Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 62: 62: Clause 13, page 10, line 37, at end insert— ““(c) a young person aged 18 to 21 who is classified as relevant by their local authority”” The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 62, I also speak to Amendment No. 66. The purpose of Amendment No. 62 is to place a duty upon local authorities to ensure that visits to, and contact with, looked-after children and others continue after the young person leaves care until they reach the age of 21. This amendment is supported by the National Leaving Care Advisory Service. I commend that organisation for its work on an issue of considerable importance to many of us. The majority of looked-after children will cease to be looked after by the age of 18. Our assumption is that at that young age they will move from their foster family or care home into supported accommodation, with very little support. At present, local authorities have considerable discretion over their visiting policy for care leavers. In east London, for example, the policy is for young people automatically to move on from their social worker to somebody called a ““personal adviser”” at the point when they move from their foster parents or care home. I shall refer to just one typical example to illustrate how incredibly destructive that policy is. A young person in care—like all his peers, no doubt—had a terrible start to life and, doubtless, a number of unhelpful changes in placement. At the age of 15 he happened to find a placement where at last he could put down some roots and develop. Of course, until some firm foundations are in place, a young person simply cannot develop normally. But at the age of 18 he had to move from that accommodation, away from the best family he had ever known. At the same point, his social worker no longer continued working with him. He asked the social worker, ““When will I see you again?””. The answer was ““Never””. Can that possibly be right? Of course not. A short time later, this young person was involved in drugs and crime—at what cost to society? A related issue which renders all the more important ongoing social work input between 18 and 21 is that the majority of young people will probably move from a foster family, who have had training over the years, to a voluntary sector organisation. I know that such organisations do a wonderful job, but I am told that many of the staff who look after these particular young people will be rather less well trained than those the young people have been with previously. I am told that many of these staff will find it very difficult to cope with the depth of disturbance of the young lad I have referred to and that of thousands of others like him. The National Leaving Care Advisory Service rightly argues that, in order to secure their successful transition to adult life, local authorities should guarantee care leavers that they will have regular visits by somebody they know up to the age of 21. I am sure that the Minister is aware of the work of the organisation YoungMinds on young people leaving care. BAAF also expresses its concern: "““a major component of the Care Matters agenda for 18 to 21 year olds is missing from the bill””." The amendment would ideally support another to extend foster care beyond the age of 18. Whether or not the Government are willing to reconsider that issue, however, it is of the utmost importance that young people do not have a change of home, the loss—for many—of a family environment and, at the same time, the loss of the professional social worker upon which many have come to depend. Amendment No. 66 refers to Clause 14; I think that this is a slightly odd and somewhat confusing grouping. That amendment ensures that a person’s appointment as an independent visitor to a relevant young person need not cease until the young person reaches the age of 25. I emphasise that the independent visitor is, of course, quite distinct from the local authority representative who would visit the child. In his helpful response to the Second Reading debate, the Minister referred to the aims of the independent visitor proposals. He made it clear that there is no requirement on the local authority to continue to provide an independent visitor to relevant and formerly relevant children, and suggested that there is no reason why a local authority could not choose to continue the arrangement. I must say that there is a little matter of relevance here: in view of the enormous pressure upon local authority resources, we can be quite sure that if there is no requirement to provide independent visitors, the great majority of local authorities simply will not do it. The rationale for Amendment No. 66 has several strands. First, on average, young people leave their family home at the age of 24, as my noble friend Lord Listowel pointed out in a previous debate. Even then we can assume that they rely heavily on the support of their families in the years ahead. All of us who are parents know well that when life gets really tough, the young person—and the not-so-young person—returns to the nest. They phone up, they come and visit and they may even live at home for a while. But, of course, a looked-after child who is unable to return to their family of origin when they leave care will not have any of that support. Secondly, we have already referred to the high proportion of children in prison who have been looked after. According to the Youth Justice Board, nearly 70 per cent of young children released from custody are re-convicted. The lack of consistent support for relevant young people in the years when they are most prone to criminality must surely play a significant role in those figures. Thirdly, we know that looked-after children and young people are likely to have mental health problems. Likewise, care leavers’ outcomes in employment, education, housing and health indicate significant failings in their preparation and readiness for adult life. I understand that the initiative involving 60 organisations, called What Makes the Difference, has found that 38 per cent of young people with care experience believe that they were simply left to get on with it without any input when the time came to live independently. I find it hard to imagine the desolation of these young people when they are out there on their own, and there is suddenly, perhaps literally, nobody in the world to turn to. I applaud the proposal of the National Leaving Care Advisory Service for a new transitional status for care leavers which envisages an accommodation and support strategy for them up to the age of 25. It seems to me that that is exactly what is needed. Amendment No. 66 relates directly to the second of the three elements in that transitional status. The independent visitor could provide an important element in the support strategy. I beg to move.