Children and Families Bill

Public Bill Committee, 12 March 2013.

Dai Havard (Labour, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney)

Before we begin, I would like to make a statement on how we have agreed that we intend to proceed in Committee. The selection list for today’s sitting, which is available in the room, shows how the amendments selected for debate have been grouped together for debate. Amendments grouped together are generally on the same or a similar and related issue. The Member who has put their name to the leading amendment in the group is called first; other Members are then free to catch my eye in order to speak to the amendments in that group. A Member may speak more than once, depending on the subjects under discussion. At the end of the debate on a group of amendments, I will call the Member who moved the lead amendment again. Before they sit down, they will need to indicate whether they wish to seek to withdraw the amendment or to seek a decision. If any Member wishes to press any other amendment in the group to a Division, they need to let me know.

I will work on the assumption that the Government wish the Committee to reach a decision on all Government amendments. Please note that decisions on amendments take place not in the order they are debated, but in the order in which they appear on the amendment paper. Where it is not already indicated on the selection list, Mr Chope and I will use our discretion to decide whether to allow a separate stand part debate on individual clauses or a separate debate on schedules.

We will not necessarily get to that position today, but at some point during our proceedings we may need to operate that part of the procedure. I therefore wanted to explain it now, so that it is written into the record, and Members can consult it later on. In that way, everyone ought to be clear—both yourselves and members of the public with an interest who are watching—how we intend to proceed with a Bill that is large in extent and quite complex in some of the areas it addresses. Now I have said all of that, we will begin our line-by-line consideration of the Bill.

Clause 1 - Placement of looked after children with prospective adopters

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I beg to move amendment 3, in clause 1, page 1, line 8, after ‘(9A)’, insert ‘Subject to subsection (9B)’.

Dai Havard (Labour, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 11, in clause 1, page 1, line 9, at end insert

‘and are satisfied that a placement falling within paragraph (a) of subsection (6) would not be consistent with C’s welfare’.

Amendment 12, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, leave out ‘(7) to (9)’ and insert ‘(7)(c), (8)(a) and (9)’.

Amendment 5, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, at end add—

‘(9B) Before considering placing a child with a foster parent who has been approved as a prospective adopter, the authority must consider as part of the permanency plan for C, placement with carers who could become the child’s permanent carers where this is in C’s best interests.’.

New clause 4—Continuity in the arrangements for the people with whom a child is to live—

‘(1) In section 1 of the Children Act 1989, insert the following after subsection (2A)—

“(2B) In any family proceedings, unless the contrary is shown, a court is to presume that continuity in the arrangements relating to the person or people with whom a child is to live will further the child’s welfare.”.

(2) In section 22 of the Children Act 1989, insert the following after subsection (3)—

“(3ZA) A local authority is to presume, unless the contrary is shown, that continuity in the arrangements relating to the person or people with whom a child looked after by that local authority is to live will help to fulfil its duty under subsection (3)(a) to safeguard and promote the welfare of that child.”.’.

New clause 11—Pre-proceedings work with families—

‘(1) Section 47 of the Children Act 1989 (Local authority’s duty to investigate) is amended as follows—

(2) After subsection (12) insert—

“(13) Where, as a result of complying with this section, a local authority concludes that a child may need to become looked after in order to safeguard and promote the child’s welfare, the local authority must, unless emergency action is required,—

(a) identify, and consider the willingness and suitability of any relative, friend or other person connected with the child, to care for them as an alternative to them becoming looked after by unrelated carers;

(b) offer the child’s parents or other person with parental responsibility a family group conference to develop a plan which will safeguard and promote the child’s welfare.”.’.

This group of amendments and new clauses broadly relates to continuity of care and efforts to keep looked-after children within their biological family.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

Amendments 5, 11 and 12 and new clause 11, which stand in my name, are designed to ensure that we do not tilt the playing field against the right placements and long-term outcomes for individual children. They would ensure that all placement options are considered, not just one.

Fostering to adopt, like concurrent planning, is an important form of care. The Opposition agree with the Minister that providing stability for children is an urgent priority. In fact, I go further and concur with the view of Barnardo’s that stability should be seen in its own right as a safeguarding factor for children in the care system. For some children, fostering to adopt placements can be a very effective way to provide a loving home as soon as possible. No Government should overlook the importance of that. The previous Government placed a great deal of emphasis on the importance of not moving children frequently in the work done through the social exclusion unit, which was in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. That work had important implications for children and teenagers. Many children can and do overcome the harm that is done to them when they are moved too frequently in their early years; we should never forget that, but we should seek to prevent the problem at all costs.

Other forms of care, however, might be right for a child. I agree with the sentiment that the Minister has expressed that there should be no hierarchy of placement. I am concerned that asking social workers to consider fostering to adopt in primary legislation without mentioning other forms of care risks giving it undue prominence over those other forms of care. In the words of Action for Children, we need

“a system which has at its heart a drive to find the right placement for each individual child, rather than creating a false hierarchy of care—where adoption is interpreted as being the preferred care option.”

That is important because evidence suggests that when similar groups of children are considered, there is no difference in outcomes for children in foster care or special guardianship. Some of the amendments before the Committee on kinship care relate strongly to special guardianship.

In practice, I share the concerns expressed by charities and by Nagalro—the professional association for children’s guardians, family court advisers and independent social workers—that the clause could divert attention away from investment and consideration for other forms of care. It is important that the Committee considers that, given that 75% of children in the care system are currently in foster care, 4% are placed for adoption and 9% are in residential care. The figures are so stark that, even if Ministers’ efforts to increase the numbers of adoptions are dramatically successful, the fact will remain that the vast majority of children are in other forms of care. If the real world, practical impact is to place undue emphasis on and to direct scarce resources towards fostering for adoption and adoption placements, many of those children will have a problem. In the words of the Who Cares? Trust,

“the Government’s current focus creates a grave risk that, in a drive to increase the number of children who are adopted, policy making for children in care in England is becoming the poor relation. The logical consequence is that local services will disproportionately divert their focus and resources towards a minority of the children in their care, leaving others at risk of continued poor outcomes.”

That is important because, as we heard in the oral evidence sessions, fostering to adopt placements are labour intensive, like the concurrent planning placements before them. That worries me because, at a time when social workers are under pressure, it diverts attention away not just from children in the care system, but from pre-proceedings work with birth families. My amendments would address that.

The Association of Professors of Social Work says that

“there is a risk that the emphasis on adoption will undermine the progress that has been made in recent years in providing stability and a sense of belonging in foster families. This will especially be the case if at a time of reduced resources (including a shortage of experienced social workers) these are diverted towards adoption which will always be the placement of choice for only a minority of care entrants. A very small number of children may benefit, but the welfare of a very large number of children may well suffer.”

