Schedule 2 - Curfew orders and supervision orders
Anti-social Behaviour Bill
2:30 pm
Mr Bob Ainsworth (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Coventry North East, Labour)
I was responding to the amendments that have been proposed. The Bill already ensures that a court would have to consult the local authority about whether fostering was an appropriate response. Furthermore, that requirement would be available only in areas where schemes had been set up. That is why the fostering provision would only be available to those courts that had been notified by the Secretary of State.
The intention of the measure is to address problems within the family, and to work with young people and their parents to bring the family back together, while preventing the young person from being sent into custody unnecessarily. The local authority has an existing duty for looked-after children to promote contact between the child and its parents. Therefore, there is no need to stipulate that in this measure. The legislation, as drafted, allows the youth offending team and the local authority flexibility to determine the intervention programme that needs to be delivered in order to address the young person's offending, and the problems within the family home. There is no difference in principle; there is no requirement for the amendments because what they are seeking to achieve will happen in any case.