say we have had a lot of assurance from the Minister on the points raised so far. I hope that he will reflect further on the points that Members have made and on the amendments put forward, and will come back to us before Report with some further thoughts. We will be thinking about what we may want to bring forward on Report ourselves, and it may be that we can come to some consensual agreement on some of these issues. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.