The Committee should consider that carefully in relation to the clause and my proposals. I also share the view of the House of Lords Select Committee on Adoption Legislation that enabling children, where possible, to stay with their birth families is incredibly important to the children and their wider family, notwithstanding the fact that, tragically, for some children, that will not be the right option, because it is not safe and not consistent with their welfare.

Adoption is the most radical form of interference in family life. The UN guidelines on alternative care for children make that clear:

“The family being the fundamental group of society and the natural environment for the growth, well-being and protection of children, efforts should primarily be directed to enabling the child to remain in or return to the care of his or her parents, or when appropriate, other close family members.”

The pendulum should not be allowed to swing too far. Children’s relationships with their birth families matter, but the clause worries me in that respect because it specifically exempts the local authority from having to give preference to a relative, friend or person connected with the child, as required by section 22C(7) of the Children Act 1989. The clause asks the local authority to consider a fostering to adopt placement, perhaps from pre-birth or the first week after the child is born. As a result, there is little time to consider kinship care arrangements.

Grandparents Plus says that even in the current system, it is common for wider family to be overlooked. If the parents are considered to be dysfunctional, it is assumed that the grandparents will be too, and the paternal family are almost invisible—they are simply not considered. We know that kinship care has important benefits for children. Grandparents Plus is concerned that grandparents are not always given the prominence that they deserve in the current system. It is concerned that there is no duty to consider grandparents in the clause, and that the situation may get worse, not better, as a result.

The clause as drafted is very different from the Government’s original proposals, which envisaged that children would be placed with prospective adopters when the local authority was satisfied that the child ought to be placed for adoption, and when it had identified suitable adopters who were also approved as foster carers, but when the adoption order had not yet been granted by the court. Many people thought that was a sensible proposal, including the House of Lords Select Committee. The clause is very different, bringing forward the point at which the duty on local authorities to consider placing a child in a fostering for adoption placement begins, and widening the application of the scheme to children for whom adoption is only being considered as an option.

I agree with the Children’s Commissioner for England that such an approach risks pre-empting a court decision. It is hard to see how a court could overturn a decision once the child has become settled, because by then it would be contrary to the child’s welfare to break those attachments. The Association of Professors of Social Work points out that very few children who are placed into concurrent planning arrangements return to their birth parents, so it is not hard to envisage a similar situation with fostering to adopt placements. The Family Rights Group is right to argue that that represents a fundamental shift in the relationship between family and the state.

The clause removes an important safeguard. On Second Reading, the Minister said that fostering to adopt placements were subject to section 22C of the Children Act 1989, which requires the local authority to give preference to a relative, friend or someone known to the child, and to place the child within the local authority area, but the Bill exempts the local authority from those safeguards. The Lords Committee raised serious concerns about the clause and says that it may breach articles 6 and 8 of the European convention on human rights—the right to a fair hearing and the right to family life—because it does not give the birth family a proper chance of being reunited with their child.

Andy Sawford (Labour, Corby)

Has my hon. Friend considered the evidence from the Coram foundation that it is preferable to place a child within the wider family in most cases, as is allowed for under the Children Act? Does she share my hope that the Bill will allow for that in future?

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

Coram has been incredibly helpful in the debate; it has significant experience and expertise in dealing with children who are placed in concurrent planning arrangements. It is striking that the voluntary adoption agencies speak with one voice on the matter: they believe that pre-proceedings work with families is very important. I share the concerns of the Lords Committee that the proposals might not give birth families a proper chance at reunification and could result in the child being put into the wrong placement. I have seen for myself the vulnerability of some of the parents in court proceedings. I sat in the family courts for several days, where I saw a combination of learning difficulties, disability, poverty, domestic violence and mental health problems.

Andrea Leadsom (Conservative, South Northamptonshire)

Does the hon. Lady agree that parents who may themselves be emotionally disturbed in some way often need support to be able to meet their baby’s attachment needs, in other words, to help them become good enough parents? Does she agree that we could go further in enabling that support to be made available?

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I am grateful to the hon. Lady because she highlights an important point. This is happening at a time when families are under pressure and their support is being squeezed. I say that not to make a party political point—we are all aware of the economic realities—but because it is something that concerns me. We need to get much better at supporting families to stay together. We should support mothers in particular, but also fathers, so that they become their families’ best teachers.

Andrea Leadsom (Conservative, South Northamptonshire)

Actually, there could be a cost saving to the state, because the cost of taking children into care far outweighs the cost of supporting them to stay with their birth families.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

That is very helpful. For 10 years before I entered Parliament I worked with children and young people in the voluntary sector, including many children who, for whatever reason, were not able to live with their birth families. It was still a source of ongoing pain for them, even when it was the right decision. The hon. Lady is right that there could be a cost saving, but there could also be an emotional saving.

I was talking about the vulnerability of some of the parents whom I saw in the family courts system. In the light of that, I am concerned about how the clause—however right the intention—will work in practice. I am particularly concerned about instances when a mother or father agrees that their child can be accommodated under section 20 of the Children Act 1989, when there is no court process and no legal aid. It is often the lawyer who explains to the parents the significance of the decisions. I have seen the power of how that works, and what a good lawyer can do to help parents come to terms with the decision that is made about the child. Even when the right decision for the child is to take them away from their birth parents, it is incredibly important for the ongoing relationship of the parents and the child that the parents have the opportunity to understand and come to terms with the decision. I am not convinced that the parents will understand the implication of allowing a child to be accommodated under section 20 and put in a fostering to adopt placement, particularly given the concerns that the Children’s Commissioner for England raised about whether that might pre-empt the court process.

The Family Rights Group gave two scenarios, which are worth the Committee’s consideration. The picture it painted is not unlikely, in my view, given the cases that I have seen in the family courts. The first example it gave is a mother who could be asked to consent to her new born baby being placed with prospective adopters on a temporary foster care basis, even though her formal consent to placement for adoption could not lawfully be given until her baby is six weeks old. Such consent to placement for adoption is valid only if it is witnessed by a Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service officer, who is required to encourage the mother to take independent legal advice before signing. However, that process does not apply when the mother is being asked to consent to section 20 accommodation in a fostering to adopt placement.

The second example the Family Rights Group gave is similar—although slightly more extreme—to a case I have seen. A parent might feel coerced into agreeing to their child being looked after by the local authority. It cited the case of re CA—a baby—in which the baby was removed immediately after birth under a section 20 agreement:

“The mother knew of the local authority’s plan beforehand and had ‘demonstrated submission but not consent to it’…She had initially refused to consent to the section 20 agreement…but when approached again, after being medicated with morphine, she consented.”

