Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I was surprised that there was nothing in the Bill about healthcare. That is a crucial part of the partnership, and the Government have done so well in making organisations work together. I thought this was a flaw that we might well want to look at, which is why I support the amendments. There is a structural issue here. My attention was drawn to it particularly by the Local Government Association, which points out that councils do all they can to bring children into the services they need, with regard particularly to mental health services but also to services generally in terms of making assessments of their health. However, their partners, the primary care trusts, have to work to a set of objectives established by the NHS within which the needs of children generally, and children in care specifically, are usually not given high priority. I quote two reinforcements for that. One is that when the Children’s Rights Director, Rhodri Morgan, was trying to look at the needs of children and wanted to be helpful to children in hospitals, that was a really difficult area for him to get into. Secondly—I cannot quote the particular authority as it was a discussion under Chatham House rules—in a discussion with a chief executive of a hospital trust about how he would give priority to children’s needs and children’s issues, his answer was: ““I wouldn’t do that if it actually interfered with my acute targets””. It is very clear that unless we take action children will not get the kind of service they need to promote their health, which will leave a huge gap in the Government’s policy of pulling together the partnership to make sure that the total holistic needs of the child are met. This barrier in improving the outcomes for children is not the ill will of the staff of the PCTs but because of the structure that exists, and the Government will need to intervene.