Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I begin by commending the Department for Children, Schools and Families for its work in setting standards in this area. I refer particularly to setting minimum standards in relation to fostering allowances. It is, however, appalling that 17 local authorities in England are still not paying the national minimum standard. As one who has brought up children, I do not think that I could bring one up for £102 or £151 a week. Foster carers are out of their own pocket paying for a lot of extras for those children, so that they can have equal care. It is important that we do all that we can to ensure that all those local authorities come up to standard. I particularly wanted to speak on the issue of commissioning, since it has not been mentioned. I am not sure whether my noble friend is going to speak about this, but this discussion gives me the opportunity to raise the issue and to say why there is considerable difficulty in this area. Most of us who have been involved in children’s services will know that many of the very good placements provided mostly by the voluntary children’s sector that are now closed have been closed because they could not be maintained under present commissioning arrangements. That means that no local authority was prepared to pay consistently the appropriate fee for the child’s placement or to ensure that they paid for vacancies or voids during the time when a child was being moved from one place to another or when a placement might be held for a child who might need to come back. There was no way in which all that could be maintained. That has caused a huge reduction in good placements for children. Unless practical ways are found through commissioning, we will not be able to do anything about that. Also on commissioning, when services are being sought by local authorities in this way, it is crucial that the practice is improved substantially. Many organisations continuing to provide services of one sort or another—I have said this to the Minister many times before, publicly—will tell you that short-term contracts militate against good services. Local authorities are employers and would not take on staff on the same basis as they would expect their voluntary services partners to do, which is on short-term moneys. Not only that but, sometimes only weeks before the contract is due to run out, you do not know whether the contract will be renewed—another such case has arisen today. Redundancy notices have to be issued to staff in time, so that if you do not get your grant you have some way out as a voluntary organisation. Good commissioning is terribly important right across the sector for all sort of placement services. I wanted to reinforce the point that, important as local area networks are, there are some children for whom specialist provision needs maintaining. I declare an interest as the chair of Grooms-Shaftesbury, which provides specialist school placements for very disabled children. Unless some way is found of maintaining those kinds of placements, the children do not end up going into normal education, because they are not the kind of children who can often be contained in ordinary education. They have severe and complex disabilities and end up living with their parents at home in considerable difficulties, without the capacity to learn what they could learn with skilled help. So it is not always appropriate for a placement to be in a local area, although for the mainstream of children it clearly is.