Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, it was with pleasure that I added my name to these amendments introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, who has been tireless in campaigning for these carers. Most kinship carers do a very good job for the children whom they take on. As she said, such carers are the most needy. Compared with other carers, they spend more time alone and are more overcrowded; more have a disability and more face financial hardship, which is sometimes severe. However, we know that these placements are more stable and certainly at the moment are a great deal cheaper than a child going into normal care. Even if financial help were to be given to these carers, it would still be considerably cheaper than the cost of up to £40,000 a year to place a child in another kind of foster care. What is important from the child’s point of view is that he settles down more quickly because he already knows the person who is going to be caring for him. Often he can carry on at the same school and keep the same friends. What is crucial is that these carers provide the child with love and affection, which money cannot buy. Importantly, they also provide a link to family, identity and culture. Uncertainty about identity can cause an awful lot of problems, including mental health problems, and can affect self-confidence as well as general well-being. Why should we help financially? Many kinship carers have to reduce their working hours to have the time to look after the child or even give up work altogether. As the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, said, the Fostering Network claims that it costs more to bring up a foster child than a birth child. Certainly there are initial costs that come all at once instead of being met gradually over the years, as happens with birth parents. You buy a bed and a desk for the child to do its homework; extra clothes and whatever the child needs are also bought, and it all happens gradually. But for kinship carers, the cost all comes at once. It is essential that kinship carers are given help immediately and do not have to go through the hoops of formal fostering first. As the noble Baroness said, many of them are not prepared to go through those hoops anyway, because of the fear of losing the child. It is important that kinship carers get other support and advice, too. Just because there is a loving relative or friend willing to take care of the child, that does not mean that these children have not gone through the same range of terrible traumas that children who go into other placements have experienced. They are often just as badly damaged as any other child taken into care. The carers may need special training or mentoring. They need a shoulder to cry on or somebody to turn to for advice if the child proves to be more difficult than they had anticipated. This quite often happens and, indeed, is quite likely if a child has been very badly treated. It is time that we sorted this out once and for all. The 1989 Act said that kinship care must be considered if it is in the child’s best interest. The 2008 Act, which the Minister and I both worked on, said that it should be considered first. I am not convinced that this is happening. Anyway, the lack of certainty about financial help is undoubtedly discouraging potential carers from coming forward, which costs the taxpayer more in the end. It is important that we collect the data, as proposed in this group of amendments, so that we know the extent of the problem. We then need to ensure that family group conferences, which are good for every placement situation but particularly these, are available in every area rather than the patchwork provision that currently exists. The wider family need to be given information about what help is available, so that they are more likely to volunteer to help. The Family Rights Group found that 85 per cent of authorities lack explicit eligibility criteria for financial support for these carers, so it is a real lottery. Sixty-two per cent of the authorities in the same survey did not even mention criteria for non-financial support. We do not know if it is happening at all, least of all whether there is a postcode lottery in any individual area. Certainly, the friends and family of parents from whom children have to be taken for one reason or another just do not know what they are letting themselves in for. You can hardly blame them, willing though they might be otherwise, for saying, "I really do not think I can do it". If we could sort this out and they could have some certainty, I am quite sure that a lot more would come forward.