That concerns me, not solely because of the rights of birth parents, but because of the rights of children to have a decent chance to live with their birth families, if that is in their best interests. The clause, as drafted, does not enable that. It gives undue prominence to one form of care over others. In saying that, I echo concerns raised by the House of Lords Select Committee on Adoption Legislation, Grandparents Plus, the Family Rights Group, the Who Cares? Trust, the Adolescent and Children’s Trust, the NSPCC, the Children’s Commissioner for England and the Fostering Network, among others. There are families today who live with the scars of bad adoption decisions. The clause runs a serious risk of recreating that pain for another generation.

It is also worth noting that there is a proposal in the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Bill that takes a different approach. The safeguards that I mentioned relating to birth families and other arrangements in section 22C of the Children Act 1989 apply before a fostering to adopt placement. That is why I asked the Minister to reconsider the wording of the clause, especially the decision to exempt subsections (7) to (9) of section 22C.

It is also worth considering the Minister’s explanation, which was sent to the Committee yesterday in a series of policy statements. He explains that when the local authority is considering a fostering to adopt placement, the duty to give preference to a kinship care placement is disapplied. The statement goes on to explain:

“This is because where adoption is a realistic possibility or probability for the child, it cannot be assumed in every case that keeping the child within the wider family is necessarily the most appropriate option.”

It continues:

“We should be clear, however, that the intention is not to displace the duty to consider kinship placements, and local authorities are required, before they place a child in a fostering for adoption placement, to have considered whether a placement with relatives would be the most appropriate placement for the child and have given preference to that placement if that is the most appropriate placement available.”

The policy statement goes on to articulate that some more. I will spare the Committee a reading of the full section, but it is worth having a look at it. If anything, it makes the situation less clear, not clearer. If the intention is not to displace the duty to consider kinship placements, that should be clear on the face of the Bill. It would be welcomed not just by the Opposition but by children’s organisations more widely and many others. That is also why I would like to see more work done with the birth family pre-proceedings, which is the purpose of new clause 11.

Lucy Powell (Labour, Manchester Central)

Going back to the point that my hon. Friend was making about kinship carers and the additional guidance that we received from the Department yesterday, is it not also the case that in many scenarios, the potential kinship carer does not want to be considered for adoption for various complex reasons within the family, but is prepared to provide a permanent placement for the child, which could be the best option for them in the long run? Where a local authority considers that a birth parent is unsuitable in the long term and the child therefore needs a more permanent care scenario, kinship care is often still the best option, rather than permanent adoption elsewhere.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

That raises two points. The first is how important it is to ensure that there is no hierarchy of care. As I said in my opening remarks, for some children, long-term foster placements, special guardianship arrangements or even residence may be the right response.

The other point is that we must ensure that the speed with which it is done and the safeguards built into the system are strong. One point made by many organisations that have discussed the issue with us is that members of the wider family may not come forward immediately to care for the child. They may be deterred from doing so by a sense of loyalty to the birth parents, and they may not want to offer themselves in case it increases the likelihood that the child will be taken away from the birth parents. It is incredibly important that we do not rush into decisions about permanence for children before those decisions have been properly thought through. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those comments.

As I said, I would like to see more work done with birth families pre-proceedings. That is the purpose of new clause 11. The Bill as a whole places more pressure on pre-proceedings work. We do not disagree. Certainly, in principle, we support the notion, as powerfully stated by David Norgrove, that more work should be done before a case comes to court so that the decision is not only right for the child but can be made much more quickly. However, I am concerned about the pressure that that places on pre-proceedings work in the context of the clause and of huge cuts to children’s services, which we heard in oral evidence have reached 40% to 50% in some areas. Nearly eight in 10 social workers now say that their case loads are unmanageable. In evidence to the Committee, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services indicated that that would work in some areas, but might be problematic in others where work needs to be done pre-proceedings and the infrastructure is not necessarily there.

Children should not face a postcode lottery when it comes to the right decision about a permanent placement for them. What is the Minister planning to do to address the pressure on children’s services in the light of the clause, and bearing in mind the intensity of fostering for adoption placements and the amount of pressure that it places on the children’s work force? We have a very short time to get it right for children.

I am also concerned, as I mentioned to the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire, about the measure in the context of support for families being stripped away. We have seen huge cuts to the early intervention grant, which was an important source of support and intervention for families in stress. Recently, the Minister decided to take another £150 million more from that grant to pay for the adoption reforms. We welcome the adoption reforms, but surely the Minister can understand why I and so many children’s organisations are concerned about giving a child the ability to remain in their birth family where that is in their interests.

It tilts the balance away from the birth family if support is not there. Our aim is simply to ensure that, whatever the right form of care for a child, we invest to help them receive it. In the words of the Lords Select Committee on Adoption Legislation:

“All routes to permanence merit equal attention and investment...It is permanence that is important, rather than the particular ‘type’ of permanence that is chosen.”

I hope that the Minister will seek to allay some of the concerns that I have raised today.

Andrea Leadsom (Conservative, South Northamptonshire)

I am grateful for the opportunity to make a few short remarks on the support that is or is not given to birth families before a decision is taken on whether to allow their child to be adopted. As the hon. Member for Wigan said, very often when parents are before a judge who is making a decision on whether to take their child away, they sit there, incredibly vulnerable themselves, in the dock, perhaps not even fully understanding what is happening to them. With more than 13 years’ experience in parent-infant psychotherapy and the support that can be given to families who are struggling to form a secure bond with their infants, I know there is a lot more that the state could do to help the small number of babies—about 700 a year—who are born already on the child protection list. In other words, social services, for various reasons, are aware that there is likely to be a problem with a child before it is even born.

It ought to be possible, even as a pilot scheme, for resources to be made available to support the mother through her pregnancy and beyond so that she can understand what it takes to be a good enough parent and spare her—and by extension, the taxpayer—the emotional devastation and financial cost of so many children who come into the care system. Unfortunately, as we know, they have generally poor outcomes in terms of their educational and lifestyle achievements. The cost to the taxpayer from criminality, drug misuse, homelessness and mental health problems are enormous and often linked to attachment problems stemming back to babyhood. I have not tabled an amendment at this point.

Lucy Powell (Labour, Manchester Central)

I congratulate the hon. Lady on her long campaigning on this issue. She raised important points during the oral evidence sessions, and I welcomed that. I strongly support what she is advocating. My only question is about the resourcing of such a scheme, which I absolutely agree would more than pay for itself in the long run. What we are seeing at the moment with the removal of grants from the early intervention funding, and other support coming away from early intervention and children’s services, is the opposite in terms of resourcing. Perhaps she will implore her Front-Bench colleagues to look again at the resourcing of some of those important pilot projects.

