My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for meeting me and the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and the noble Baronesses, Lady McIntosh of Pickering and Lady Burt of Solihull, over this vexed issue of child contact centres.
A little history is important here. In 2007 the Department for Education commissioned the National Association of Child Contact Centres, the NACCC, to develop national standards for child contact, but no regulatory framework was created. The NACCC and the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, Cafcass, agreed a memorandum of understanding on service delivery accreditation standards and safe- guarding protections to keep children safe. This cross-party amendment builds on the work of both. They, along with Women’s Aid, Family Action and Barnardo’s, all support this amendment.
The amendment aims to ensure that these standards protect children wherever they have facilitated contact. The NACCC, Cafcass and key sector providers, including the Salvation Army, Barnardo’s, Family Action, Relate, Action for Children and Core Assets, all do an outstanding job and these third sector organisations agreed by consensus in 2019 that regulation is required by the sector.
Accredited child contact centres and services have clear procedures and staff training and support staff in decision-making where risk may be present, including in safeguarding children and preventing domestic abuse. Sadly, it is not uncommon for one or both parents to have deep-seated problems, including risks of problems with alcohol and/or drug abuse, and the risk of ongoing abusive behaviours.
However, many centres and services currently fall outside the oversight of local authorities, NACCC or Cafcass because the current regulatory framework is only voluntary and patchy. Such unregulated provision of centres and voluntary child contact services unfortunately leaves this field open to those of malintent, including paedophiles and those from extremist factions.
I ask noble Lords to ask themselves why anyone who really cares about children would not want to be fully trained in child development and safeguarding. Is it acceptable to leave children already traumatised by being victims of or watching abuse in situations of increased risk? The amendment closes the loophole by providing the Secretary of State with powers to specify regulations and delivery.
As the Minister requested in Committee, we provided an initial review of evidence to the Minister. I am most grateful to the Minister for meeting us. In the list of over 50 centres advertising on the internet, we found some operating without oversight. Local authorities have a duty when commissioning under Section 34 of the Children Act 2004, but financial stringencies and the lack of universal standards contribute to variability. Importantly, not all services are local authority-commissioned.
For example, one child contact centre had NACCC accreditation withdrawn due to safeguarding and health and safety concerns, including Disclosure and Barring
Service checks that were not up to date and poor storage security of personal information and records. After the removal of accreditation, the centre accepted a high-risk supervised referral where the father was on the sex offenders register, but the centre could not provide adequately supervised services. It continues to advertise as NACCC-accredited and take referrals from solicitors.
There are also a significant number of child contact centres with no website presence. In the time available, the NACCC could do only a desktop study and so could not ascertain how many are still operating. For example, I have been informed by the NACCC of at least two that are operational, but their details cannot be found anywhere online.
Without oversight and clear standards, there is no way of verifying how these child contact centres and services are operating, and no levers to close them down. Compounding this, the courts’ awareness of the judicial protocol on child contact is patchy, so inappropriate referrals continue to be made.
The motivation behind this amendment is to ensure the safest environment in child contact cases, to allow regular contact between absent parents and children, and to ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place. All this amendment does is provide the Secretary of State with powers to specify regulations and delivery standards. We cannot let a Bill on domestic abuse proceed without ensuring the safeguarding of those children, already victims in family breakdown, in situations where abuse may be ongoing.
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I hope the Minister will be able to tell me that this amendment will be accepted or that the Government will return at Third Reading with an amendment of their own, or give a firm undertaking to bring forward the necessary regulatory standards. At the moment, children are at risk in unsupervised and dangerous situations. The specific question is therefore this: when will the Government lay before Parliament the regulations required to protect children in child contact services? Without an answer to this, I will feel forced to test the opinion of the House. I beg to move.