Clause 18 - Meaning of childcare
Childcare Bill
5:30 pm
Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing and Shoreham, Conservative)
As the clause deals with the meaning of child care, it is fundamental to what we have been and will be debating. Again, the Conservative amendments are probing amendments.
Amendment No. 111 would leave out the part of subsection (2) that refers to “education for a child”. This might be more relevant to the debate that we will have about the clauses around clause 41, which relate to the early years foundation stage and the criteria on which that will be drawn up. Education should not be referred to as child care and we want to remove that part of the definition. Perhaps the Minister can tell us why education should be considered as part of the wider definition of child care.
Amendment No. 109 is again a probing amendment relating to foster carers. We have had many debates in Committee on previous children’s legislation relating to the registration of private foster carers. Many Conservative Members have argued long and hard that the Government should take the matter more seriously in legislation. We have a fundamental problem with an underground industry of private foster arrangements, the scale of which is unknown, but it has been estimated to involve in excess of 10,000 children. Many of those originate from west Africa and are subjected to conditions akin to that which led to the death of Victoria Climbié, which gave rise to Herbert Laming’s report and the 2004 Act.
Many of us think that the Government should go further and make it a punishable offence for those who choose not to register private fostering arrangements. We should not rely on local authorities to seek out private fostering arrangements and to investigate whether the welfare of the child or children involved is sufficiently taken into account. By their very nature, those people—they are often extended relatives or family contacts, particularly with overseas families, especially those from Nigeria and Sierra Leone, where it has been an particular problem—try to be invisible to the authorities. That is often to the detriment of the children’s health, welfare, education and so on. The Government need to go further. The 2004 Act holds out the possibility—a slim possibility, given its wording—of tougher legislation if the sort of voluntary approach taken in that Act does not bear fruit, as many fear it will not.
Subsection (4)(f) recognises private fostering. If an authority locates private foster arrangements made by people who have not registered their existence, it needs to take a closer interest in the welfare of the child than if the child were with those who have legitimate private fostering arrangements. It is an exploratory amendment, to see exactly what the Government mean when they refer to private fostering. Hence, we say in the amendment that foster carers must be registered.
Amendment No. 110 defines the establishments where child care is not deemed to be taking place—that is, they would be exempt. Appropriate children’s homes should clearly be exempted, as should care homes, whether local authority homes or independently privately run children’s homes, and residential family centres. However, subsection (5)(a)(iii) refers only to
“a hospital in which the child is a patient”.
I am curious as to why it is limited to “a hospital”, which is why we seek to add
“or other medical establishment providing clinical treatment or long term care”.
From my reading of this part of the Bill, certain medical establishments should be included. For example, Mr. Amess, it should include hospices, a subject about which you and I were talking only this morning in Westminster Hall. It should also include other centres where children with long-term chronic conditions go to have forms of treatment—to be attached to machinery or whatever other therapy is necessary. Surely we do not expect those premises to be treated as if they provide child care. They primarily provide medical care and, in some cases, especially in hospices, respite care.
It is a probing amendment to see why the provision is so tightly defined as to exempt only hospitals. Again, the Minister may say that the definition will be widened in regulations, but it would be helpful to include it in the Bill. I see no downside in adding the words suggested.