Member

My Amendment 15 focuses on the need to ensure that, for a child under two, family group decision-making must not delay care proceedings. Of course, this is most acute when a very young child is concerned, because of the risk to them, but it links to my Amendment 16, which aims to highlight the need to avoid delays in proceedings more broadly. Returning to Amendment 15, we know that meetings can be difficult to set up. We know that people do not always turn up and that they have to be rescheduled. Indeed, family members could be actively obstructive and cause that to happen. With very young children, every week and month matters, and we need to get permanence decisions as quickly as possible. In fact, I would go as far as to urge the Minister to consider a timetable in these cases; we have the public law outline in public law cases, so perhaps we could have a kinship outline in these cases.