I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, for her amendment, under which local authorities would be required to
provide counselling and therapeutic support to parents who have had children taken into care to prevent any further children being taken into care. This is an important issue and, contrary to the noble Baroness’s introductory remarks, I am pleased that she has raised it and I am grateful to her, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lords, Lord Warner, Lord Hunt and Lord Ponsonby, for their contributions to today’s debate.
As their Lordships will know, the Government believe that children are best looked after within their families, with their parents playing a full part in their lives, unless intervention in that family’s life is necessary. One of the fundamental principles of the Children Act 1989 is that children should be brought up and cared for within their families. Indeed, Section 17 of that Act embodies that principle, with local authorities under a statutory duty to provide services for children in need and their families to safeguard and promote the welfare of such children and promote their upbringing by their families. Local authorities also have a duty to return a looked-after child to their family unless this is against their best interests.
The noble Baroness is right to emphasise how important it is to support parents who have had children taken into care. They need the right type of intervention to allow them to be effective parents for that child if they are returned to them, any other children in their care and any children they may have in the future. We share this commitment, and the legislation and our statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children, reflect this. Working Together is clear that any assessment of a child’s needs should draw together relevant information from the child, their parents and any other professionals in contact with them. Every assessment of need must be child-centred and must acknowledge that many of the services provided as part of a child in need or a child protection plan will be to support the parents to make sustained change so they can look after their children well.
Alongside the child’s needs and wider family and environmental factors, parenting capacity is a crucial element of a good assessment, as Working Together makes clear. If support is needed to improve parenting capacity, a good assessment will identify this and enable the specific support needs identified—which will vary depending on the circumstances of each case—to be provided. If a child is removed, their parents should continue to receive help and support. If they go on to have further children, Working Together is clear that the level and nature of any risk to the child needs to be identified at a pre-birth assessment and the appropriate help and support given to these parents to support them with making a sustained change.
The noble Baroness might be interested to read, if she has not already done so, the research Assessing Parental Capacity to Change when Children are on the Edge of Care: An Overview of Current Research Evidence, published by the Department for Education in 2014. Among other things, the research sets out the parental factors that are known to be associated with a risk of significant harm to a child, the factors that can reduce the risk of harm and the likely nature of that harm. The report highlights the extensive body of research that shows that a range of problems can impair parents’
ability to meet the needs of their children. These include, but are not restricted to, poor mental health, problem drug and alcohol use, learning disability and domestic abuse. This underscores the need to make sure that parents receive the right type of support to meet their particular needs and circumstances.
Of course, there may be circumstances where counselling will always be appropriate. Because adoption, unlike any other permanent option, involves the ending of a child’s legal relationship with their parents and family, and the creation of a lifelong relationship with new parents, adoption agencies have a legal duty to provide a counselling service for the parent or guardian of the child. Local authorities and voluntary sector agencies that provide these services often, where appropriate, also use the service to support birth parents whose children have been taken into care. In the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, for example, Ofsted inspectors found:
“In all cases seen by inspectors where placement orders had been granted, there was evidence of birth parents being offered referral to support services and mothers were offered referrals to commissioned services to avoid repeat pregnancies where proceedings were likely to result”.
We know that the cycle of care too often continues and that parents who have a child taken into care may well be more likely to have another taken into care later. The noble Baroness referred to some depressing statistics in this regard. The Department for Education’s innovation programme has supported the Pause project, to which the noble Baroness referred, to the tune of £3 million to support women who have experienced, or are at risk of, repeat removals of children from their care. The project aims to break this cycle and give women the opportunity to develop new skills and responses that can help them create a more positive future. Early indications are showing positive results for all 150 women Pause is currently working with, and in some instances the project is enabling them to engage in positive and consistent contact with their children.
Noble Lords will be pleased to hear that, given its success since Committee, the Secretary of State announced last week that further support is to be offered for programmes such as Pause to build on early successes of the programme, and that the programmes’ reach would be extended from six to 47 areas, with up to a further £7 million. This will provide much-needed further evidence on which we can assess our proposals. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is pleased to hear that.
Through the innovation programme, we are also continuing to fund the family drug and alcohol court service, which provides therapeutic support to parents whose children are at risk of being taken away from them. Again, often these are parents who have had other children taken into care in the past.
Changing practice like this provides a more effective means of ensuring that we break the cycle. Mandating that local authorities provide counselling or therapy may help some, but it will not be the answer to all the complex problems in this context and will not provide the right support to all parents.
Given that the existing statutory framework is clear that local authorities must provide services to support children in need and their families to stay together, and the innovative ways that we aim to change practice, including further support for Pause and other projects, so that we can build up further evidence, I hope the noble Baroness will feel reassured enough to withdraw her amendment.