My Lords, I am going to propose Amendment 9. Perhaps I may do that first—I am not intending to close down the debate.
Amendment 9 which stands in my name is on the subject of maintaining sibling contact. The amendment would require local authorities to give specific consideration to enabling children in care to remain in contact with their siblings. Many noble Lords here today will remember that we had a very good, if disturbing, discussion on that in Grand Committee.
First, we were confronted with some stark statistics. Some 63% of children in care whose siblings are also in the care system are separated from them. Surprisingly, those living in children’s homes are much more likely to be separated than those in foster care. What is more, children care very deeply about this separation; 85% said that it was important to keep siblings together and more than three-quarters said that councils could do more to help brothers and sisters keep in touch with each other. Secondly, we heard a number of moving individual stories of the distress caused to children who were separated from and unable to contact their siblings. For many, the relationship was more important than that with their parents and was a particular bond when they had been through a traumatic family break-up or protected each other in an abusive family. Often the elder children felt a particular responsibility for their younger siblings and were desperate when they could not check that they were okay; they had almost a quasi-parental concern for them. Although there will be occasions, of course, when children need to be separated for very good reasons, it seems that in the remaining majority of cases a lack of priority or perhaps just practical issues have been allowed to develop as an excuse for contact not happening on a regular basis. Our amendment would make that sibling contact a priority in social work practice and would give the requirement the additional weight of being in the Bill.
When we debated this in Committee, and in subsequent discussions, the Minister showed sympathy for the problem but resisted the need for primary legislation.
He drew our attention to the current requirement for children’s individual care plans to set out the arrangements for sibling contact. He has also drawn up updated guidance on sibling contact for children in care. Of course, we are very grateful for that additional work. However, the point is that the previous guidance had little effect on practice on the ground, as the statistics have shown, so it is hard to imagine that the updated guidance will be any more effective. That is why we believe that emphasising the importance of this issue in the Bill can send a stronger message to those who are currently routinely failing to nurture sibling contact.
The Minister also referred to the views of an expert group, which looked into this issue and concluded that more needed to be done to improve practice on the ground. Obviously, we agree that more can be done in terms of advice, training and good practice dissemination. I do not know when that group reported its findings, but, again, so far there appears to be little evidence of a major improvement in sibling contact as a result of this.
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That is why we believe that our amendment could act as a catalyst for change and help to drive the change in social work practice on the ground that we all desire. We have to find the right balance between key principles being set out in primary legislation and the detail that can be spelt out in statutory guidance. This is becoming an ongoing theme of our debates on the Bill. There may be a contradiction in the position adopted by the Minister and the Government if we compare their views on this to the position adopted on the ethnicity issue that we debated only an hour or so ago. There the Government took the view that if it was in the Bill people would take it very seriously and therefore they needed to remove it from the Bill so that it would not be taken so seriously. On the other hand, we are saying that people are not taking it seriously because it is only in secondary legislation so we need to put it in the Bill. However, the Government are very resistant to that, even though they are sympathetic to our arguments. There is a dichotomy about how we deliver that change on the ground.
We believe that the right to sibling contact for children in care, unless there is a specific and justified reason where it is not appropriate, is sufficiently fundamental for it to be in the Bill. We therefore hope that noble Lords will support our amendment.
There are other amendments in this group—Amendment 7, which was very ably introduced by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and Amendment 10, will be introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. Those amendments were debated in Committee and received considerable support. Both the noble Earl and the noble Baroness made very coherent cases and I am sure that we will have a good debate on those amendments again. I hope that noble Lords will continue to support them.