My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, for introducing this amendment and I recognise, of course, the reasons why she has tabled it. This has been a short but extremely valuable debate on a crucial part of the architecture of the law in this area. I am afraid that I cannot confirm to my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering that I came across cases like this in my practice but I can confirm that, when he sat as a judge, my father always told me that family law cases, which raised issues such as we have been debating this evening, were the most important and often the most difficult that he came across.
I suspect that there is a broad measure of agreement across the Committee. We all agree that the provision of child contact centres is extremely important in supporting families and enabling parents to have contact with their children, while providing a safe environment that protects children and adults from potential harm. When moving her amendment, the noble Baroness made three points of principle from which I do not demur at all: first, the courts must always give careful consideration to the circumstances of each case; secondly, the child must be at the centre of the debate and the focus of what is going on; and, thirdly, we must have high standards. There is nothing between us on any of those points. As the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, set out from his personal experience—magistrates are not professional but, given the amount of time that the noble Lord puts into it, I ought perhaps to have said his professional experience—and, as we accept and know, the National Association of Child Contact Centres, the NACCC, as the sole accreditor of such services in the private law sector, provides an invaluable service, and the same high standards are required in the provision of services in the public law sector.
That said, I question whether statutory accreditation of all child contact centres is, in fact, the best mechanism to achieve the objective of the amendment: namely, to ensure domestic abuse protections as well as the maintenance of safeguarding for children and families. The family court cannot refer families to a non-accredited child contact centre as part of a child arrangements order. In private law cases, a traditional protocol has
been in place for nearly two decades, guiding courts to refer families to child contact centres and services which are members of the NACCC and therefore subject to agreed national standards and an accreditation process.
Since 2018, Cafcass and the NACCC have established a memorandum of understanding under which Cafcass will refer to and commission only NACCC-accredited centres and services. Cafcass will therefore not advise any parent to attend a non-accredited centre or use non-accredited services. As set out by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, the Government are keen to work with the NACCC to improve information and signposting to accredited child contact centres as part of an improved range of information and support for both separating and separated parents. In so far as local authorities are concerned, in discharging their statutory obligation under Section 34 of the Children Act 1989—to promote contact between children and their parents and other family members, including siblings and grandparents—local authorities are already subject to legal, inspection and accountability frameworks to protect and safeguard children in their care.
I recognise that local authorities increasingly outsource to external providers to deliver the service on their behalf. This is particularly the case when a local authority child contact centre might be in one location while the child has a foster care placement some distance away. Rather than requiring the child to travel a significant distance to undertake contact, the local authority may consider it to be in the child’s best interest to remain at a location closer to their home. This means that the local authority may outsource a provision to an external provider to deliver the contact on the local authority’s behalf. I hope that provides one answer to the question put to me by the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, as to why the Government do not accept the amendment.
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However, even where the provision is outsourced, the local authority, with its statutory duty under the Children Act 1989, remains responsible for ensuring that the services it commissions and are delivered on its behalf are of good quality. It does this through the commissioning, contracting, inspection and evaluation processes. Given the regulatory and compliance mechanisms already established for local authorities, we believe that a requirement of mandatory accreditation for such services would impose an additional layer of costs and bureaucracy on local authorities, which we are particularly keen to avoid at this time. Importantly, we have seen no evidence to indicate that local authorities are failing in their existing statutory obligations so as to justify the imposition of this extra level of compliance through mandatory accreditation of child contact centre provision.
The current system allows for flexibility of provision to meet the needs of the local authority and the children in its care. Different families need different provision—this is not one size fits all. One has to look at the circumstances of the case and the age of the children involved when considering the child contact environment. What is an appropriate environment for one family might not be appropriate for another.
Some would thrive in a formal setting, some in an informal setting, and older children are likely to be uncomfortable in settings designed for younger children. Therefore, there is a need for flexibility, and mandatory accreditation has the potential to risk damaging that necessary flexibility. There might, for example, be a problem where the local authority social work team with the duty to provide the contact has decided that a foster carer’s home is the most appropriate place for family contact to take place. If every such placement had to be registered and regulated, above and beyond the current legal, inspection and accountability obligations placed upon local authorities, the process could become too onerous or costly for smaller providers and they might simply stop providing the service. That loss of flexibility would not be in anyone’s interests, certainly not in those of the children and families for whom that setting might have been most appropriate.
However, I come back to the point I made at the start of my remarks: I believe there is no disagreement of principle in the Committee. Should the Government be provided with evidence about the number of unaccredited child contact centres and the problems they are causing, we would be pleased to engage in discussions about how they may be effectively addressed. I believe that as matters stand, any problems that exist with the current process can be addressed using existing mechanisms, rather than by the introduction of additional statutory requirements. However, I am happy to look at any further evidence and to engage in discussions on the basis of that evidence.
I do not know whether that amounts to what the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, hoped would be a favourable response, but I hope it is. In any event, I respectfully urge the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, to withdraw her amendment.