Lord Young of Cookham (Con)

My Lords, having listened to the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, he has totally persuaded me that Amendment 254B should be adopted, and I hope the Minister will respond sympathetically to it. Amendment 257A in my name would require the statutory local registers of children not in school to include whether a child is a young carer, and whether a young carer’s needs assessment has been carried out. It is a revised version of Amendment 251 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and the noble Lords, Lord Russell and Lord Storey. The wording is identical, but by amending new Section 436C(2) rather than new Section 436C(1) it makes it easier for local authorities to comply, because new Section 436C(1) is compulsory with no exceptions, whereas new Section 436C(2) refers to information that the local authority has or might reasonably obtain. I thank the Minister’s officials for the constructive discussions that they had with the Carers Trust and local carer services on this issue. They led to this new amendment, which I hope improves its chances of acceptance. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, for indicating their support for this revised amendment. The amendment is closely related to Amendment 209, which we discussed on 3 July. That would require local authorities to ensure that they have offered a young carer’s needs assessment if they are notified of a pupil who is being withdrawn from school. Amendment 257A, which we debate now, complements that by including such information on the register. I will not repeat the arguments for improving the protection for young carers, but I mention very briefly the case of Salma, who is caring for her mother, who has physical and mental health issues, and her father, who has physical health issues. She was taken out of school after being subject to bullying. The parents stated that they were home-schooling her while always working towards getting her back into specialist provision. After Salma returned to that specialist provision, she admitted that no home-schooling had taken place and she had been caring around the clock. She had missed one and a half years of school before she was given a permanent placement in that specialist provision. So, repeating what I have said before, I am not saying that a young carer should never be home-educated—I have listened to the powerful arguments from my noble friends and from the noble Lord, Lord Crisp—but we need safeguards for the reasons I have just given so that children do not slip off the radar, to use a phrase that the Minister used in an earlier debate. Related to the previous amendment and this one are delays in carrying out a young carer’s assessment. I raised this in July and the Minister wrote to me on 9 July—I am grateful for that. She told me that the Care Quality Commission is currently assessing how well local authorities perform their relevant duties under the Care Act 2014 and that every local authority will have been assessed by next March. She also strongly urges all local authorities to sign up to the No Wrong Doors for Young Carers initiative. Following the CQC report, I hope that the Government will take strong action against local authorities that are underperforming. Turning specifically to the amendment, the addition of young carers to the school census is helping to increase the visibility and understanding of young carers within schools and of the impact that caring can have on educational opportunities. For example, we now know that young carers in our schools are missing over a month of their education each year. So including young carers on this register will help ensure that local authorities can comply with their statutory duties under the Children Act 1989, which requires them to take reasonable steps to identify young carers who might be in need of support. By including young carers on the education not in school register, local authorities will be better able to work with families and local young carers services to ensure that caring responsibilities do not mean that the child misses out on education. Finally, to put it in perspective, there are around 15,000 children who are caring for an alarming 50 hours each week, including over 3,000 children aged between 5 and 9. A further 21,000 children are caring for 20 to 49 hours a week. This has a huge impact on their health and their future life chances. Young carers taking on significant caring responsibilities are 86% less likely than their peers without caring responsibilities to obtain a university degree and 46% less likely to be in employment. Currently, it takes far too long for these young carers to get the support they need—on average three years, with some going more than 10 years without support. That is why this amendment seeks to ensure that this group of children is at the front of our thinking when we are talking about children not in school. The clause, if amended, would mean that young carer status would be included on the register only if the local authority knows that the child is a young carer or could reasonably obtain such information. But, given that the majority of young carers are not identified, will the Minister say what steps the Government are taking to ensure that local authorities are complying with their duty to identify young carers outside education? This simple amendment is an important small step to help ensure that all young carers are able to have the same educational opportunities as their peers, whether they are educated in school or elsewhere.