Childcare Bill

I support my noble friend Lord Listowel’s Amendment No. 17. There is a danger that we are demotivating and disempowering parents, which I shall talk about at greater length. That will not, I fear, be today, with regard to my Amendment No. 56, which deals with the status of kinship care. I will suggest that we must stop talking about care by professionals as if it was care, and care by the family as if it was something other than care. Families also provide care. We need two kinds of care and to expend our energies partly on professional care and partly on supporting families in the kind of care that they provide.