Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)

My Lords, this is an important group of amendments regarding family relationships and the appropriate placement of children in care. I have four amendments in my name in this group and will move through them as quickly as I can. Amendments 43 and 49 are linked. They are about promoting children in care’s family relationships and particularly improving sibling contact, an issue that we discussed at some length in Committee. We know and previously debated that children in care are too often separated from siblings when in the care system. Unfortunately, we have also heard that, for too many children in care, they are not supported to have either consistent, appropriate or high-quality contact with their siblings when they are separated so that they can maintain these most vital relationships and stay connected. The evidence shows that there is real variability in the type and frequency of contact between siblings. It can be affected by things such as workforce issues, instability and geographical factors—including where children are moved to. As we discussed in Committee, there is a real disconnect between policy and practice here. Amendment 43 seeks, in general terms, to strengthen the duties on local authorities to promote children’s family and social relationships, including with siblings. This would make a real difference to overall family relationships and to a sense of identity for these children. Amendment 49 seeks to close a specific loophole in the current regulations. Paragraph 3(1) of Schedule 1 of the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010 includes provision for arrangements to promote contact between siblings who are in care but who are not placed together to be set out in children’s care plans. The key point and the purpose of this amendment, however, is that this does not cover the promotion of contact between a child who is in care and a sibling who is not in care. While there is currently limited data about how many children in care have siblings outside of the care system, the charity Become has reported examples from children and young people who have felt unsupported to adequately maintain relationships with siblings who are not in care, particularly when they are living miles away. This amendment seeks to close this loophole by requiring a child’s care plan to include arrangements for promoting contact with all their siblings, whether they are in care or not, as far as that is consistent with the child’s welfare. For children in care, their relationship with siblings can be the most important relationships that they have, with lifelong consequences. Too often, these relationships are being strained or damaged by a system that just does not support these relationships effectively. This needs to change. These amendments seek to strengthen the policy framework, close a loophole and influence practice to better protect these fundamental relationships. Amendment 61 seeks to amend the sufficiency duty to prevent children in care being moved far from home when that is not in their best interest. This amendment seeks to amend the sufficiency duty in a number of ways. First, it would place a stronger requirement on local authorities to take “all reasonable steps” to provide children with appropriate local accommodation. It would place a more explicit requirement on local authorities to plan, deliver or commission on a range of accommodation to meet children’s needs locally. It would also require local authorities to plan to keep children near to the local authority if they are unable to be kept within their own local area. In recent years, local authorities have faced real challenges in delivering sufficient places close to home and in ensuring that they have enough of the right type of homes and carers in the right places at the right time to meet children’s needs and keep them close to the relationships, places and support networks that matter so much to them. Increasingly, for too many children this has meant being moved far away from the people and the places that they love. Last year, 22% of all children in care in England were living more than 20 miles away from their home communities and support networks. This number has increased by over 40% over the last decade. There are also too many children living hundreds of miles away from home. Become’s “Gone Too Far” campaign has highlighted the devastating long-term impact that living far from home can have on children’s relationships and well-being. Relationships, which is what these two amendments are all about—where children in care live and who with—are pivotal to children’s outcomes and experiences. There needs to be greater accountability and oversight about the extent to which this sufficiency is being delivered to drive real system change, starting with a stronger sufficiency duty, and to keep more children living close to home. I very much hope that the Government will look sympathetically on this amendment. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Russell and Lord Hampton, for adding their names to my Amendment 62, which is essentially about the mental health needs of children in care. They often experience dramatically higher levels of mental ill-health than their peers, yet their mental health needs are often underidentified and poorly supported. While current regulations require health assessments to include mental health, they do not require the involvement of health practitioners with mental health expertise. As a result, assessments are often inconsistent and frequently fail to identify need early enough to offer the sort of evidence-based professional responses to address mental health needs and prevent deterioration of a child’s mental health. My amendment addresses this gap by seeking to ensure that mental health is assessed by a qualified mental health practitioner as a core part of the initial and ongoing health assessment for children in care. This builds on the work of the Education Committee, which has done very important work in this area in its inquiry. It reported that specific considerations around mental health were frequently absent or treated very superficially in health assessments. It is a limited change but an important change. It is asking that mental health is not simply included in the initial health assessment, but that mental health expertise is involved in carrying it out. Because of the importance of mental health to children in care, because of the high prevalence that they have and because of the difficulties that they have in accessing the right sort of mental health support and treatment, I very much hope that the Minister will look sympathetically at this amendment.