Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 21: 21: Before Clause 7, insert the following new Clause— ““Support services for family and friends (1) After section 17B of the 1989 Act (vouchers for persons with parental responsibility for disabled children), insert— ““17C Support services for family and friends (1) For the purposes of this section and sections 17D and 17E, a family member is a person who is related to a child, whether by blood or affinity, who is not a parent of that child. (2) A local authority must make arrangements for the provision within their area of support services for family members and friends caring for a child for a period which is, or is intended to be, for 28 days or more. (3) In this section ““support services”” means— (a) the giving of counselling, advice and information; (b) such other services as may be prescribed in regulations. (4) The power to make regulations under subsection (3)(b) is to be exercised so as to secure that a local authority provides financial support. 17D Support services: assessment (1) A local authority must carry out an assessment of the need for support services for family members and friends at the request of any of the following— (a) a child being cared for by family members or friends for a period which is, or is intended to be, for 28 days or more; (b) a family member or friend who is caring for a child who is not their own for a period which is, or is intended to be, for 28 days or more; (c) a parent; (d) any other person falling within a prescribed description. (2) The Secretary of State may by regulations provide that an assessment under this section must be carried out if— (a) a person falls within a prescribed description; (b) a case falls within a prescribed description; or (c) both a person and his case fall within a prescribed description. (3) A local authority may, at the request of any other person, carry out an assessment of that person’s need for family and friends support services. (4) A local authority may carry out an assessment of the needs of any person for the purposes of this section at the same time as an assessment of his needs is made under any other provision of this Act or under any other enactment. 17E Support services: provision (1) Where, as a result of an assessment carried out under section 17D, a local authority decide that a person has a need for family and friends support services, they must decide whether to provide any such services to that person. (2) If— (a) the local authority decide to provide any family and friends support services to a person, and (b) the circumstances of the particular case fall within a prescribed description, the local authority must prepare a plan in accordance with which family and friends support services are to be provided to him, and must keep the plan under review. (3) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about— (a) the carrying out of assessments; (b) the preparation and reviewing of plans; (c) the provision of family and friends support services in accordance with plans; (d) the reviewing of the provision of family and friends support services. (4) Regulations under subsection (3) may, in particular, make provision— (a) about the type of assessment which is to be carried out, or the way in which an assessment is to be carried out; (b) about the way in which a plan is to be prepared; (c) about the way in which, and the time at which, a plan or the provision of family and friends support services is to be reviewed; (d) about the considerations to which a local authority are to have regard in carrying out an assessment or review or in preparing a plan; (e) as to the circumstances in which a local authority may provide family and friends support services subject to conditions (including conditions as to payment for the support or the repayment of financial support); (f) as to the consequences of conditions imposed by virtue of paragraph (e) not being met (including the recovery of financial support provided); (g) as to the circumstances in which this section may apply to a local authority in respect of persons who are outside that authority’s area; (h) as to the circumstances in which a local authority may recover from another local authority the expenses of providing family and friends support services to any person. (5) A local authority may provide family and friends support services (or any part of them) by securing their provision by— (a) another local authority; or (b) a person within a description prescribed in regulations; and may also arrange with any such authority or person for that other authority or person to carry out the local authority’s functions in relation to assessments under section 17D. (6) Section 27 (co-operation between authorities) applies in relation to the exercise of functions of a local authority under sections 17C, 17D and this section as it applies in relation to the exercise of the functions of a local authority under Part 3.”” (2) In Schedule 2 to the 1989 Act, in paragraph 1(2)(a)(i) for ““17”” substitute ““14F, 17, 17B, 17C, 17D, 17E””. The noble Baroness said: Someone said that this amendment was the longest in history, but I shall try not to make the longest speech in history. However, I crave the Committee’s indulgence to go over some issues that have a bearing on other amendments, in particular my later amendment on grandparents. If I speak comprehensively now, it should cut down the need to speak at length later and thereby assist my colleagues. I am grateful to the Family Rights Group and the National Children’s Bureau, among others, for their detailed support on this amendment, which seeks to include a new duty in the Children Act 1989 to provide a framework for family and friends carers. It recommends an assessment of the need for support services and the preparation of a plan of support if those services are recommended. In addition, it would give the Secretary of State the duty to make certain provisions—for example, about the type of assessment, a review of any plan, and provisions as to the circumstances in which a local authority may recover costs of providing support services. Amendment No. 86 would clarify the definition of children in need; it would ensure that any child in care could be considered as a child in need. This issue was raised by several noble Lords last week, and I think that it will come up again later. Last week, many noble Lords spoke of practical support for families and of therapeutic support. I was pleased to hear this, as families under stress, in poverty or in other difficulties often need support in order to benefit children, who are, after all, the focus of our deliberations. Without such support, many placements are under great strain and some will break down, with the result that children will end up in the care system after all. Research on kinship care commissioned by the former DfES and carried out by Elaine Farmer and Sue Moyers tells us that children in family and friends placements have similar difficulties to those living with unrelated foster