My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 28 standing in my name. Both amendments relate to advocacy and, again, it may be helpful if I begin with an illustration of why advocacy is important.
Advocacy is a means of ensuring that the wishes and feelings of children, particularly children in care, are heard. A typical issue might be whether they have the right to have contact with siblings or to continue to remain in the same placement. Another concern might be a child whom it is convenient for the local authority to move to a new placement, or the local authority may consider that it is in the child’s best interests to do so, but the child very much feels that where they are is where they wish to continue to be.
The first amendment looks at advocacy in relation to child protection conferences. This is a probing amendment and its purpose is to debate the merits of
the introduction of a statutory presumption that local authorities should give consideration to ensuring that children and young people are supported by an independent advocate in initial and review child protection conferences unless they choose to opt out.
The purpose of the two amendments is to elicit a debate on advocacy and to get an assurance from the Government on two things. First, will the Government produce an advocacy handbook to replace the 2004 Get It Sorted guidance, which is now nearly 10 years out of date, to reflect current policy and practice? Secondly, will the Government collect more data on how advocacy is used in child protection conferences and care reviews so that we know better what happens and how good access to advocacy is for children in care in those two situations?
Evidence has consistently shown that the child’s voice is often not heard and effectively represented in child protection cases. Both professionals and children think that meaningful engagement of children in the decision-making process would lead to improved outcomes. Recent high-profile cases have once again put child protection services under close scrutiny. The exposure of systematic safeguarding failures in Oxford, Rochdale and Edlington have raised questions about the extent to which services are putting children’s experiences and voices at the heart of the child protection process. The 2012 Monro Review of Child Protection states:
“Children and young people are a key source of information about their lives and the impact any problems are having on them in the specific culture and values of their family. It is therefore puzzling that the evidence shows that children are not being adequately included in child protection work”.
Child protection conferences are a key part of the child protection process, although I shall not describe them in detail. Until recently, the framework for ascertaining a child’s wishes during the child protection process was provided by the Working Together to Safeguard Children guidance, published in 2010. From April 2013, a revised version of this guidance has been in place with the aim of reducing the level of prescription and bureaucracy involved within safeguarding procedures. Although the revised guidance recommends obtaining and understanding the wishes and needs of children within a child-centred system, it gives far less prominence to the involvement of children during assessment and within the child protection process than the previous version. In particular, there is no longer a presumption that a child, subject to age and understanding, should be invited to attend their conference with an advocate if they wish to do so. So there is less prescriptive guidance alongside no clear statutory right to advocacy. This risks reducing the opportunity for people to participate in the child protection process.
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The next amendment relates to children in reviews. Again, this is a probing amendment. Edward Timpson, the Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families, clearly recognises the importance for children of their being heard in decisions affecting them. However, if this is to be effective, children need to be able to access independent advocacy and support when significant decisions are being made about their lives.
I shall not go into the details of what independent advocacy is. However, various professionals are supposed to take on this role. They consider what they need to do in the best interests of the child but no one is there to say to the child, “We are just interested, independently, in what your wishes and feelings are. We just want to help you to express those things”. That is the particular niche for independent advocates.
For instance, it has been suggested that IROs—the independent reviewing officers—can fulfil the role of ensuring that the child’s wishes and feelings are heard in their reviews. However, they have a number of different roles: they chair the meeting, draw together the views of the child and the other professionals, and have a duty to monitor the case. National advocacy standards require an advocate to act on the child’s instructions about their express wishes and feelings and to uphold their rights. Non-instructive advocacy is provided for younger children and those with communication difficulties. All advocates will discuss matters and seek to help the child to understand the views of others but, ultimately, they are required to act on the wishes and feelings of the child, reflecting the child’s perception of their best interest.
Looked-after children, care leavers and children in need have a statutory right to an advocate in making or intending to make a complaint under the Children Act 1989. We introduced this in 2004 in the Lords, and over the years since there has been an increased recognition by the Government of the importance of advocacy for looked-after children and care leavers. However, there is an inconsistency in implementation which means that children and young people still do not receive the advocacy support to which they are entitled. In particular, provision of services is patchy and inconsistent. A report from the Children’s Commissioner illustrated the postcode lottery and provision of advocacy services in general and the legal categories of children covered by local authority contracts. For example, some services are not commissioned to provide services to children in need. Research by the Children’s Society showed that one-third of local authorities do not report any spending on advocacy services. Recent experience from the helpline of the charity Voice has shown a great increase in recurrent calls from young people, many of whose home advocacy or children’s rights services state that they are unable to help them.
We need to strengthen the right to independent advocacy for these children. Particularly helpful for this would be a new advocacy handbook which would draw together all the existing guidance, standards, frameworks and minimum standards; describe better the provision of advocacy services for children and young people in child protection conferences; draw on the recent reports of good practice—it would give examples of good practice—and the involvement of independent advocates in child protection conferences; and, importantly, look at the routes to training and practice for advocates. They are extraordinarily important professionals. It is a relatively new profession that has blossomed in the past 10 years and we need to be quite clear what the requirements are for training, support and supervision of these advocates. These need to be clearly laid out and monitored.
I hope that the Minister and your Lordships will find this discussion helpful. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. I beg to move.