My Lords, I support this group of amendments, to which I have added my name, for the reasons outlined by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, who has been resolute in his defence of the rights of care leavers. I want to raise some issues arising from the Government’s rationale behind creating a separate system of support for care leavers who have no leave or who are appeal rights exhausted, particularly the removal of the duty to provide these care leavers with a pathway plan and personal advisers, and the dispersal of care leavers outside their local area. I am grateful to the Refugee Children’s Consortium for its briefing.
As I understand it, the Government’s view is that a separate system is needed for these young people who are appeal rights exhausted, because they believe that these young people’s future does not lie in the UK, even though in practice many young people who are ARE remain because of the barriers to their removal. However, the Government accept that in some cases additional support, such as access to social care services and remaining in foster placements, will still be needed. In his letter following Committee, the Minister stated:
“I agree entirely that they”—
that is, care leavers—
“should receive support appropriate to their individual needs”,
and that this could,
“include remaining in foster care placement”.
That is welcome, but it is very difficult to see how it will be achieved if the young person’s needs cannot be assessed because they will no longer be entitled to a pathway plan or personal adviser under the provision in new paragraph 10B, which is precisely the mechanism through which individualised assessments currently take place. Are the Government not just going to be reinventing the wheel by creating a whole separate system for this group of young people? Would it not be better to concentrate on ensuring that the current system for planning these young people’s transition to adulthood worked better by using dual or triple planning approaches to plan for all eventual outcomes for the young person’s immigration status, as set out in the guidance? Can the Minister explain whether the Government intend for young people’s needs to be assessed by new and different professionals? If so, would this not simply break the existing links that young people have with their personal advisers?
11.45 pm
During the parliamentary event organised by the Refugee Children’s Consortium last month, we heard from Dembo, a care leaver who spoke highly about his personal adviser and the importance of that role in his life in helping him to stay on the right path and supporting him in a range of different decisions in his life. These professionals understand the young person’s history and their present circumstances. How do the
Government envisage that they will be able to maintain the continuity of support for these young people under the new two-tier system?
On the issue of dispersal, it is unclear whether it is intended that care leavers will be dispersed outside their local area when they are redirected away from leaving care support to support under Home Office provisions, be it under the new Section 95A or paragraph 10B system. In his recent letter to the Alliance for Children in Care and Care Leavers, the Minister, James Brokenshire, suggests that care leavers may be able to stay in their local authorities in accommodation provided by the Home Office. Again, that is welcome, but it is not clear whether this will always be the case or just in certain limited circumstances. Could the Minister please clarify that?
Given the current dispersal policies on asylum support housing, the fear is that care leavers who fall outside leaving care support will generally be dispersed outside London and the south-east on a no-choice basis and that they may be moved around frequently, as many asylum seekers are. If so, that is very worrying, given the vulnerability of these young people. We know from the available research on separated young people that suitable accommodation and stability act as key protective factors. Many of these young people have grown up in the area and the limited support network they may have is there—for example, their former foster parents and siblings, their friends and teachers, their independent visitors and any NGOs that support them. To remove them would almost certainly be contrary to their welfare, whatever their circumstances. This concern has been raised by organisations in the Refugee Children’s Consortium, the Alliance for Children in Care and Care Leavers and, I am told, by some local authorities.
There is also the fear that without proper safeguards and continued support from their corporate parents through their personal advisers and their support network, dispersal out of the area where care leavers have grown up could lead to many more vulnerable young people simply going missing, creating significant safeguarding risks. Can the Minister please clarify what decisions have been made with respect to the dispersal of care leavers in these circumstances, and will he consider including in the Bill a guarantee that no care leaver will be dispersed, no matter which system of support they end up on? It seems as if there are still too many unanswered questions that perhaps could be returned to at Third Reading, following further discussion with the Refugee Children’s Consortium and the Alliance for Children in Care and Care Leavers.
Underlying the concerns I have raised is the point I made in Committee that these extremely vulnerable young people do not magically turn into independent adults without need of support when they turn 18. The Government have gone some way towards acknowledging that, which is very welcome. I hope that they might go a step further and address the concerns raised by the Refugee Children’s Consortium and the amendments.
Finally, I will raise one other matter. I apologise for not doing so in Committee, but it was only raised with me since then by Baca, an organisation local to me in
the East Midlands that works with unaccompanied young people. It is worried by Clause 64(10), which states that:
“The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the meaning of ‘unaccompanied’ for the purposes of subsection (9)”.
It points out that both the UNCHR and the Home Office already have a clearly established definition of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, which refers to separation from both parents and absence of care by an adult who in law or custom has responsibility to provide such care. Its worry is that the clause could be used to restrict the definition of “unaccompanied”, so that those who arrive in the UK with, say, a trafficker or someone else seeking to exploit them—“accompanied” in a literal sense—might be denied the support offered to unaccompanied children, even though they lack the support and care of a parent or legal guardian. I am sure that that is not the intention, but I would welcome an assurance and an explanation about what the intention is—probably, given the lateness of the hour, in one of the Minister’s famous letters.