Andrea Leadsom (Conservative, South Northamptonshire)

The hon. Lady makes a good point, but as chairman of the all-party group on Sure Start children’s centres, I genuinely believe that children’s centres remain well resourced, albeit at a lower level, as is the case across the public sector. I would call for more focus on the perinatal period.

About 700 babies are born on to the child protection list each year, so it is a neat, enclosed group with which to carry out a pilot whereby talking therapies and psychological therapeutic support are made available to pregnant mums, where there are severe concerns about the likelihood of their being able to take on a nurturing and caring role for their baby. If we could ensure that some of those 700 babies each year do not have to be taken away from their family and put into a far more expensive system, with potentially far worse outcomes for those children, it would be very worth while. Because of the relative smallness of that group, the impact would be small both on the public purse and on the limited resources available to tackle such issues.

I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to consider whether, as well as introducing this important Bill, there is something we can do to ensure that we give parents about whom we know there are concerns the right amount of support to give them the chance to become good enough parents, thereby introducing not only the stick but the carrot.

Bill Esterson (Labour, Sefton Central)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Havard, and I look forward to doing so over the next few weeks.

I shall speak to new clause 4, which is about the desirability of continuity of arrangements for the people with whom a child is to live. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan said, at times in this country we have a false hierarchy of care in which adoption is seen all too often as the gold standard, followed by fostering, followed by children’s homes, with other forms of care, such as kinship care or special guardianship, sometimes not considered at all. The reality for children going through the care system is that what is most important is what is in their interests, depending on their needs. Over the years, that has sometimes been overlooked and neglected, in the same way as the children themselves have been.

My new clause would promote the importance to children of security, stability and the opportunity to form stable attachments, especially to vulnerable children who end up in the care system through no fault of their own, many of whom have had the most appalling start in life. The new clause is about the primacy of children’s needs and rights. On Second Reading, I was pleased to hear the former Minister, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who is one of the Bill’s main architects, say that the primacy of the child is protected throughout the Bill.

Pat Glass (Labour, North West Durham)

My hon. Friend is a fellow member of the Select Committee on Education, which considered this in great detail as part of its child protection review. I know we are talking about younger children here, but one of the findings of that review was that far too many children, particularly older children, are left in neglectful and damaging situations for far too long, while adults sort out adults’ problems.

Bill Esterson (Labour, Sefton Central)

My hon. Friend worked with children for many years and has a wealth of experience. I am sure that we will hear more from her in the coming weeks and that the Government will listen carefully to what she says. She has far more background and expertise than perhaps all other the Committee members put together. I hope she is not embarrassed by my praise, which she deserves.

I am glad that my hon. Friend mentioned older children and the damage that is done to them. Last Friday, I met two men in their 30s who are in prison. One is serving a life sentence for being involved in a murder, and the other is serving a much shorter sentence for being involved in burglary. I went to see them because both were in care when they were children, and both were horrendously abused and neglected. One was in the Bryn Estyn children’s home in north Wales. I will not put on the record the graphic account they gave me, but suffice it to say it was an appalling record of maltreatment by adults for many years. It was shocking to hear of the severe mental health problems those two men are suffering from, 20 or 25 years after the event. One was severely brain-damaged by the assaults that he experienced in care.

We no longer have Bryn Estyn, and children’s homes where there is daily abuse of the kind that was going on in north Wales, but we know that there are still problems in children’s homes. There have been recent scandals, such as the one in Rochdale. As my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham said, there is still a big problem. If we look at the results, people in their 30s who suffered that abuse are now in the criminal justice system. They are violent offenders who know the damage that they have caused to people in their lives, and who understand what has happened to them. The way that they were treated when they were children led them into a life of crime, because the only people who showed an interest in them were career criminals who took them under their wing when they left care or ran away from the abuse they were experiencing.

There is no suggestion that things are as bad now as they were then, but an awful lot in our care system needs to be improved so that young people do not end up in prison, with mental health problems, with no qualifications, unable to get jobs, and finding it almost impossible to form stable relationships as they grow into adulthood. It was a troubling experience for me to meet those young men, and it was a salutary reminder, as we move to the debate stage of the Committee, of what can happen if we do not get the care system right for young people. That is why I thought it important to put on record what I found when I met those two men.

If we start with the end in mind, it may give us some clues about what needs to happen if we are to avoid the wrong end, and to ensure the best possible outcome for children who go through the care system. We need continuity, which is why new clause 4 is important. My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan referred to concerns that fostering to adopt could unintentionally do the opposite of what is hoped and expected of it. We certainly need to get it right as far as possible to ensure that children form attachments and have stability as soon as possible once their family is identified as having problems and they are taken into care. The submissions we have received tell us that fostering to adopt should certainly be considered, but it needs to be done with great care. We have to get it absolutely right.

We had some very good evidence sessions last week. A number of comments were made about the value of fostering to adopt, but also about how it might be improved. Kevin Williams of TACT said that he would like foster carers, particularly those with permanent placements, to be considered for adoption—that would be a way of improving adoption. He said:

“There is a missing part of the Bill”

in which

“foster carers for children who are currently in foster placements”

could convert

“to adoptive placements”.––[Official Report, Children and Families Public Bill Committee, 5 March 2013; c. 21, Q48.]

I mentioned the welfare of the child being paramount, and that is exactly what Dr Homden spoke about in the evidence we heard from Coram. She said that

“the decision-making process…is often elongated,”

and can

“impact on the welfare of the child negatively, even if the child is technically safe. The child’s other experiences in terms of multiple placements or the level of contact may continue to be harmful.”—[Official Report, Children and Families Public Bill Committee, 5 March 2013; c. 23, Q54.]

That is why it is so important that decisions are made in a timely way, rather than too speedily. Those are some of the concerns that show why we must get this absolutely right.

Both TACT and Coram mentioned concurrent planning and made the point that it has been very successful historically; it shows how a balanced approach can be taken. Adoption can be considered in a foster placement at the same time that final decisions are being taken about the options mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan—options to do with kinship care or the birth family—before they are dismissed out of hand. At all times, the long-term interests of the child are put first.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

My hon. Friend prompts me to make a point that I forgot to make earlier. Under the new legal aid rules, a family member who wants to apply to court for a residence or special guardianship order to take on the child can apply for funding only if they can show evidence of child abuse, unless there are existing care proceedings to which they are, or will be, a party. That causes me concern, because if they come forward at a later stage and work has not already been done with the wider family to see whether there is somebody willing to take the child on, they will not be eligible for legal aid, except in child abuse cases, and even where they are eligible, it will be means and merits-tested. If the child is already in a foster for adoption placement, does my hon. Friend agree that a family member might be refused on merits grounds, because they have little chance of success, which will make it even more difficult for the child to be considered for placement with the wider family, and to have the continuity that he talks about?

