My Lords, we are at the start of Committee on this important and valuable Bill. Although, sadly, with the current political situation as it is, it is unlikely that we will know whether the Bill will complete its passage through
your Lordships’ House—or indeed its passage through the other place—and become law, it is my great pleasure to start the first group of our Committee stage on the Bill with my Amendment 1.
The amendments in this group consider the extent and purposes of the corporate parenting principles set out in Clause 1. In many ways this section of the Bill seeks to reinforce existing good practice, with local authorities such as Trafford and Leeds already demonstrating that the care and well-being of looked-after children is not just the duty of social workers but a duty across the whole of the organisation.
Amendment 1 contains two new elements, the first of which extends the corporate parenting principle to health authorities and schools and the second of which, dealt with also in my Amendment 28, introduces a recovery principle to better ensure that looked-after children have access to therapeutic support.
I will be focusing on extending responsibility for the principles to other bodies such as schools and health authorities. We all have a responsibility to ensure that children have the care and support to thrive in life. Nowhere is this more important than for those children who are in the care of the state. Yet far too often we fail in this duty. There is a 40% achievement gap between looked-after children and their peers in the attainment of five GCSE grades A to C, including English and maths. We also know that 34% of care leavers are not in education, employment or training by the time they turn 19. The figure among the general population is less than half that: 15.5%.
It is extremely positive and important that the Government have sought to address this imbalance by introducing a set of principles that responsible corporate parents must abide by. This is a vital step, introducing a universal element that looked-after children up and down the country can count on while also providing consistent standards for the locally elected officials and local authorities responsible for meeting their needs.
So the Government’s proposals provide a good starting point. Yet I—and, I know, other noble Lords—believe that the legislation before us can be more ambitious in its intent. In laying out these responsibilities, we have to imagine the extent and breadth of a child’s world, the people, professional or otherwise, with whom they might come into contact, and the expectations that they will have of them. It is therefore vital that we extend the responsibility for these principles to include other bodies. We must put ourselves in a child’s shoes and imagine the kind of services they come into contact with.
Schools, for instance, are an obvious and integral part of their experience. The extension of these principles to other responsible bodies also has the important purpose of ensuring that health professionals—just like social workers—understand their responsibilities to looked-after children and that resources and support are properly directed to meet their needs.
I look forward very much to listening to the debate on this group of amendments—and, indeed, the whole debate—and I beg to move.