Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 84: 84: Clause 19, page 16, line 30, at end insert— ““( ) The appropriate national authority may by regulations, make provision about the arrangements for relevant children and former relevant children to live with a former foster parent.”” The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 84 stands in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Walmsley. The purpose of this amendment is to enable young people to stay with their foster carers between the ages of 18 and 21. The Care Matters White Paper indicated a desire to enable young people between the ages of 18 and 21 to stay with their former foster parents; it said that pilots of such schemes would be run in 2008. We believe that the provision of stable placements for young people making the transition into adult life—both those going into further or higher education and those needing more intensive support—could make a massive difference to their life chances. Indeed, we had a lengthy debate on these issues yesterday. Many young people in care will have experienced significant disruption to their lives and they are likely to need additional help and support to enable them to succeed educationally and to make a successful transition to adult life. Despite this, children in care are often required to leave their foster carers before they are 18. Children in care, despite their vulnerability, are leaving care at a younger age than most other young people have to leave their families, which they do on average at about the age of 24. At present some local authorities operate an unregulated form of supported lodgings arrangements to enable foster carers to continue to provide a placement for that young person post-18, but there are no guarantees of any support for the foster carer or for the young person. However, many local authorities do not provide even this option. We believe that every local authority should enable the provision of placements for young people between 18 and 21. We welcome the pilots, but we believe that it will be necessary to introduce regulations informed by them to resolve several issues and to avoid the myriad interpretations of the scheme across local authorities that may prevent foster carers from being able to provide these placements to young people desperately in need of support. Adequate consideration must be given to the more complex issue of continuing to provide residential care for young people older than 18. Many questions are raised. Will the local authority be required to provide a service for these young people between the ages of 18 and 21? How will housing benefit be assessed for the former foster carer and the young person? What will be the required level of support from the local authority? Will former foster carers be entitled to support from a supervising social worker? What allowances will they receive to cover the cost of care for that young person between 18 and 21? Will former foster carers retain their status as foster carers if they are not also fostering others aged under 18? If so, does this mean that they will not have an annual review? Will there be provision for care planning and decision-making? Will independent reviewing officers have a role in reviewing care plans post-18? We are not calling on the Government to detail specific regulations at this point, as we understand that these would be guided by information from the pilots. As we believe that new regulations will be required to make these important proposals work across the country, we are convinced that the Bill should give the Secretary of State the power to introduce regulations in this area prior to effective rollout but after the pilots have been evaluated. I beg to move.