Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 3:00 pm on 23 January 2025.
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 22, in clause 5, page 9, line 37, at end insert—
“(8) In fulfilling its duties under subsection (7) a local authority must annually consult and collect feedback from children in kinship care and their carers about its kinship local offer.
(9) Feedback received under subsection (8) must be published annually.”
This amendment would require local authorities to consult children and carers when assessing their kinship care offer.
Amendment 39, in clause 5, page 9, line 38, at end insert—
“(8) A local authority must from time to time publish—
(a) comments about its kinship local offer received from or on behalf of children, kinship carers and others with lived experience of aspects of kinship care;
(b) the authority’s response to those comments, including details of any action the authority intends to take.
(9) Comments published under subsection (8)(a) must be published in a form that does not enable the person who made them to be identified.
(10) The Secretary of State may, by regulations, make further provision about—
(a) the information to be included in an authority’s kinship local offer;
(b) how an authority’s kinship local offer is to be published;
(c) the parties who are to be involved and consulted by an authority in developing, preparing and reviewing its kinship local offer;
(d) how an authority is to involve children, kinship carers and others with lived experience of aspects of kinship care in the development, preparation and review of its local kinship offer; and
(e) the publication of comments on the kinship local offer, and the local authority’s response, under subsection (8)(b), including circumstances in which comments are not required to be published.”
Clause stand part.
I strongly welcome clause 5. I am delighted that we are finally putting a definition of kinship in statute and that we are requiring all local authorities to publish their kinship offer. That is long overdue and an absolute testament to the tireless campaigning of many groups—not least the Family Rights Group—the kinship carer community and young people. The Minister may remember that in 2022 I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill that sought to put a definition of kinship into law. It also had a number of other provisions, which we will come to in the new clauses later in Committee.
Amendment 38 seeks to add to the list of services that local authorities must publish and offer to assist children and their kinship carers. It would add financial support, legal support and family group decision making to the list of items that should be included in the local offer.
Ministers are aware that kinship carers turn their lives upside down to take children in, even though their own financial situation may be unstable. Around half of kinship carers are grandparents who rely on their pension savings. We know that financial support is variable throughout the country, which is why I will seek to address that variability through a new clause to ensure parity of allowances across the country. As that is not included in the Bill—I suspect Ministers will not accept my new clause because of Treasury constraints—at the very least it should include information on whatever financial support is available in the local offer.
We are concerned about the omission from the list of information about legal support and family group decision making. Those categories already appear in statutory guidance but are not mentioned in clause 5. We have considered clause 1, on family group decision making, so I am not sure why it was left off the list. I look forward to the Minister’s comments as to why it was.
The child welfare and justice system is extremely complex. Early specialist advice, including legal advice, has a crucial role to play in helping families to navigate the system, understand their rights and responsibilities, and avert children from going into care. Having had many a meeting with kinship carers, one of the things I hear time and again—apart from comments about financial support, leave and all those other things that would make their lives easier—is, “I just didn’t know what my rights were. The local authority was telling me one thing, and I had no information to push back.” Sometimes local authorities seek to make kinship carers do things they may not necessarily want to, and they do not necessarily lay out all the options. Legal advice is so important, but it is also very expensive.
The all-party parliamentary group on kinship care carried out a legal aid inquiry, which found that many families do not have access to legal advice to make informed decisions about their kinship arrangements. That has lasting consequences for their entitlement to support, and for who can make key decisions about the child. Of the kinship carers surveyed, 82% felt they did not know enough about their legal options to make an informed decision about the best options for their kinship child. I implore the Minister to accept the amendment and include that information in the Bill as part of the local offer.
Amendment 39, which is similar to the official Opposition’s amendment 22, seeks to ensure the involvement of children, kinship carers and others in the development of kinship local offers. It also seeks to ensure there is transparency, with the publication of comments on those offers and of the feedback that local authorities receive from children, kinship carers and others with lived experience. They are best placed to comment on how things could work better, and we believe that making sure there is transparency with that feedback is important.
At the moment, we think there are low expectations in the Bill for the involvement of those who are involved in kinship care. That contrasts with the special educational needs and disability local offer, for example, which was established in section 30 of the Children and Families Act 2014. Amendment 39 is consistent with that legislation on special educational needs and disability. It would also give the Secretary of State explicit powers to set out in regulations how the offer should be published, when it should be reviewed, and how children and families are involved in developing it.
On clause 5 more broadly, although I have not tabled an amendment on this, it would be advantageous if the Minister clarified on the parliamentary record the definition of “other person connected”. The Bill defines kinship care as when
“the child lives with a relative, friend or other person connected with the child for all or part of the time”.
