Children and Young Persons Bill [Lords]

Having been elected for about three and a half years, I have realised how important it is to have a constituency, and how much a constituency educates us. I have spent the past three and a half years trying to get to grips with and understand my constituency, and have learned a huge amount. It has been an important part of my political education—it is a little like taking off the layers of an onion. One of the important things is to apply social policy to the practical experiences of constituents. Speaking to foster carers and those in our constituencies who support and train them enables us to appreciate the difference between real help and initiatives that look good on paper but are, in fact, so much red tape. I commend a new initiative called Fostering Changes, which has been promoted by the Government. It began at Southwark and has been developed in Islington in my constituency. It is about giving real support to foster parents, as opposed to being a charter for foster carers simply to put on their wall. Fostering Changes gives a great deal of assistance to foster parents. My constituency is an inner-city one with high levels of deprivation. If there were a top 10 in terms of the number of people who are drug addicts, have mental health problems and are struggling to bring up children on their own, unfortunately we would be in it. My borough is also No. 3 in the country in terms of the highest number of children in care per head. However, before Conservative Members get excited and start bouncing up and down talking about a broken society, let me say that we are not a broken society. Many people in my constituency will open up their hearts and homes and give such young people somewhere to live where they can be loved. Such kids are often difficult, angry and mixed up, but 75 per cent. of Islington's children who live in care are in families where they are supported. There has been a training course available to help fosterers deal with allegations, to assist them in giving first aid, to train them on drug and alcohol issues, and to promote children's ID. Fostering Changes, however, was developed by the borough of Southwark and the Maudsley, on the Webster-Stratton model. People from the Maudsley have come to Islington to train up our trainers, and they are now able to do the courses. We are about to start the fifth course. We hope that by the end of this year all our carers will have been trained. The course lasts 10 weeks, and one day a week is spent talking about how to deal with the difficult behaviour of the children being looked after. That course is primarily intended for those who are looking after children aged between three and 11, but there have been courses for teenagers as well. It is not magic, but it really helps with building a relationship between the furious little bundle who has had such an enormously difficult life and has ended up in someone's home, and the adult who is there to love it and give it security but who is, ultimately, a stranger and not its mum. The purpose of the course is to build that relationship so that carers can deal with the furious bundle, but also manage access to the original family—who may, in fact, represent some of the causes of many of the difficulties involved—and the relationship with the rest of the family. I am very grateful to Norma Barnes and Mary Day, who have spent time explaining exactly what the course is about. Essentially, it is about positive reinforcement. During the day of the course, the carer talks about the difficulties that he or she is experiencing with the child, and is set homework for the rest of the week on how to deal with those difficulties: how to ignore bad behaviour and positively reinforce good behaviour, and how to give 30 minutes a day to a child. The carer should simply give the child attention—not direct the child and not ask questions, but do what the child wants. The difference that that makes to a severely abused child who has come from a difficult background into a home where there is an adult who simply wants to be with that child reinforces the child's identity and confidence and helps to address bad behaviour in, I am told, a fantastic way. Along with other forms of discipline—time out, consequences, and the other more negative side of controlling a child—it can work really well. As I have said, it is not magic, but it helps to develop relationships. That Government initiative was launched in Islington, but the good news for hon. Members is that it will be coming their way soon. It is being sent around the rest of the country, and I hope that foster parents will benefit from the practical and real help that it provides.