My Lords, I support what the noble Baroness has just said about special guardianship. It is a paradox that there were obstacles to special guardianship when it was a desirable outcome in particular cases.
I thank the noble Earl for arranging the meeting with the group of young people 10 days or so ago. I found it encouraging and disturbing at the same time. They were a remarkable group of young people. I do not think I could have been nearly as resilient as most of them seem to have been in the conditions they described. In support of the amendment, I shall read from a few of my notes: “There was no checking on the conditions I’d be going back to”, and the noble Earl has referred to the capacity of the mother and the physical conditions; “it depends on the child to tell or to ask for help”, which is a very salutary thing to have heard; “I went home once a month but no one checked up or even asked how the weekend went”, and the picture that I got was of variable circumstances and variable support depending, frankly, on where the child was. One—I hesitate to call him a child—young person said, “I should not have been allowed to go home”.