The term “relative” in the Bill has the meaning given in section 105 of the Children Act 1989, namely someone who is
“a grandparent, brother, sister, uncle or aunt (whether of the full blood or half blood or by marriage or civil partnership) or step-parent;”.
That omits extended family members, including cousins.
Given that kinship care arrangements are particularly prevalent among a number of ethnic minority communities, where culturally it is much more normal for extended families to live together, cousins may well be involved in the arrangements. I understand that the Department has confirmed that such wider family members are intended to be captured by the phrase “other person connected”, but nowhere in the Bill is the term defined. Nor has there been any indication as yet that regulations or statutory guidance will make plain who falls within the scope of that phrase. Clarity is important for families and practitioners. I would welcome the Minister’s comments on that and on the other issues raised in the amendments.
I rise to speak to clause 5 and amendment 22. The previous Government were promoting kinship care and there is no great disagreement about it; in fact, there is great agreement, including with the hon. Member for Twickenham. I pay tribute to her work on the issue, and she is right that her amendment 39 is similar to our amendment 22.
Creating a duty for a local authority to publish a local kinship care offer seems sensible to provide clarity and to ensure that kinship families are aware of what support is available. The statutory guidance on kinship care, which exists already, states that every local authority must publish information about the services they offer in their area to children in kinship care and their approach towards meeting the needs of those children. That has been there since 2011, but too many still have no up-to-date offer, so we are supportive of clause 5.
This is an example of the current Government building on the direction of travel under the previous Government. The kinship care strategy we published in December 2023 set out a definition of kinship care that has been used in the updated statutory guidance on kinship care published by this Government in October.
One important reason for having something that is public and visible to everyone is that when many people hear mention of kinship care they think of uncles, aunts and grannies, but of course a lot of kinship carers are not related to the child. Some 140,000 children live in kinship care, but a further 24,000 live with kinship carers to whom they are not related, such as family friends.
The Minister will be aware of the concerns expressed by kinship carers and the organisations that represent them, such as the Family Rights Group, that the definition of kinship care in this clause of the Bill—on pages 9 and 10, in proposed new section 22I of the Children Act 1989—risks providing less clarity and potentially greater confusion for children, families, practitioners and agencies. They argue that it does not adequately address the different types of kinship care arrangements, while the expectations for councils to involve families in shaping or promoting the local offer are minimal. What is the Minister’s response to that, and what does she plan to do about it?
The Family Rights Group also made a specific point about something that should be amended in the Bill, stating:
“The Bill includes a list of categories of services available in the authority’s area that the kinship local offer should include. We are very concerned by the omission of legal support and family group decision making from this list. These categories already appear in statutory guidance but not…the Bill.”
The Family Rights Group proposed an amendment to remedy that, which we tabled. Will the Government at least consider taking it up?
The Family Rights Group made another point:
“We are concerned that the Bill sets low expectations regarding the involvement of children, kinship carers and others in the development of kinship local offers, as well as in respect of publication and transparency. This is in contrast to the SEN and disability local offer…established in section 30 of the 2014 Children and Families Act. That legislation gives the Secretary of State the power to set out in regulations how the offer should be published, when it should be reviewed, and”— this is the key bit—
“how children and families are involved in developing it.”
That takes us to our amendment 22. Again, as with previous ones we have tabled, our amendment seeks to set in train a self-improving system by collecting feedback from children in kinship care. We have heard several times during our sittings about the importance of the voice of the child and the voices of those who provide care; this is a way of ensuring that we hear them. We are proposing a light-touch process in the amendment: keeping a record of feedback. That helps to protect from the loss of knowledge when personnel inevitably change, so we can still have that feedback and knowledge. It also provides a resource for learning and performance improvement at the local level. By publishing it, as we suggest in the amendment, we allow for better public discussion and for learning at the national level.
That is the purpose of our amendment. We have no great disagreement about the spirit of this clause—quite the opposite, in fact—and we hope that the Minister will adopt or in some way implement the ideas in our amendment.
I rise to speak to the amendments and to clause 5 stand part.
On amendment 38, which the hon. Member for Twickenham tabled, I appreciate her engagement and great interest in the kinship local offer, and I will explain how we see it working. We expect that local authorities would include information on legal support when setting out their general approach to supporting children living in kinship care and to kinship carers under the newly inserted section 22H(1)(a) to the Children Act 1989, as set out in clause 5. To be clear, the listed categories of information about services have been kept very broad by design, in order to cover as many different kinds of services as possible. That means that local authorities could reasonably be expected to provide information about legal support under one of the categories that we have included.
