My Lords, no one can be anything but absolutely delighted at the government amendment. I, too, was at the joint meeting with the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and the noble Earl, Lord Howe, but wish to ask some further questions, following on from the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Tyler. I am concerned that, even if a local authority had a duty in this regard, there would be extreme difficulties in continuing this journey. We are on the first step of the journey. As a long-standing practitioner, I know that the problem arises with the actual implementation of these services.
When I asked a supplementary question about the parents of disabled children, I was told that it could be dealt with in this Committee. We do not get those services for disabled children, or a proper co-ordinated family approach in local authorities, because of the difficulties they have in meeting their commitments currently. I have said this before, but I sometimes think I am living in a parallel universe where our aspirations and our joy at achieving excellent legislation cannot be matched by reality. My own local authority is about to face further cuts of £145 million on top of previous ones. Every noble Lord in this Room should know
what their own local authority faces and what the implications will be for services on the ground. I want to hear from the Minister how we can meet the young carers approach and about what we might do for disabled families, because they need the services, not more legislation.
There is an answer. If we had good, co-ordinated family assessment and family workers with no duplication—I speak as a trained family case-worker in the past—where one worker undertakes the assessment and knows which experts to call on when other expertise is needed, and much more focus in terms of the work, we might actually save resources. However, I do not know how that gets into regulations. I would be very interested to see whether or not we can do that because we could revolutionise some of these services by the approach we take in implementation. We have legislation that says that disabled children should receive X, Y and Z for particular conditions, but I fear that the services are simply not there to meet the need. I am sorry if that sounds a slightly sour note—it is not meant to, as I am utterly delighted that we have this in the Bill. What I hope we can do now is to start to revolutionise services so that it actually happens, day to day, in people’s lives.