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Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

My Lords, I will start using the mantra of the Minister: on a number of occasions she has said that it is about getting children and families the right support. I very much agree with that.

I will start by talking generally about the care system. I met a young man whose name is Tristan, and when he was a child he was put into care. When I was chatting to him I was genuinely shocked when he told me he had been in nine different care settings throughout the country. Imagine this child going from one care setting to another. I do not know the reasons why, but that happened. He was lucky enough to end the care placements by being fostered by parents in Liverpool, who eventually adopted him as their son. That was the happy outcome after all the trauma that went on before. He is now at Liverpool John Moores University, studying law.

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As was said by the noble Lord, Lord Russell, we do not know how lucky we are to have kinship carers. The system of caring would collapse if we did not have them. This priceless asset is probably among the best ways of caring for children that you could imagine. As the Minister said, we should be doing everything we can to get the right support for them.

I just want to respond to what the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, said. Local authority care in many cases is having major problems because of rising costs and finding placements, so local authorities put children into private care providers, and the costs are absolutely enormous. The local authorities do not have the resources themselves, so they go to private providers and the costs keep going up each year. The noble Earl, Lord Effingham, quite rightly talks about costs, but he needs to be aware that in the private sector the costs are very expensive.

My figures are slightly different: best estimates suggest that there are more than 141,000 children in kinship care in England and Wales. This is three times the number in unrelated foster care. Grandparents comprise the most kinship carers, but they can also, of course, be older siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins and family friends. A kinship carer provides a stable home life, remaining in their existing family network. It makes sense, therefore, to invest in kinship care and provide reasonable legislation to support those who are providing this care. Kinship care delivers good experiences and outcomes for children and families, as well, as I have said, cost savings for the Government.

We support the statutory funding of kinship care in the Bill, but are critical that it provides merely a definition without practical solutions, including that financial support. My amendments try in some ways to look at how we can give extra support to kinship carers. I have three amendments in this group. Amendment 103 would extend the pupil premium to children subject

to kinship care arrangements. Amendment 104 would mean that a person is entitled to kinship care allowance for any week in which the person is engaged as a kinship carer in England. Amendment 146 would introduce an entitlement for an individual to be absent from work on care leave where the individual is a kinship carer.

We need to support this sector of caring. It is probably the best way that we can deal with what some might call the problems of and some might even call a crisis in the care system. I hope that Members will look carefully at all the amendments and how they can enhance what we currently have.