Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I support Amendments Nos. 69 and 72 and will speak to my Amendment No. 95A, which concerns a duty on agencies, such as children’s homes and foster care agencies, to provide children in their care with access to advocacy. I thank Her Majesty’s Government for introducing the right to advocacy for children making complaints and for introducing advocates for children in the secure estate. Many children have already benefited from these moves. I have heard from some of them at Voice conferences—I should say that I am a patron of Voice. I need hardly add anything to what noble Lords have so eloquently said on this matter. This is an important set of amendments. As vice-chair of the Associate Parliamentary Group for Children and Young People in and Leaving Care, I hear each month from children in care how their wishes and rights are ignored. I am frequently reminded that care plans can be ignored. The Committee may wish to hear Mr Justice Munby’s observations in the journal Family Law in 2004. He said: "““The simple fact is that there are real problems affecting too many of the children in our care system. Too often their substantive rights under Article 8 are not respected as they should be. And too often these problems arise and continue because the children affected do not have the support and representation they should have and which, it might be thought, Article 8 entitles them to have””." Article 8 imposes procedural safeguards. He continued: "““And the burden may extend in some instances to an obligation not merely to permit representation but even to ensure that parents—and particularly children—are properly represented when decisions fundamental to the children’s welfare are being taken””." So there is a strong legal argument for the extension of the duties described here. I shall hear and respect what I expect the Minister to say—he has said it before—about the importance of the independent reviewing officers, the independent visitors and the children’s councils in developing the voice of the child. Sadly, the situation is that, as we have heard time and again in Committee and as I know from listening to children, children require a strong, independent advocate whose focus is not on resources or local authority rules, who is a professional operating in a professional framework and who can take up the child’s concerns at the earliest stage possible. Neither a local authority social worker, nor an independent visitor, nor an independent reviewing officer can be enough. I shall give a brief illustration of a recent case involving five children—three siblings and two siblings. They had come into care for some of the most serious reasons possible and life had become better for them. According to their reviews, they had lived happily for the previous five years in a large house near the sea, far away from the inner London borough that was their corporate parent. They all thought that they would live there until they were 18. Things changed one Monday afternoon. One of the boys, aged 12, rang Voice at 4 pm to say that their social worker had just visited and told them that they were all being moved the next day at 10 am to three separate homes. The foster carers had been informed two weeks previously that the children were being moved. This was not because of the quality of the childcare, parenting practice or, importantly, child protection, but because the foster carers were not co-operating with the borough. They were told, ““Don’t tell the children; it will upset them””. A complaint was sent and I shall not go into further details. The matter went to court and the judge found that the decision to remove the children from the care of the foster carers was procedurally unfair and perverse, because there was no consultation, no consideration of the harmful effect of removal from the placement and failure to consider or evaluate the children’s security in the placement and the progress that they had made. The judge found in the children’s favour, but the damage had to a large extent been done; the foster siblings now have no contact and believe that they are not together because of something that they have done. So it is important that we ensure that there is an independent advocate at earlier stages to ensure that children’s views are heard. If that were to happen, such cases would be unlikely to occur. Amendment No. 95A, standing in my name, would place a duty on children’s homes and foster care agencies to provide access to advocacy. Sir William Utting concluded in his report People Like Us in 1997 that looked-after children need independent advocacy as a source of protection and as a means of making their voices heard within an otherwise closed system. An advocate can develop a relationship with a young person over time and engender the trust and safety needed for them to raise child protection issues and any other issues of concern to them in placement or elsewhere. The advocate will be able to offer support to the child, take up issues on their behalf as they arise and support them through the protection procedures or any other procedures that may be necessary. My amendment would ensure that children had access to an independent advocate wherever they were placed—in a foster agency or in residential care. It would ensure that children could be supported in raising safeguarding issues and other issues of concern by an advocate who was independent of the care authority and the placement provider. I hope that the Minister can accept this amendment but, before I conclude, perhaps I may briefly reinforce what I expect will be said later about the need for children with disabilities in long-term residential care to have access to ongoing advocacy. I am grateful to the Children’s Society for reminding me that there are more than 13,000 children with disabilities living away from home in England. New research from the Children’s Society found that, despite government guidance, a quarter of advocacy providers were not able to respond to referral from a disabled child at all. The most vulnerable children were the most excluded: two-fifths of providers said that they could not provide advocacy for children who did not communicate verbally. I hope that the Minister can say that he will introduce a duty on providers to ensure that appropriate advocates are visiting children with disabilities in long-term residential care. I look forward to his response.