Lord Hampton (CB)

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 62, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and to which I have added my name. I declare, as ever, that I am a teacher and I thank the National Children’s Bureau for its help on this. Children do not come into care because they have won the lottery of life; trauma is unlikely to be far from their lives. Yet our assessment processes still rely on professionals who may have little or no training in mental health or trauma-informed practice. Care-experienced young people told the Education Select Committee, as part of its inquiry into children’s social care, that local authorities are not always fulfilling their obligations to include emotional and mental health in their health assessments of children in care. One young person told the committee: “I feel a lot could be explained if they understood the experience of trauma. It will take time. It will not go away at night, and sometimes before it gets better it could get worse. No one talks about that. You will not be okay if you are going into care; there is a reason why you are there, and so it is important that the minute you go into care every child should have a mandatory assessment, physical and mental, and there should be that on-call support for them”. Bringing qualified mental health practitioners into the mandatory health assessment of children in care is simple, practical and overdue. I hope that the Government will use this amendment as an opportunity to do more for children in care and to make their lives and, as importantly, their futures better.