Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 1: 1: Clause 1, page 1, line 6, at end insert ““but only after sufficient provision has been made for early intervention to prevent a child from being taken into care”” The noble Baroness said: I begin by wishing everybody a very happy new year. In speaking to Amendments Nos. 1 and 18, I repeat the overwhelming sentiment of Second Reading that we broadly welcome this very important Bill. I look forward to debating the amendments, many of which can only make it better. The purpose of the Bill is to improve the provision of care for children and young persons and to ensure that children in care have the same opportunity as all other children and young people. It is important, however, not to lose sight of the fact that providing the support that the Bill seeks to offer can happen in many cases without a child ever having to go into care. While the aim to improve care services is certainly laudable and necessary, we must remember that when it is in the best interests of the child, every effort should be made to keep families together and prevent children going into care in the first place. Of course this is, sadly, not always possible. However, the amendments place a duty on the local authority to make sufficient provision to intervene before the rest of the Bill’s provisions kick in. Having this duty is important for a number of reasons: success in early intervention provides relief for the care system, saving money and allowing the limited resources to be used more effectively. Sometimes problems that could have been resolved by counselling or family group conferences result in a vulnerable child being taken from their home and spending their entire youth in care. We have always welcomed any serious attempt by local authorities to intervene early enough to prevent children being taken into care, and I have often cited the example of Kent County Council, where early intervention and family group counselling have created a virtuous circle. Everyone we interviewed for our social workers commission said that they would like to see more emphasis placed on proactive work. When the Government issued their Green Paper, Care Matters, we held a number of hearings from those involved in the care sector. A common theme was that the current threshold for intervention into the lives of families on the edge of care is too high. That leads to a very costly process—costly to the lives of those children and costly to the state. Research from the NCH Sheffield Hallam report indicated that early intervention could save £250,000 within one family. The other amendments in the group outline the specific manner in which we see early intervention being addressed, namely with family group conferences. Such conferences and our specific amendments are supported by a number of children and family lobby groups, including the Family Rights Group and Every Disabled Child Matters. Family group conferences offer a way in which children and their families have the opportunity to have a professionally mediated way of addressing problems and coming up with a plan of resolving them in a manner appropriate to the specific family’s needs. Does the Minister agree that it is vital to take the steps necessary to see that families are not broken up in the first place, and that if problems can be fixed early, they should be? I understand that a weakness in my amendment could be the term ““as appropriate””, and this could be an excuse not to refer in authorities where they are not confident of the model. I hope that the Minister will appreciate that the amendments are a genuine attempt to put some anchor points into a Bill that will require a great deal of best practice and good will. I beg to move.