Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I will speak to Amendment No. 26 in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Walmsley and the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and also to Amendment No. 27, in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Walmsley. Amendment No. 26 is very similar to Amendment No. 18, which has already been spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. It differs slightly in that it seeks to promote a family group conference before a child is committed into care and puts a duty on the local authority to undertake a family group conference when there is a strong likelihood of the child being committed into care and to offer the opportunity of a family conference to develop the care plan for the child. It is important to emphasise that point, because even when a child is taken into care, a family group conference is useful so that the family can understand what the plan for the child is, participate, be involved and to some extent have ownership of that plan. I emphasise the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that such early intervention and thinking forward is a very important part of the process. Family group conferences are a proven mechanism to enable partnership between the state and families at all key decision-making points for the child, including as a means of engaging the family to identify and support care arrangements for vulnerable children and their parents and as a way of identifying alternative care arrangements within the family when the parent cannot continue to look after the child, including identifying necessary support packages to avoid the child being received into care prior to legal action being undertaken, other than in emergencies. Recent research has found that family and friends placements were initiated by social workers in only 4 per cent of cases, with the vast majority of placements initiated by relatives and friends. There is therefore clear scope to improve practice and to increase the number of family and friend placements. Family group conferences are a very effective way of engaging family members to come forward to care for a child if a child cannot live at home. The number of family group conferences taking place in England and Wales is increasing, and we welcome the commitment in the White Paper Care Matters: Time for Change to developing the capacity to deliver family group conferences. Nevertheless, whether a family is offered a family group conference is currently dependent on where they live and whether the social worker is inclined to support it. In other words, it is something of a postcode lottery. We believe that it should be the right of every child to know that it has not been removed from his or her family without the state fully exploring all the options for the child to remain within the wider family network. It is worth noting that it is a legal requirement in New Zealand that there should be a family group conference before a child is taken into care. We have also added our names to Amendment No. 27, the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. It deals with the provision of mental health and other services that might support the child and his family, which we discussed extensively at Second Reading. I am very grateful to the Minister for the letter that he sent after that debate, which spoke, among other things, of the statutory guidance that will be issued in the coming year on promoting health for looked-after children and which will make it clear that child and adolescent mental health services should be providing targeted and dedicated provision that prioritises children in care. That is certainly not the case at the moment. We should be delighted to see that guidance made explicit to PCTs and to child and adolescent mental health services. The Minister also talked about two projects where pilots are being run aimed at providing additional support for vulnerable children and their families; the multi-systemic therapy intervention, which gives the child cognitive behavioural therapy strategies with a range of family support services, and the family drug and alcohol court developments, which are being piloted and developed. Both of those are very promising developments. We are delighted to see that they are taking place but other forms of therapy might be piloted and I hope that the Minister will say a little more about that.