carers but that the outcomes of children settled with families are often better. We heard horrendous stories earlier about some children in care. However, family and friends carers are significantly more impoverished, more likely to be living in overcrowded accommodation and more likely to be in worse health than unrelated foster carers. I shall dwell on this more when I speak of grandparents as carers. Despite the vulnerability of both children and carers, many of these families receive no adequate financial or practical support. They are more likely to be left alone to cope—for example, in managing contact arrangements and in balancing financial needs. I want to distinguish between two kinds of family and friends carers support: immediate short-term needs, where a carer takes charge of a child in an emergency to prevent the child from going into care; and longer-term needs, where family or friends take on the care of a child or children on a long-term or permanent basis, as local authority foster carers, under a residence or special guardianship order or by private arrangement. Let me first look at the immediate emergency type of care, which can happen because of a crisis in the parental home, perhaps in the context of child protection inquiries. If suitable care cannot be found in the family network, the child will almost inevitably be taken into care either with parental agreement or under an emergency protection or interim care order. Such emergency placements frequently cause enormous financial and other pressures, particularly where the carer takes on a group of siblings who may have suffered trauma, neglect or abuse. Such support may include cash to buy clothes or specialist mental health or behaviour support. If the child is treated as being in the care of the local authority, as in the recent Southwark case, the carer will be a local authority foster carer and will receive a fostering allowance and support to care for the child. In practice, however, only a small minority of family and friends carers are treated as local authority carers because, even in a child protection context, those carers agree directly with the parents to take on the care of the child, whether through direct negotiations or in the context of a family group conference. Thus the local authority is not directly involved in making the placement or, despite the ruling in the Southwark case, the local authority refuses to accept that the child was looked after when placed with the carer and hence refuses to pay the carer financial and other support. In these situations, the carers do not receive a fostering allowance and can receive support from the local authority only if the child is considered in need. Is everyone still with me? This is very complex. The provisions in Clause 21 of the Bill that remove the reference to ““exceptional circumstances”” are helpful, yet such carers will still have great difficulty in accessing support because, even though the children will have undergone some degree of trauma to no longer live with the parents, they are frequently denied an assessment for their need for support—and without such an assessment they are not categorised as being ““in need”” for accessing the specialist support that they require. We talked about assessment earlier. My Amendment No. 86 would help those family and friends carers who are not treated as local authority foster carers to have the child’s needs assessed without having to argue the case that those children should be treated as being in need. They would therefore have access to support services. Let me move on to meeting needs where family or friends take on the care of a child on a long-term or permanent basis. The amendment to Clause 7 would insert a new duty into the Children Act 1989 to provide a support framework. Currently, the only way in which family and friends carers can be guaranteed access to their support needs is for the child to be a looked-after child in the state system. Yet there may be no other good reason why the child should be in care. In order that children do not remain in state care unnecessarily, I am seeking a new duty to be placed on local authorities to provide a family and friends care support service for those who have an established caring arrangement. The service would mirror the framework for special guardianship support services. It would be available to family and friends carers who are not local authority carers but are family members or friends who are taking charge of a child for 28 days or more, either where there is a residence order or where there is no order in place. The amendment would mean that the local authority would have a duty to establish family and friends care support services, including commissioning services from the voluntary sector. The duty would be consistent with the duties introduced under the Adoption and Children Act 2002 in respect of adoption and special guardianship. It would mirror those specified in the Special Guardianship Regulations 2005, which include support groups for carers to combat isolation; support for contact arrangements where appropriate; respite care; therapeutic support; an assessment of need and access to support provision; improved communication between agencies such as CAMHS, housing, police and children’s services; and cash help. In law, at least, relatives and friends are not financially liable for the children whom they are raising. It therefore follows that the core financial needs of caring for such children should, where they cannot be met by parents, be met by central government. There is a moral argument at least that financial support should be available to anyone caring for a child who is not their own. There should be a national non-means-tested financial allowance, tax credit or benefit to cover the real costs of raising a child, which should be paid to relatives or other persons already connected to the child who take on the care of a child for more than 28 days continuously in the following circumstances: where there has been a Section 47 child protection inquiry; as a result of a Section 37 investigation; or where a carer has secured a residence order or special guardianship order and there is professional evidence of the parents’ inability to look after the child and/or there is a residence order or special guardianship order arising out of care proceedings, or the carer has those orders following the accommodation of a child. That would avoid the child being a looked-after child. Thus the financial allowance would be received only if the carer were raising the child and the parent had been shown to be incapable of raising the child. These are complex but incredibly important issues. There are moral, emotional and financial reasons for looking at the amendments and I hope that at the very least we may get an inquiry into the imperative and the practical implications of providing a national financial allowance and other support to family and friends carers. I look forward to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.