Bill Esterson (Labour, Sefton Central)

That is an important point. My experience has been that in financially constrained times—we have had financially constrained times in social care for a very long time; it is not a new problem, although it has got a lot worse in the last couple of years and will continue to worsen—decisions are often taken on the basis of financial resources. One of the problems with that is that the cheaper option is not always the option that is in the best interests of the child. I am keen for us to take the opportunity that the Bill gives us of ensuring that the primacy of the child trumps absolutely everything, including short-term financial constraints.

Everyone on the Committee would agree that we want to put the needs of the child first, but we must also consider the long-term financial costs. I mentioned the two men who are in prison because of the human misery for them and their victims. They are victims, but they also have victims of their own. There is the sheer cost of people committing crimes and ending up in prison, and of the whole criminal justice process. The cost of getting it wrong far outweighs the cost of getting it right, so my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan is absolutely correct to make that point.

I looked at the figures on Friday: there were 84,500 prisoners in this country on Friday afternoon, and about 75,000 young people and children in care. It struck me that those are very large numbers, and very significant amounts of money are involved both in keeping those 84,500 in prison and in getting the services and support right for those 75,000 children in care.

Charlie Elphicke (Conservative, Dover)

The hon. Gentleman is speaking movingly and knowledgably. As I understand it, his new clause 4 would put greater emphasis on continuity of care. One of my concerns is that the number of looked-after children has been growing, but the educational outcomes are not great, and the criminal outcomes are not great. We do not want looked-after children to stay looked-after children; we want them to move into a more traditional type of loving, single-bond setting, do we not? Is it not preferable to get looked-after children into a more stable family or fostering-type setting?

Bill Esterson (Labour, Sefton Central)

Foster children are looked-after children, of course. The term “looked-after children” covers those in foster or residential care, and some who remain within the family are regarded as looked-after children by local authorities. The hon. Gentleman’s point is important, because we must understand that this is about what is in the best interests of children in the long term to give them the best possible outcomes.

The hon. Gentleman mentions the lack of qualifications of children in the care system. He is quite right, but it does not necessarily follow that getting children back to birth families ensures improved qualifications. Sadly, when children who have been in care go back to birth families, they all too often return to care, and there is evidence that that process is far more damaging than staying in care all along. Judging what is in the best interests of the child is always a very fine balance, which is one of the challenges that those working with children have to make. It is a challenge for social workers, the courts and those taking on the responsibility of caring for children.

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman made that point, but the most important thing is the long-term interests of children. I tabled new clause 4 because long-term foster care is often in their best interests. For example, for some children who want longer-term contact with their birth families, the best place to have that is in foster care. I mentioned the gold standard of adoption at the start of my speech. We need to move away from regarding adoption as the gold standard. For some children with good, long-term, experienced foster carers, that is the best option. For some in a good residential children’s home, that is the best option. For many children and young people, when their birth parents cannot care for them in the long term, the best arrangement is to be brought up by kinship carers or friends; hundreds of thousands of children are informally brought up by friends and family, outside the children in care formal arrangements.

I want to turn back to last week’s evidence from TACT and the rationale behind the new clause. Kevin Williams told us that he

“would like local authorities to be given a power to make permanent placements in foster care for children. In Scotland, there is the permanence order, which I understand is difficult in the English legislative framework, but we would like to see a similar order that would empower foster carers to take on a full-time, permanent legal responsibility. That could be something along the lines of special guardianship, but the difficulty with special guardianship and residence orders is the loss of support”—

that comes back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan about financial matters—

“both the financial support that is awarded to foster carers, and the ongoing practical support. We think that the Bill is a missed opportunity to secure permanence for children, not just through adoption, but through other legal means.”––[Official Report, Children and Families Public Bill Committee, 5 March 2013; c. 20, Q46.]

The key point is the importance of permanence, continuity and stability to the formation of attachments. The lack of attachments often leads to insecurity later in life, which causes a lack of confidence and an inability to concentrate in school. Behavioural issues sometimes emerge when children have been neglected or have faced difficulties, particularly in their early years, and they have a knock-on effect by making it hard to get qualifications and a job, which might lead to problems such as homelessness and mental health difficulties. My new clause is an attempt to say that whatever setting is decided to be in the interests of children, permanence is important and should be a key criterion in any decision.

The evidence we heard last week and the written evidence emphasise the importance of getting fostering to adopt right. Concurrent planning has been successful over many years. Good arrangements are already being made and there is much that can be done to improve permanence. According to some of the evidence, if the decision to foster to adopt is taken too early, there is a danger that opportunities will be missed, such as with relatives, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan mentioned. Many of our contributors asked us to consider whether adoption should be approved as the right route for children before moving to foster to adopt arrangements, and that important point certainly should be considered.

Above all, I hope that the Minister will take on board the need to get things right for the child, first and foremost, at all times. I know he has said that before, and I do not for one moment doubt his sincerity, but we need to take that on board and ensure that the interests of the child are put above everything else. These good ideas should be considered in balance. The key is balance between all the different options, while ensuring that the child’s interests are put first at all times. Decisions must be taken in a timely way, not because there has been a long-term problem of a lack of children going to adoption and costs going up.

Charlie Elphicke (Conservative, Dover)

Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that the voice of the child is also important? In evidence last week, Dr Morgan said that among children who were surveyed there

“is very strong support for fostering for adoption…The reason why children are keen on fostering for adoption is that they see it as a trial run for adoption—a trial period. That is an important concept, because there are debates around whether or not fostering for adoption might almost pre-empt the later adoptive decision.”––[Official Report, Children and Families Public Bill Committee, 7 March 2013; c. 110, Q235.]

Bill Esterson (Labour, Sefton Central)

When the Education Committee held a meeting with some children in care, every single one of them said that fostering was the right option for them.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

The hon. Member for Dover is completely right to say that we should take the views of children into account. The crucial point about the evidence that children gave to Dr Roger Morgan was that the proposal put to them was the Government’s earlier proposal, whereby a decision had already been made and the social worker was satisfied that the child ought to be placed for adoption, not that they were merely being considered for adoption. Children also had concerns about what might happen if the adoption placement turned out not to be the right one and broke down, as they said in evidence to the Select Committee.

Bill Esterson (Labour, Sefton Central)

I thank my hon. Friend for that clarification—she found the relevant section of the evidence sessions faster than I did. She is quite right that the rights of children are fantastically important.

