My Lords, I will speak briefly to make two points. First, as the noble Baroness indicated, this is both a short-term and long-term financial issue. The previous Government and the present one, I fear, have taken the same position, which is that paying kinship carers in the short term would be too expensive. However, as many noble Lords have pointed out, it has tremendous value and advantage in the longer term. I only wish that a Government could, if not introduce the whole package, at least take one step.
I remind noble Lords that the Select Committee on Adoption Legislation, which I was part of, pointed out that there was very little difference in outcomes—
indeed there might be better outcomes—for children who were in special guardianship orders compared to those who were adopted. However, we treat those two groups in a totally different way. That is irrational. If we could just make a start with special guardianship, where there is an order and it is quite clear that the care is going to continue, we would feel we were taking a step forward.
Overall, we spend very little these days. The news today is that we are almost unable to meet our commitments to protect children with child protection procedures and that social workers are under tremendous pressure. I notice that the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, glanced at me, because I am a social worker by background, when she said that social workers are actually insisting that people take the time off—of course they are, because, as the noble Baroness pointed out, they have a responsibility to make sure that these children are properly cared for. Most of those social workers would be delighted if they could recommend that they were paid for that. The old Section 1 of the 1963 Act, which used to help with this, has long gone, and there are very few provisions now to help these families get through even the initial difficult times, never mind the longer period of caring for a child who is not their own, with all the pressures that such a child brings.
Being the unlikely founder of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Grandparents and Extended Kin—which is another story—I am concerned for grandparents, because they have reached a point where they thought life was going to be easier and they were going to be financially secure. However, they then find themselves bringing up children in their family—as they would wish to rather than let anyone else take over the care of the children—and somehow the state does not see it in its purview to give help to these families. With the changes in the benefits system, these families are finding it more and more difficult to survive. Consequently, as noble Lords know, more children will come into care. These situations will break down as families can no longer manage or social services think that it is inappropriate for them to do so.
I am quite sure that these amendments will not be accepted, as they have not been accepted in the past. However, I wish that there could be some thought, and some work undertaken, to see whether there is a step change that can move forward, through the various groups, to make it easier, particularly when a family has a legal order and responsibility for the children concerned.