Children and Young Persons Bill [Lords]

Unreservedly, my answer is yes. By asking that question, the hon. Gentleman highlights a separate point about new clause 26 that I would like to touch upon. So far, I have been discussing the importance of a local authority giving assistance to family members to enable them to keep a child out of care altogether, but if a child ends up having to be in care, most of us would like that period of care to be as short as possible while any family problems are resolved, so that the child can be rehabilitated back into the family. If part of the period in care results in a placement a long way from home, perhaps for the reason of necessary specialist health care provision, it might be extremely important for the possible final outcome of the child being rehabilitated home that contact be kept up between the child and the family members who eventually will take over responsibility again for the care of that child on a day-to-day basis. Therefore, transport costs and other practical obstacles would be an important consideration for a local authority that was doing its job properly, because the alternative to doing its job properly would be to make it a self-fulfilling prediction that once the child was in care it would stay in care until adulthood. The hon. Gentleman has made an important point, with which I agree. If the Minister intends to say at the end of the debate that she does not think there is any need for new clause 26 because the existing law says all that is necessary, in one sense I am inclined to accept her argument, because if every local authority fully implements the law—as the best authorities already do—there probably will not be a problem. However, I think she will agree that practice varies to an unacceptable degree between good and bad local authorities. Therefore, it is important for us to ensure that all authorities perform to an acceptable standard. One of the reasons why many of us try to insist on everything being written into the law is the fact that at least if something is in the law every authority knows it has to do it, rather than authorities simply being encouraged to do it, which might allow some of them to backslide. We would not want them to backslide on such an important subject. The Government already have a splendid policy document called ““Every Child Matters””, and not long ago they launched the implementation plan for it, which, happily, explicitly includes a section on supporting children on the edge of care. That is on page 11 of the implementation strategy, and it says by way of introduction:"““The most important relationship for almost all children, whether in care or not, is with their family members: parents and siblings.””" It goes on to emphasise that it is important for local authorities and social workers who are thinking about whether a care decision needs to be made to consider whether there are relatives or friends who are able to take the role of primary carers, to avoid that care decision being taken. It talks about analysing needs, supporting parents and parenting, and assessing whether there is a need for therapy. It also talks about the Government producing in due course a new framework for family and friends care. I ask the Minister to say, in responding to our debate, that if new clause 26 is not necessary in law, that document on a new framework for family and friends care will, when it is produced, make it clear to every authority that they have to do the things new clause 26 proposes should be done. It would be useful to all those friends, family members, informal carers and grandparents who would like to be able to help in the future to know that there is some named contact or named part of a local authority team who they will always be able to get in touch with and expect a proper and constructive response. Therefore, perhaps the Minister will say at the end of the debate that there will be an emphasis on these matters in that document, when it is produced, and that there will be a named contact of somebody at the local authority to respond to the concerns of family and friends who want help in the upbringing of a child. The implementation plan deals with many more issues as well, but at the end it says that there is a role for monitoring and evaluation of local authority performance. I agree with that. It stresses among those processes of evaluation and monitoring the role of the Children's Rights Director, currently Roger Morgan. It is to be welcomed that he recently produced his annual monitor of what young people themselves think about the system of care in this country, and that in future he will produce that monitor in a particular format with six headings—subjects on which he will always obtain children and young people's views. It is to be hoped that over time that will give us some good, reliable and consistent evidence about how things are going, and help us identity local authorities that are not doing so well.