Lord Bird (CB)

I second the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Young. I am very interested in foster caring, largely because when I was in care as a young child, it was largely because I did not really have a family. I had a mother and a father, and I had brothers who were taken away in one direction. My parents were not very grown up; they had not really got used to the idea of having six children when they could probably afford only one. I find this amendment so interesting because it backs up my experience as a young boy. When our family finally reconnected in Fulham in south-west London, the place was littered with foster-children. It was very interesting. I got to know people who went to my school, and they were fostered. They were not blood brothers or sisters or related to their family. I found that so interesting because most of those children, dare I say—I do not want to appear as a classist—ended up being quite middle class. They ended up getting the education of a lot of us who passed through care. It was interesting that, in this area of Fulham, there was this great mixture of very working-class children with a bit of a middle-class aspect, yet the children who really excelled were the ones who had the all-round relationships. I would love to see a strategy that got behind those circa 130,000 people who want to foster. I would like to see a shrinking of the numbers of local authority homes, having been in a Catholic one, which was not an awful lot different from any other kind. The idea of institutionally raising children is not good news. The idea of raising children who were separated from their loved ones—as I was—is bad news. Therefore, I suggest we follow the example from the noble Lord, Lord Young, and create a proper strategy so that we can share out the loving relationships that we need to to our children, who are in desperate need, especially at the time when their own kith and kin cannot provide them with what they really need.