The voice of a child in their early years is difficult to understand, which is why it is important that there are people to interpret what children are feeling. However, it is important that we listen to older children and children who have been through the care system, and I have mentioned the example of two prisoners. It is important to listen to children who have been through, or are still in, the care system.

The hon. Member for Dover reminded me of the importance of leaving care services being right. Again, we have to listen to children about that, because the issue is about not just the early years or foster care while children are in school, but what happens after that—it is the whole continuous process.

I have mentioned children’s homes and the problems in Rochdale and elsewhere in the country. This is about what is happening to older children and young people who are not in good placements in children’s homes. We must remember the damage that is done in that stage of life and the support that is needed for young people leaving care and entering adulthood.

To return to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham, far too many young people are not receiving support in their mid to late teens. I was talking yesterday to a colleague who accompanies the police in Greater Manchester, and they pick up the same young people and take them back to the same children’s homes night after night, because that is the stage that has been reached. Staff are neither experienced nor qualified enough to be able to do any more than what they are doing. That is another example of the lack of quality in the false hierarchy of care that we described earlier. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Dover for his intervention because, yes, we need to listen to the voice of the child.

David Simpson (DUP, Upper Bann)

As someone who has been through the adoption process and has adopted children over the years, is there not a fundamental problem due to the shortage of adoptive and foster parents? If we address that, surely a lot of the issues will take care of themselves.

Bill Esterson (Labour, Sefton Central)

I had not realised that the hon. Gentleman was an adoptive parent. There are several of us in this room; I have also been through the process. I agree with him, from personal experience, that the shortage of adoptive parents and foster carers is a problem, as I think we are short by 7,000 foster carers nationally.

When I talk to other adoptive parents and foster carers, the question of recruitment—we will come on to that when we consider other parts of the Bill, but I will briefly discuss this—

Dai Havard (Labour, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney)

We are on context at the moment.

Bill Esterson (Labour, Sefton Central)

We are staying just about within scope, I understand.

I and others—the point was mentioned in evidence last week—are struck by the way in which adoption and fostering are sometimes presented to prospective adopters and foster carers in a rather optimistic light. The fact that children sometimes have severe and complex needs—and sometimes unpredictable needs—is overlooked. There is a lack of realism and honesty in the way in which we recruit for fostering and adoption.

Greater honesty and openness are needed about what it really can mean to look after vulnerable and often damaged children who have been neglected and sometimes abused. Sometimes we do not even know about that, because if things happen to children before they are able to speak, they cannot tell us what occurred, and sometimes all we see is very strange behaviour. That is extremely difficult for a prospective adoptive parent or foster carer to deal with.

I completely agree with the hon. Member for Upper Bann that it is important that we concentrate on recruiting foster carers and adoptive parents, but—we will return to this issue, so this is all I will say for now—we need more honesty. We need to say to the people coming forward to look after some of the most vulnerable children in our society, on behalf of us all, “There is a real challenge for you here, and the nature of it is sometimes complex.” As one of those who gave evidence to us last week said, social workers will say that they told the adopter what the child’s background was, but sometimes the adopter will later say, “But no one ever told us about what this child had been through.” Alternatively, they might have been told, but chose not to listen, and therefore did not understand quite what they were taking on. Somehow we must have greater honesty, to which I think people will respond well, and I hope that the Minister will take that point on board when we come to the relevant provisions of the Bill. I will conclude my remarks there before I wander on to territory that will be covered later.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

As has been articulated by other members of the Committee, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Havard, on this balmy spring morning. It was welcome that the hon. Member for Wigan set a thoughtful and balanced tone for the debate. We have had a wide-ranging discussion about a number of points that touch specifically on clause 1—and, on occasion, about some that go a little beyond it. Nevertheless, it is important that we debate such issues in Committee.

Before I deal with some of the specific points raised by hon. Members on both sides of the Committee, I want to explain a little about our adoption reform programme and how clause 1 is an important element of that. As many hon. Members will have heard me say, perhaps on too many occasions, getting the best possible care for those children who are unable, for whatever reason and for however long, to live with their birth parents is one of the state’s most important responsibilities. The most appropriate form of care will depend on the needs and circumstances of individual children, and the clause does nothing to undermine the principle in the Children Act 1989 that the paramount consideration must always be the welfare of the child.

However, we know—I know from my own family’s experiences, and we have heard today about others’ experiences as well—that those children who come into care at a young age and are placed swiftly with loving, stable adoptive families can go on to enjoy some of the best chances in life. There is overwhelming evidence of harm being done to vulnerable children due to inexcusable drift and delay in care and adoption services. That is why, alongside our work to improve outcomes for children in care, the reform of the adoption system is a major priority.

In March 2012, my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, published “An Action Plan for Adoption: Tackling Delay”, which set out the steps to be taken to streamline the adoption system so that permanent, loving families could be found quickly and effectively for more children. Working closely with local authorities, voluntary adoption agencies and other national adoption organisations, we have made good progress with implementing the action plan through the creation of the adoption gateway, the reform of regulations to create more streamlined processes and the publication of transparent scorecard data about timeliness. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Wigan for voicing her support for the generality of our wider adoption reforms.

In the action plan and subsequent policy documents, we outlined specific proposals for tackling delay and improving the involvement of adopters in different parts of the system. Many of those proposals require changes to primary legislation, and the Bill’s provisions on adoption will make significant improvements to the existing legal framework, particularly the Adoption and Children Act 2002. Alongside our other reforms, the changes will help to reduce the delays faced by children needing adoption so that their lives can start to improve much sooner than at present, and they will also create a system that is more focused on the needs of children, with more active involvement among adopters.

In the action plan, we have sought to encourage practices that are aimed at the early placement of children with foster carers who are also approved adopters, such as concurrent planning. We heard from Coram about its successful programme of concurrent planning and about its success rate with stable and enduring adoptive placements. However, we know that only a handful of local authorities are using such practices, which is why we have made a commitment to introduce legislation to make it easier for local authorities to approve prospective adopters temporarily as foster carers—it is important that we emphasise that the placements are with them as foster carers. We will shortly lay regulations before Parliament that do just that, which will mean that local authorities will be able to look to the pool of approved prospective adopters for carers who could foster a child and then become their permanent carers if the court makes a placement order. Local authorities will be able to approve them rapidly, for a named child, in recognition of the training process they have already gone through, supplemented as necessary so that they are able to meet the requirements of foster care.

In the Prime Minister’s July announcement on early permanence, he said that we would legislate better to enable and encourage local authorities to place children earlier with carers who are likely to become their permanent carers. He outlined the concept of fostering for adoption, and we are not alone in believing that fostering for adoption will reduce the delay for children. Barnardo’s said that it

“welcomes the Government’s emphasis on reducing delay and achieving permanency in light of the impact permanent placement delay can have on child development and outcomes…We believe that ‘Fostering for Adoption’ could be an extremely effective model for reducing delay particularly for very young babies but perhaps not for older children.”