Clause 1 already sets out the requirement to offer family group decision making at pre-proceedings and new section 22H(1)(b) to the 1989 Act will require local authorities to publish information about financial support that may be available to children living in kinship care and their carers. Therefore, I would like to reassure Members that the list of categories of information about services in the Bill is deliberately not exhaustive. It also remains our intention that further detail about what we expect to be included in the kinship local offer will be made in statutory guidance, so we will take on board the points made in this debate. We believe that amending clause 5 as has been suggested would not achieve that effect. We believe that we have the measures in place that will deliver what the hon. Lady is looking for, so we kindly ask her to withdraw her amendment.
On amendments 22 and 39, tabled by the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston and the hon. Member for Twickenham respectively, I appreciate the concern that exists about consulting children and carers on the kinship local offer and making sure that their feedback is collected. The children’s social care national framework and the existing kinship care statutory guidance make it clear that children’s wishes and feelings should be taken into account whenever adults try to solve problems and make decisions about them, and local authorities are legally obliged to adhere to article 12 of the UN convention on the rights of the child, which makes it very clear that the child has the right to express their views, their feelings and their wishes in all matters affecting them and to have their views considered and taken seriously.
The kinship care statutory guidance also sets the expectation that local authorities should consult children, kinship carers and parents as appropriate in drawing up their kinship local offers, and set out how the kinship local offer has been informed by their views, to ensure transparency.
New section 22H(7) to the 1989 Act states:
“A local authority must review and update its kinship local offer from time to time”,
to give opportunities for the views and opinions of children living in kinship care and their carers to be taken into account. However, since the intention of clause 5 is to ensure that local authorities publish information about what their kinship local offer includes, what is published should be a clear reflection of the services available, and consultation on the publication would be of limited value.
We cannot be more specific about how kinship local offers are published, because that would potentially limit the accessibility of the information. For example, requiring online publication would potentially limit access to the information among those who do not have access to that technology. For that reason, new section 22H(6) of the 1989 Act already puts an obligation on local authorities to:
“take such steps as are reasonably practicable to ensure that children” and kinship carers
“receive the information relevant to them.”
Consequently, we do not believe that the amendments are required, as there are sufficient safeguards within clause 5 and other legal frameworks, and because the local authority will be best placed to determine what information should be published. More prescription in legislation might hinder local authorities as they design and publish their local offer in a flexible way that reaches people and makes the maximum impact.
I will respond to the question raised by the hon. Member for Twickenham and to some extent by the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston about some lack of clarity on the definitions of a connected person. To be clear, that is because they are defined in the Children Act 1989. The term “relative” is deliberately not defined in the Bill, because the measures on the kinship local offer are not freestanding: they form part of the 1989 Act. Although section 105 of that Act defines relatives, new section 22I(1)(a) under clause 5 includes
“a relative, friend or other person connected with the child”,
so it is broad enough to cover every type of person. Although cousins are not specifically defined as a relative, they would fall within the category of another person connected with the child. I hope that has answered all the questions raised by hon. Members, and I urge them to support this clause.
The Family Rights Group raised a specific point. It would effectively like to add another item to the list on page 9, line 17 of the Bill, which currently states that the list of support services should include
“health…relationships…education and training…accommodation”.
The Family Rights Group would like to add legal support to that list. Will the Minister go away and have a look at that?
I appreciate the request; I have dealt with that in my response, in that we feel that we have included broad headings that are clearly not exhaustive and leave room for local authorities to publish the whole range of services that they feel will support kinship carers. Fundamentally, we know that having a good kinship care offer is in the best interests of a local authority, because it is the one supporting the children who it knows need that care, but I will certainly take away the hon. Gentleman’s specific consideration.
I fully agree that the list in subsection (2) is clearly not an exhaustive list, and many local authorities, as a matter of good practice, will set out the variety of services available to children who live in kinship care and to kinship carers. However, I also invite the Minister to consider the guidance already available and any other means of encouraging local authorities to publish their approach in relation to legal support and ensure that these provisions remain under review.
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. Her point is noted.
I thank the Minister for her response on the point about legal support, which is in amendment 38 along with financial support and family group decision making. I intended to push the amendment to a vote, but, given her assurances that this will be in statutory guidance, I am happy to withdraw the amendment and not push it to a vote.
On her point about connected persons, we need some clarity. As she says, the term “relative” is in the Children Act 1989, but it does not cover cousins. Practitioners on the ground and families would like clarity for those other arrangements. Whether or not that is in guidance, it needs to be spelled out further. Nevertheless, based on the assurances the Minister has given, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.