My Lords, I support Amendments 26 and 29, in my name and that of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. I will briefly state the arguments for my Amendments 30 and 31, which refer to improved support for special guardianships.
I want to reflect on some of the things which came up in Committee last week about children wanting to know; children having experiences and having a voice. We know, from children’s own stories, that support for them is not always there when they return home from care. Returning home to a parent or parents is the most likely outcome for children who have been in care and this can be the best result, but NSPCC research shows that about half the children who go into care because of abuse and neglect suffer the same when they return.
I will illustrate this with something I heard at the weekend, at the opening of a centre in Brighton which supports young people whose parents are addicted to drugs or alcohol. Children may be placed in care because one or more parents are addicted. The parent or parents go into treatment and are rehabilitated: they get clean. The children return and family stress may mean that the parent turns again to drugs or alcohol. The parents need support and the child needs support. I know from my experience as chair of the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse that some local authorities and drug or alcohol agencies provide excellent information and support for parents, but others do not. So often in services, we end up with a vicious circle of rehabilitation and relapse—be it drugs or prison, abuse or neglect—with children in the middle. A recent report from the Centre for Social Justice talked of children falling between the cracks, and so they do. We have in the Bill an opportunity to strengthen local authorities’ responsibilities towards children returning home from care and increase the chances of it being a successful return. If that return is not successful, not only does it cause more stress for children and families but it is expensive, as the noble
Earl, Lord Listowel, said. Improving things is not likely to cause extra expense to the LA; it is likely to save money.
One key is assessments of the needs of the family and the child. It is worth asking families and children what they need rather than making assumptions about it, assuming that everyone is the same or that they simply need information. As Amendment 26 suggests, information is important, but it is not everything. Information about support services should also be in place. More than a third of children return home without an assessment taking place, and assessment is not necessarily ongoing. Assessment should not be a one-off. Needs can change. I know that successful treatment for an addiction means revisiting the initial assessment regularly. The Department for Education produced a useful data pack entitled Improving Permanence for Looked After Children in September this year. It has messages and questions for local authorities, such as: what are all the assessment and decision-making processes for return to home from care? What services are available for returning children to their family? How do services link across children adult and specialist services—for example, can access to parenting programmes and drug or alcohol programmes be part of a “return to home” plan? What action are you currently taking to improve return on practice?
All those questions are important, but perhaps the most important is the linking of services. So often, services are parcelled out into child, adult, mental health, drug and alcohol, but often there are significant overlaps which are not recognised or responded to. Following a child’s return home from care, neither they nor their parents have a right to any support, and children often end up, as we have heard, back in the same situation—as I said, a vicious circle. Children have said, “I was left to it. I have been in care because my dad assaulted me. Since I have been home, he has been threatening me, pushing me around. I have been cutting myself and I feel like I want to die”.
We all know that behaviour change is difficult. It is perhaps especially difficult for troubled families. The needs of such families—of all families and their children—must be addressed before a child returns home. Engaging with families has been identified as an opportunity to enable the return home to be successful. Personal budgets are important and Clause 4 suggests that they should be available to parents of an adopted child. It is vital that that is extended to children returning home. I hope that the Minister will respond sympathetically to the amendments.
I shall say a quick word about my Amendments 30 and 31, which refer to special guardianship support services and personal budgets. I shall not go into detail on the amendments; they are self-explanatory. Their aim is simply to ensure that improved support for adopters in the Bill in the form of personal budgets and better information about support is extended to special guardians who, like adopters, are providing a permanent home for a child as an alternative to them being in the care system.
I am aware that this issue will come up again but, meanwhile, I hope that the Minister will respond favourably.
3.45 pm