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services said:

“concurrent planning and fostering for adoption both provide ways of allowing the forming of attachments while decisions are being made, reducing one effect of delay.”

The hon. Member for Sefton Central made an important point about the development of secure attachments at the earliest possible moment.

Andrea Leadsom rose—

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

I suspect that my hon. Friend is about to make a similar point.

Andrea Leadsom (Conservative, South Northamptonshire)

I commend my hon. Friend in the strongest possible terms for the very sensible proposal of fostering for adoption. We all want adults to bear the risks, not babies and young children. For too long, babies and young children have been pushed from pillar to post, while too much consideration has been given to the needs of the adults. To balance my earlier remarks about helping parents to become good enough parents, we need at the same time to focus on the best possible outcomes for infants and children.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s point. I suspect that no one in the room would disagree with the importance of putting the best interests of the child first in every decision that is made on their behalf.

On where the risk lies in such a placement, I met a couple in East Sussex who have gone through the process of fostering for adoption. They knew the risks that they were taking on, but nevertheless they understood the opportunity that they were giving to a child, who is now living with them permanently, and they were willing to take on the burden of that risk. I therefore do not subscribe to the view that no parents would be willing to take such a risk, because I have seen for myself that some are. I believe that the clause will enable others to feel more confident to come forward.

Bill Esterson (Labour, Sefton Central)

Yes, absolutely, prospective parents take the risk—it can be very damaging to adults—but the key thing is balance and ensuring that children are not put at the greater risk of breakdown. Ultimately, breakdown in placements causes one of the greatest amounts of damage to children. I am sure the Minister agrees, but perhaps he can explain how it could be avoided in his plans for fostering for adoption.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

The hon. Gentleman and I have exchanged views on many occasions and approach the issues from the same angle. Stability is a crucial element of a child’s potential for strong life chances moving into adulthood. It is important to re-emphasise what I have said about the fostering for adoption provisions within the Bill. The child is being placed not in an adopting placement, but in a fostering placement. That is one option for the placement of the child—the child will be given such a placement if it is deemed to be the most appropriate one. The risk, therefore, is not with the child, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire said a few moments ago, but with the couple or the individual taking on the role as the foster carer, or with approved prospective adopters. In such circumstances, the stability of the placement should not be affected.

Bill Esterson (Labour, Sefton Central)

I understand the point but, as we know from adoption placements that have sadly broken down, one of the most damaging things that can happen to children is if they believe that they are to be adopted and that they have a permanent family—their family for life—and it breaks down. My question is on how to minimise that risk—the proposal is otherwise hopeful, optimistic and sensible. Sometimes children think they are to be adopted for life but things do not work out. How can we ensure that the decision is not taken lightly, because taking it lightly runs a risk for the children?

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

The hon. Gentleman mentions adoption breakdown. Clearly, the worst possible outcome for any child whose plan is for adoption is a breakdown of the adoption placement after they have moved into it—the outcome for the child is over and above the outcome for the adoptive family—whether that happens in relation to a fostering for adoption placement or concurrent planning, by which there is a parallel assessment of potential rehabilitation back to the birth family. The work before an adoption order is made, and the support before, during and after the adoptive placement, are crucial in ensuring that the tools at the disposal of the adoptive parents are sufficient to deal with the challenging behaviour and other difficulties that children often bring with them because of their pre-care experience. We will come to that later in the Committee when we debate adoption support, but I am clear that we need to provide prospective adopters with as much information, guidance and support as possible from the start of their involvement with a child or children of whom they are prospective adopters.

Fostering for adoption gives increased opportunity to make those inquiries and to provide support, and for prospective adoptive parents to make those attachments at an earlier point. As many of the children who spoke to the children’s rights director have said, fostering for adoption is a way of ensuring that the placement will work. In some adoptive placements—as opposed to fostering for adoption placements—a child moves in with their adoptive family without having any of those experiences before the adoption is signed off. Fostering for adoption therefore gives an enhanced opportunity to address some of the problems the hon. Gentleman rightly raises with ensuring stability of adoption placements to avoid any possible breakdown in future.

That is why we are doing important research on why adoptions break down, on why there is such a discrepancy—from 3% to 30% of adoptive placements break down—and on why some placements are more successful than others. The research will help to determine how social workers and other agencies working with the family, particularly voluntary adoption agencies, which provide much of the great support on offer, arrange support around an adoptive family so that the chances of breakdown are minimised as much as possible.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way so many times. He mentions forming attachments, which I understand is a central part of the purpose of the fostering for adoption placement, but has not addressed my central concern. Clause 1 makes it clear that section 22C(7) to (9) of the Children Act 1989 does not apply. My concern is that bringing forward the point at which fostering for adoption placements are considered to before the decision on whether it is in the child’s best interests to be placed for adoption, and exempting the local authority from applying subsections (7) to (9), will leave the birth parent with very little opportunity to continue to have a meaningful relationship with the child. There is, for example, no longer a requirement to place the child in the local authority area, which will make it extremely difficult for their mother or father to travel to see them.

Surely it is not inconceivable to the Minister that the court would decide at a certain point that the child had formed the attachments he mentioned. Because the parent had not had the opportunity to see the child for some time, the child’s best interests would be tilted in favour of the fostering for adoption parents rather than the birth parents. Is that not somewhat wrong, especially given that the Bill provides safeguards to ensure the birth family still has an opportunity to have a meaningful relationship with the child until the local authority is satisfied that it is in the child’s best interests to be adopted?

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

The hon. Lady raises a number of points, and I will come to them in more detail later. However, let me pick up two now. On placement, there remains a duty under section 22 of the Act—this is covered right at the end of the policy statement provided earlier—for the local authority to consider all placement options, including kinship care, and to put the child in the most appropriate one. Each placement still has to be considered. Looking at the birth parents when a child has been taken into care will be the first preference. If a placement with them proves not to be a viable prospect for the child, the local authority will go on to look at the wider family and friends, and at the kinship care that may be on offer to the child. If it is clear at that stage that there is no viable placement for the child or children, the local authority will look at other options. The duty on the local authority to find the most appropriate placement for the child therefore remains. Fostering for adoption does not change that.

