My Lords, I shall speak to the group that includes Amendments 41, 43, 45, 47, 51, retabled as Amendment 74A, Amendment 54 and the proposed new clause in Amendment 98A. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken to them. All these amendments are concerned with the continuing support that care leavers receive.
First, I address Amendments 41, 43 and 45. Clause 2 requires local authorities to publish information about the services that they offer to care leavers, based on an understanding of their individual needs, as well as other services that they offer to help care leavers to prepare for adulthood. In preparing those local offers, local authorities must consult care leavers and relevant representative groups of care leavers, including children in care councils.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, talked about what the local offer should cover. The clause already includes a duty to publish information about services
relating to health and well-being, education and training, employment, accommodation and participation in society. That is a non-exclusive list; the local authority may include other matters as it sees fit. Given the work that local authorities will already be undertaking, an additional requirement to assess the services required to meet the needs of care leavers would be overly prescriptive. Rather, these matters will be detailed in the guidance that my department will produce to inform the practical application of the corporate parenting principles, to which I have already referred several times during this debate.
With regard to the national minimum standard proposed in these amendments, the Government’s intention in legislating for the local offer is to raise the bar for services provided to care leavers. We want local authorities to aim much higher than a minimum standard when it comes to what they offer. We want to enable comparisons of the offer between local authorities so that there is upward pressure for them to do more. Ultimately, Ofsted will be the arbiters of how good a local offer is.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, referred to New Belongings. We eagerly await the evaluation results of the New Belongings programme at its dissemination event this Friday. That will inform our thinking. The care leavers strategy will support programmes that empower care leavers to drive change locally, such as New Belongings. I will come back to the noble Baroness on the care leavers fora and the other points that she made. In light of this, I hope noble Lords are sufficiently reassured not to move their amendments.
I now address Amendments 47, 51—retabled as Amendment 74A—and 54, which all concern the support that care leavers receive up to the age of 25. No care leaver will be left to fend for themselves when they reach 21. Through Clause 3, a care leaver aged up to 25 will know of their right to request support, including access to a personal adviser. If a particular service provided under the local offer is appropriate and meets a particular need, of course the young person should be able to access it. That is the purpose of the local offer and personal advisers are responsible for identifying and co-ordinating the provision of services for the care leaver.
However, mandating a personal adviser for every care leaver, regardless of their wishes, and a requirement to provide such services would be disproportionate. To do so raises several obvious practical issues. Some care leavers want independence at the earliest opportunity and to sever any ties with their corporate parent. Some move away from the area and become hard to trace. Even those still known to the local authority will be in very different circumstances, with different needs and aspirations. Some will value the help of a personal adviser and some will look for guidance and support elsewhere, as my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook said. Often, this will reflect how well the relationship with the personal adviser has worked, how helpful they have been or might be, and their relationships with others.
If we were to impose the support of a personal adviser on every care leaver, there is a real risk that that would divert support from care-leaving teams
away from those who really need it. Rather than impose a personal adviser service, it is better to make the personal adviser service optional for those who want it so that resources can be effectively targeted—as is done successfully in Trafford. However, we want to make sure that all those who want the support of a personal adviser can access it.
There are two important issues here. The first is whether and how care leavers are made aware of the offer of support from a personal adviser. I suggest that the obvious place for that is the local offer. The second is whether a care leaver who has lost contact with their personal adviser should be able to resume this if and when they feel the need to do so at a later date. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, referred to an example of this. I can certainly confirm that that would be possible through the existing legislation and Clause 3 for care leavers up to the age of 25. The guidance we are producing will encourage local authorities to carry out this new entitlement clearly, proactively and positively so that care leavers are encouraged to take it up.
We need to set an expectation that local authorities should attempt to remind care leavers of their entitlement to this support so that a young person refusing support at age 22 does not feel that they should be barred from accessing it later. I accept that this is an important point. I should like to reflect further on this in discussion with local authorities and over the next few months before we return on Report.