My Lords, I had not intended to speak on this amendment and I find myself in a curious position in so doing. Having worked in this field for many years, I am absolutely clear that you have to approach the needs of these children with your heart. Any noble Lords who have children or grandchildren can imagine what it would feel like to discover that they had disappeared from home—had been whipped away—and been forced into prostitution or other forms of slavery such as working as unpaid cleaners.
However, having reacted to the issue with one’s heart, one has to deal with it using one’s head. I say that because, having listened to the arguments, I am still not clear what a child trafficking guardian would do. I spoke against this concept during the passage of the then Children and Families Bill, and therefore feel that I should at least explain my position and establish where we go from here. At that point, I shared the view expressed by the Minister on behalf of the Government: namely, that we should make absolutely sure that staff in existing services had the necessary training to enable them to help these young people, particularly those who end up in children’s homes and subsequently disappear. Far too many young children go in and out of children’s homes, and I shall speak briefly on that.
As I say, I spoke against this concept at that point in the hope that we would be able to develop satisfactory services. Since then I have had conversations with
people involved in social services. As many noble Lords will be aware, the stress on services at local level is at its highest at present. My own local authority has to find several millions of pounds more from its budget in the next few years. That money will come out of children’s services and care services as well as other areas and will reduce the services that we all strongly believe have to be provided. That makes me wonder how social workers, who are so incredibly hard pressed, will be able to develop the skills needed to help these young people.
Some local authorities are doing very well in this regard. I work with Children and Families Across Borders, and have met some of its workers. This organisation works with young people whose immigration, trafficked and care statuses are all in total confusion. Sometimes it takes four social workers and two local authorities working across local authority borders to track down and help these children. I am somewhat distressed in that two of the proposers of the amendment are two of my closest friends, whom I admire enormously, but, does the noble Lord, Lord McColl, really think that volunteers can work with these children?
Recently, I have undertaken work in the areas of safeguarding and witchcraft. Many noble Lords may know that trafficked young people are often told that a spirit will attack their families back home if they break the cycle in which they are trapped with their traffickers. They believe that this will happen and consequently they continually leave safe places to go back to the traffickers, not through perversity but because they believe that in so doing they are protecting their families. That is a complex concept for a social worker or, indeed, anyone to understand.
At this moment, I must say to my two colleagues that I am undecided about how I should vote. This is partly because I do not understand where the guardian would stand in the structure. Here I look to the Minister and to those proposing the amendment. Having worked for eight years in the children and family court service, as chair and vice-chair, I know all about guardians in that service. Where would these guardians stand? All workers need some sort of management. How would they relate to the local authority? What would the local authority’s role be? How do they differ from advocates? I have heard some examples, but still do not clearly understand the difference.
What I do know is that these young people desperately need someone who will understand them emotionally and who is hard-headed enough to understand the dangers. As we hear from many organisations working with these young people, the traffickers are dangerous not only to the children but to the workers, who must understand the danger of their work. The other issue is that without some sort of supervision for advocates or guardians, they cannot do the work. Everyone working with this sort of emotional stress needs a supervisor—I would never do it without a mentor. I leave these questions in the air before I shall decide where I stand on this issue this time around.
3.45 pm