Offender Management Bill

moved Amendment No. 37ZA: 37ZA: After Clause 34, insert the following new Clause— ““Children and young persons previously in care After paragraph 19C of Part II of Schedule II to the Children Act 1989 (c. 41) (children looked after by local authorities) there is inserted— ““Children and young persons in custody 19D (1) It is the duty of the local authority looking after a child who is taken into custody to— (a) advise and assist that child with a view to promoting the welfare of the child; (b) provide to the custodial authorities any information necessary for safeguarding the welfare of the child; and (c) maintain contact with the child and the custodial authorities throughout the period of custody. (2) The duty of the local authority under this paragraph shall extend to any child or young person who has been in the care of the local authority at any time during the period of 24 months prior to his being taken into custody.””.”” The noble Earl said: My Lords, this amendment places a duty on local authorities to keep in contact with children in their care who are taken into custody or young people who have spent any time in care within the past two years. I hope it may be helpful to your Lordships if I read from the script as it will be quicker than if I try to speak from memory. This amendment is to some extent redundant in terms of existing statute. Its intention is to probe Her Majesty’s Government on what steps are being taken to remedy the identified flaws in co-operation between local authorities and prisons and to ask how the proposals in the recent White Paper on children in public care may influence this relationship. I am most grateful to my noble friend Lady Howe of Idlicote for prompting the amendment and putting her name to it. Her Majesty’s Government funded the National Children’s Bureau to produce a guide for practitioners looking after children in custody. Written by Di Hart it was published last year and entitled Tell Them Not to Forget About Us. From her research Ms Hart concluded: "““The picture that emerged was one of fragmented planning and poor outcomes. There was a tendency for the welfare approach of local authority children’s services to be marginalised whilst youth justice processes took centre stage … There were examples of effective joint working but these were achieved in spite of, rather than because of, the systems within which practitioners were operating. The children themselves expressed a real fear of being forgotten in the midst of this confusion””." I welcome the recruitment of social work teams to young offender institutions. I am grateful for the replies to my parliamentary Questions on this issue. Can the Minister provide further reassurance that information on a child’s care status is being captured and shared between social care and youth justice agencies or with the adult secure estate? I hope that the Minister can assure me that staff in both the adult and juvenile estate are adequately informed to take appropriate action. I am sure that the Minister will agree with me that looked-after children or young people who are care leavers should not feel abandoned or forgotten by outside agencies. I hope she will recognise that these children and young people value, above all, relationships and need to feel that someone is taking an interest in them. Does the Minister agree that children’s services must remain involved and be the key agency as they have first responsibility for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children in a way that other agencies do not? I am putting several questions to the Minister and I would be happy to receive a letter in response because of the late hour and the detail required. Has the fit between sentence plans and care/pathway plans been improved so as to avoid the sentence plans undermining the ultimate success of children in public care and care leavers? How are contacts between children and their local authority social worker maintained? What progress is being made in ensuring the duty of local authorities to maintain contact with care leavers is delivered for young people in custody? One of the most welcome proposals in the White Paper Care Matters, which was published last month, is the introduction of a veto by children leaving care before the age of 18 and making available foster care placements to the age of 21. What guidance is there for local authorities on how long they should keep a placement in foster care or a children’s home open for a young person who has entered custody? Government departments have recently been restructured. Where does the ministerial responsibility for young people from public care in custody now lie? The role of personal officers is particularly crucial to young people who have been in care as they are most likely to have an unsatisfactory family experience. The Chief Inspector of Prisons has often reported that the personal officer role is insufficiently developed. How is the Minister addressing this? Where there are 60 young people to three or so officers in the wing of a young offender institution, the personal officer role may be particularly difficult to implement. While recognising current constraints, will the Minister be seeking to improve that ratio as soon as possible? I have one further point about supervision. I am not sure that I expressed my gratitude well enough but I was most grateful when the Minister responded to my questions about the training and supervision of prison officers. I recognise what he says about supervision and the informal manner in which prison officers are with each other much of the time but these people are very vulnerable—especially in view of the context of the recent debate on mental health issues and concerns about women in custody as well. Senior officers and junior officers need private time to talk, for example, about how an officer feels when a young person self-harms and how one carries on in one’s job. How does an officer deal with being scared by someone with whom they are dealing? How can they talk in public about something like that? Sometimes they may simply feel like hitting an inmate because they drive them up the wall. How does an officer say that publicly to another officer? Such discussions need to have a place, and I am not sure whether they do at the moment. I look forward to the Minister’s response, and I beg to move.