I rise briefly to support these amendments and to make three points. First, above all, children who have experienced trauma—indeed, all children—need parents who stick with them through their lives. Children who have experienced abuse over periods of time need carers who stick with them over the years and who are reliable and consistent.
Last night, I was at a meeting and met psychiatrists from all over the world who have just published a book on the mental health of looked-after children. The final point in the editor’s chapter in the book was that he encouraged all clinicians always to remember that the most important thing to help these children recover from past trauma is to enable them to have relationships with people who care about them and stick with them. Family relationships—long-term committed relationships—are what they need. If they cannot find that at that particular time in their lives then, as a clinician, you need to equip them to be able to make and keep those kinds of relationships. It seems to me that that is much more likely to happen in these kinship care models than in foster care, although it often happens there too.
Secondly, good social care interventions can make a difference. The most popular intervention that foster carers talk to me about is support to understand how they manage the behaviour of their young people. All young people can, at different times in their lives, be difficult to manage, but young people who have been traumatised, abused or neglected will often display very difficult behaviours. In fact, in 2004 a report from the Office for National Statistics on the mental health of looked-after children highlighted that those in foster care had, I think, a 40% rate of mental disorder compared with, I think, a 5% rate in the general population. The rate for those in residential care was 70% or so. A very high percentage of those mental disorders are conduct disorders, things such as troubling behaviours from young people. Carers need support to understand and manage those behaviours, and they tell me they really appreciate it.
They also need to be connected with other carers with the same experience. When foster carers are helped to connect regularly with other foster carers in the same position and the same job, they value being part of a community of carers and being able to share experience and learn from it.
Finally, I take this opportunity to highlight the letter sent to me by the noble Lord, Lord Nash, regarding the recruitment and retention of child and
family social workers. It is key to this area, to trafficked children and to children returning from care. In this brief debate, we have heard examples of poor and variable practice in child and family social work. I know that several noble Lords trained and practised as social workers. It is enormously encouraging that, in recent years, in the previous Government and in this Government, there has been a real commitment to raising the professional status of child and family social work—to raising entry requirements and training standards. In his letter, among several other things, the Minister drew my attention to a review by Sir Martin Narey commissioned by the Government into the initial training of social workers, which is being published in January, and to new data-collecting on social workers on the front line in local authorities, so that we will have a better understanding of how well we are retaining the new social workers that we are recruiting. I draw that to your Lordships’ attention because I think it is important.
I also want to commend the Government for taking this consistent stance towards social work, which in the past has been far too neglected. One of the key ingredients for getting better outcomes for children, whether they are in kinship, foster or other settings, is to get support from the right professionals, and I hope we are moving in that direction now. I strongly support these amendments.