New Clause 36
Children and Young Persons Bill [Lords]
4:00 pm
Helen Southworth (Warrington South, Labour)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I am conscious that I bring with me the admirable support of not only my hon. Friends the Members for Stafford and for Stourbridge, but the 198 Members who signed early-day motion 1413, “Support for young people in care in transition to adult life”, which I tabled. It notes that many young people in care are moved into independent living at 16 or 17, when the average age at which young people in the United Kingdom leave home is 24. In practice that means that many vulnerable young people do not receive sufficient support to enable them to make the transition into adult life successfully. It calls on the Government to take steps to ensure that all these vulnerable young people have access to effective support including, where appropriate, the opportunity to remain with their foster carers until they are 21.
The reason why so many hon. Members believe it is essential that the opportunity of this Bill is seized to ensure that there is effective support for young people who are making steps into independent living from care is that the Bill is intended to enable those who enter the care system to achieve the aspirations parents have for their own children, and to reduce the gap in outcomes between children in care and their peers.
The Bill sets out many excellent measures to revolutionise care for children who are looked after by local authorities, but there remains a huge gap between the aspirations within the Bill and the practice for young people who, from the age of 16, are moving into independent living. There is a particular issue for young people who at the age of 16 or 17 move from foster care or from a local authority or private children’s home into other accommodation. The current practice in operation in many, if not most, parts of the country is that when young people leave the care of the local authority and leave the protection of the “parent”, they are left alone to resolve their problems themselves because they have moved accommodation.
Although the Ministers have made it clear in the Bill that they have admirable aspirations to ensure that local authorities provide accommodation for young people in their care, the practical fact remains that many young people of 16 or 17 are at best encouraged, and in some cases left with no alternative other than, to leave care and move into the supported services available through local authority housing services, rather than through children’s services.
I draw the Committee’s attention to the children’s rights director’s report of February 2006, “Young People’s Views on Leaving Care”, in which Dr. Roger Morgan made it clear that the consultation that he undertook demonstrated that this is an issue of serious concern to young people. In his top 10 list of things that most worry young people about leaving care, drawn up by consulting young people, among the problems such as loneliness and not being able to cope that hon. Members have already mentioned is the serious problem of:
“Leaving before being ready to do so—‘Should have a say in when to leave care’”.
Other concerns are:
“Having nowhere/no-one to come back to”; “Being put in some ‘dodgy’ places... Becoming homeless”,
and
“‘Not being able to settle anywhere’—having to keep moving around”.
The report demonstrated that young people are leaving care at significantly younger ages, typically around 16 or 17 years old. For them, the reality of leaving care is “harsh and uncertain”. The report said:
“A common theme amongst those young people consulted was in their having remarkably short periods of notice to leave, together with their sheer lack of preparation to do so”.
It went on:
“One young woman told us she had received no notice of having to leave care, had no plans drawn up prior to leaving and did not have any form of written plan.”
It is a sad fact that that young woman is not the only one. Hon. Members in the Committee and outside have received considerable evidence from young people leaving care that they have not had proper support and that they have been put into dodgy places. In some cases, they have been put in hostels where the majority of other residents are people who are leaving prison or have convictions for drug offences or prostitution. These vulnerable young people are being left to cope alone in that sort of accommodation.
I accept that provisions are made in clause 9 for other placements, but there is no way of measuring by inspection the suitability of those other places. It should not be beyond the wit of this House to produce a reasonable checklist that says what is suitable accommodation and what is dodgy. If 16-year-olds can work it out for themselves, we ought to be able to work it out on their behalf. We have a duty to do so.
The aspirations stated in the new clause refer not only to relevant children, but to young people who have previously been relevant up to the age of 21. That is an important thing to write into the Bill. Much legislation over the past few years has demonstrated the right of a looked-after child to be protected up to the age of 18 if it is needed. We have seen that 41 or 42 per cent. of young people have left looked-after status to go into independent living before the age of 18. In many cases, they have gone into wholly unacceptable accommodation. It is unsurprising that they do not have the opportunities that any parent would want for their child in such circumstances.
Many hon. Members want to see the aspiration of the opportunity for a young person to make a proper transition into independent living written into the Bill. We would then not have to look at opportunities that might emerge from future pilots. We already know that, for many young people, the opportunities to carry on in further education, higher education, training or work all depend on having a safe place to live and somebody they can turn to and talk things through with.
Finally and briefly, I would ask that we please focus on this problem, because it is something that many Members of this House expect us to address, either in this Committee or elsewhere.