Baroness Cash (Con)

My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing this Statement to the House and for her kind words to me earlier. I look forward to working constructively with her in the coming months, in the interests of all children and young people. We on the Conservative Benches welcome this Statement. Indeed, it was the previous Conservative Government who commissioned the review by Josh MacAlister on which this Government’s social care strategy is based. Children who enter care have often experienced circumstances too horrible for us to imagine. As they enter adulthood, as the report reminds us, they report much higher levels of loneliness and isolation, often lacking a single loving or supportive relationship. It is now well established by the evidence that higher numbers of adverse childhood experiences correlate with poorer life and health outcomes, so we will support, where possible, reforms to improve the care system. I have some questions today. I particularly welcome the Minister’s focus on kinship care, but I wish to raise some points about the target of 10,000 new foster places—a laudable and necessary target. Surely some proportion of this is more easily achieved through the family. Currently, the proportion of fostering households through kinship care is just 20%, but finding foster carers among a child’s kin could be the surest and most efficient way of getting children into a placement in which they already feel a sense of safety and belonging. The biggest barrier is qualifying as foster carers, even though there are significant advantages to a child which might justify a less than perfect score. This would of course have to be done without compromising safeguarding, but it must merit further exploration. Will the Minister commit to revisiting this in this Session? We recommend the expansion of regional care co-operatives, particularly to encompass children currently on, or at risk of, a deprivation of liberty order. However, I am concerned about the funding of these RCCs. The two RCC pathfinders in Greater Manchester and the south-east received £3.46 million in programme funding and £5 million in capital funding between them. The Government’s paper cites over £10 million to support the expansion of the six new RCCs. Unless I have misunderstood, that is a large discrepancy in per-RCC terms. Can the Minister tell the House whether she believes that this funding will be enough for all the new co-operatives or whether she expects more to be announced in the future? We welcome the Minister’s resolution to secure the best possible outcome for care leavers, who too often, as I have said, have not a single enduring relationship in their lives. But there are some unanswered questions about how the new enduring relationship metric will be applied, and I would be very grateful for more information from the Minister. Will support for those who score lower be increased? What form will that support take? Will it allow for early intervention before those identified vulnerable individuals have left care? More information on all this would be very welcome. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.