Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I should like to speak to Amendments Nos. 29 and 31 in my name. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for supporting them. We very much welcome the aspect of this Bill that attempts to keep children in care close to home. It is encouraging to see the Government recognising the importance of keeping a child in their local area as a way of increasing stability and continuity of care. It can only be a double blow to the child to be put into care and then to be removed from the only stable things in their life. The familiarity of surroundings, friendships and ties to the local community can soften the blow of being taken into care and make it easier for a child to handle the difficult transition with more confidence. However, we have some concerns. First, as it stands, the threshold for determining when a child must be kept in a local area is weak. The Bill states that care should be within the local area unless the authority is ““satisfied”” that there is no local accommodation. We feel that, if the Government are serious about keeping children close to home, they need to make a more robust statement of this purpose in the Bill. Our Amendment No. 29 would tighten the language and remove the possibility of local authorities wriggling out of their duties; it would ensure that children are kept in the area unless that is inconsistent with their welfare. We are also concerned that, as drafted, this clause could be interpreted to keep a child locally when their best interests would be better served away from home. We are particularly anxious about children and young people with severe and complex disabilities, who require extremely specialist care that many local authorities simply cannot provide. Of course it would be wonderful if every local authority could provide every specialist need, but that is sadly not the case. I think that the Committee will agree that we need the clause to cover exceptional circumstances. A child should not be denied access to the care that they need because of geography. I am sure that the Minister will point out that that is not the point of this clause at all, but we want to ensure that need, not cost, is driving provision. I have so far spoken only about the welfare of a child and, in particular, the need for an exception for disabled children. In Amendment No. 31, we have included safety as well. There are a host of reasons—gang pressure, abuse, traumatic family environments and trafficking—where keeping a child in the local area would be dangerous. We want to ensure that there is provision for children to be placed out of local areas when there are situations that would make it genuinely unsafe for a child to stay there. Before I finish, I should like to touch on the plight of trafficked children. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, spoke about them earlier this week, but I want to talk about them in a slightly different context. I want to talk about children who are trafficked into our country and those who are trafficked within our borders. Their cases are tragic and we should give them all the support that we can. However, that is not an easy task. The nature of their situation often leads to them being not just traumatised but, where they have been trafficked for sex, highly sexualised and confused between genuine affection and abuse. This makes them difficult to place with most foster carers, so they are put in hostels or in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, where they just disappear. According to an article in the Guardian in September, more than 180 children recently trafficked into the UK have vanished without a trace from social service care. I wonder whether the Minister can tell the Committee what the Government are doing to ensure that those cruelly exploited children are placed in the most appropriate setting.