Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)

My Lords, I very much support not only early intervention but intervention at various levels when the family absolutely needs it. As the noble Lord, Lord Meston, said, there is a financial advantage to local authorities—not, of course, short term, but long term, because the more a local authority intervenes in a troubled family, the less the chance, with any luck, that the children will go into care. As has already been said, when one child has gone into care, it is particularly important to make sure that the next child—there nearly always is a next child—will not also have to go into care. As the noble Lord, Lord Meston, has said, it is a very sad situation for judges when you really cannot help the mother and her second, third or fourth child—sometimes more—because she has never had any help each time she has lost a child. So there is a genuine financial advantage to stopping children going into care, which is obviously far more expensive in the long term. I will add a short word following on from the sad story of the right reverend Prelate. My son, aged 50, died of cancer, five years ago, with teenage children. Their mother, my daughter-in-law, was brilliant, but the children’s loss of their father at early teenage was absolutely devastating. I am glad to say that they have succeeded extremely well and have coped, but it is a moment when I have no doubt at all that my daughter-in-law—she lives in Los Angeles, so the wider family were unable to help—would have gained enormously, as indeed would the children, if there had been somebody there in a similar situation in this country. This bereavement amendment is particularly important.