The hon. Lady made a point on a court making a decision further down the track when a child has been in a fostering for adoption placement. She asked whether that, in effect, forces the court’s hand because of the time the child has spent in its prospective adoptive placement. When that was put to the judiciary, who ultimately have to make a decision in the child’s best interests, they were absolutely clear—Lord Justice Munby was clear about this too—that they will not be fettered, that they will make a decision in the child’s best interests and that the child’s welfare will be the paramount consideration. The judiciary have to balance each child’s circumstances when making their decision, but we already have fostering for adoption and concurrent planning. We have a number of scenarios in which children are removed from their birth family and placed in a potential adoptive home at quite an early point in the process, but that has not led to courts making decisions that are not in the child’s best interests or that are not just. There is no evidence to suggest that anything different has happened in the past, and the judiciary are not suggesting anything different will happen in future.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I am grateful to the Minister, but the evidence suggests that it is extremely unusual for children in concurrent planning arrangements to be returned to their birth family. I should like him to look seriously at that matter again. I take his point about the judiciary, but real worries are being highlighted by experts such as the Children’s Commissioner for England that it will pre-empt the current process.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

As the hon. Lady knows, I do not plough on regardless. I am always happy to continue to listen to people’s views on such issues. However, the fact remains that, even in respect of cases when there is not concurrent planning or fostering for adoption but the child had been placed in foster care and the ultimate permanence plan for the child is for adoption, about 95% of cases are approved by the court when placement order applications are made by local authorities. That suggests to me that local authorities are not making such decisions lightly and that courts ensure that they consider all the evidence, as they must—otherwise they will be appealed against under article 6 or 8 of the European convention on human rights. I am satisfied that our approach will not interfere with those articles.

On hearing the placement order application, if parents do not consent to the making of the order, the court will consider whether to dispense with their consent. It can do so if it is satisfied that the welfare of the child requires it. The fostering for adoption clause will not change the process that the court has to go through, nor will it affect the process whereby the decision is made by the court to place the child for adoption.

I shall now try to make progress and get to the body of some of the amendments we are considering. I wish to make it clear—the matter was raised by several members of the Committee—that although we have started to make improvements to the adoption system, it does not mean we have lost sight of other important areas of care services for children. Social work reform is very much at the heart of trying to improve services for children who, for whatever reason, find themselves in the care system. We must bear in mind the £130 million in the social work reform and improvement programme through the improvement fund; our attempts to find new entry routes into social work and the step up to social work programme; the assessed and supported year in employment to improve the qualification and experience of newly qualified social workers; and our front-line approach to encourage the brightest and the best into social work.

Let us also consider the recruitment of the chief social worker, which we hope to be able to announce soon. That person will both be the champion of social workers and a challenger to raise standards across social work. The college of social work will also be launched as the voice of the profession and the body to help to drive improvement.

We have an ambitious programme for fostering and foster carers, which was set up by my predecessor in line with the fostering services programme to improve the recruitment and retention of foster carers, and to improve evidence-based interventions for children in foster care. We are also funding the multi-dimensional treatment of foster care, and the KEEP programme to keep foster carers and kinship carers trained and supported. We are also widening the delegation of authority to foster carers so that they can make important day-to-day decisions—it is important that they have the authority to do so. We have heard on many occasions of scenarios when they have not been able to take children to have their hair cut, or to take them on a holiday or a sleepover. We are doing a huge amount to improve the status of foster carers and their recruitment and retention, as well as to give them more freedom to do what we want them to do, which is to provide as much of a normal home environment as possible so that they can give children the best possible care.

Clause 1 promotes the concept of fostering for adoption, which, as we have discussed, uses similar principles to those of concurrent planning, the practice of which is promoted by Coram and Barnardo’s. Local authorities such as Tyneside and East Sussex already use fostering for adoption, so let me explain how the clause will make things work better for children. Currently, when an adoption agency has authority to place a child for adoption, whether in the form of parental consent or a placement order, it can place the child for adoption with prospective adopters. That is an adoptive placement.

Prior to obtaining that authority, a child for whom adoption is the plan or likely to be the plan can be placed only in placements under the Children Act 1989, which usually means a placement with foster parents or in children’s homes. Let me reassure the hon. Member for Sefton Central that our reform work on children’s homes continues to gather pace. I hope to make further announcements shortly on the next steps we will take.

The child may well move from placement to placement, causing disruption to their life, before being placed with his or her future adopters, which is, on average, around 22 months after first becoming looked after. The clause would reduce considerably the length of time that children must wait before moving in with people who may go on to become their adopters. The data show that just 14% of all children adopted in 2011-12 were under the age of one when they were moved in with their adoptive parents. That is all the more significant given that 44% of children adopted became looked after when they were less than one month old. On average, those children moved in with their adoptive families more than 16 months after becoming looked after. With fostering for adoption, many could move in with their potential permanent carers much earlier, and benefit from the security of a stable placement.

Andrea Leadsom (Conservative, South Northamptonshire)

The Minister will also be aware that the peak period for the development of the pre-frontal cortex is in the six months to 18 months age group, and that placing a baby before it is six months old—as early as possible—with its permanent new family makes a massive difference to that baby’s developmental prospects for having the emotional capacity and resilience to deal with life’s ups and downs. Placing a child early is about not just the security of that baby but their whole capacity as a human being. Permanently placing a child well before the age of two makes an enormous difference to their capacity as a human being.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

My hon. Friend is right. The evidence base for that is becoming more and more clear. We know from research that by the age of 22 months, the educational outcomes of a child can be fairly accurately predicted. That is why the 14 to 16 months that it currently takes a child who comes into care to move through the adoption system is the most crucial period in their very young lives. One month is 2% of their childhood, and they can ill afford for it to be wasted. Clause 1 will tackle that head on.

My hon. Friend gives me the opportunity to congratulate her on the work she is doing on early intervention through OXPIP—the Oxford Parent Infant Project. The funding that has been secured by OXPIP through the Department will continue that work to improve early intervention to tackle the long-term effects of poor attachment in early childhood and its implications for the social and emotional development of those children.

Bill Esterson (Labour, Sefton Central)

The hon. Member for South Northamptonshire is absolutely right about the damage that is done after those early months. My son was 10 months old when he went into care. He was three years and four months old—it was exactly two and a half years later—when he came to live with us to start his adoptive placement, which rather makes the Minister’s point. The sad thing is that most children in care are a lot older than that. Although any move to increase the number of long-term placements through adoption or otherwise is very much the right way forward, those children who are older, to whom that damage has already been done, are a very big concern to all hon. Members. It is only right that we acknowledge that that is a much bigger issue and that the proposals can only scratch the surface. That does not mean that they are wrong, but there is also the question of what can be done for many other children.

Mr Timpson rose—

Dai Havard (Labour, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney)

Before you speak, Minister, let me say that I am allowing quite a wide-ranging discussion about what is technically a narrow clause, because it is important that we contextualise things. However, interventions must become shorter and more direct. I will not hold a clause stand part debate, as we are effectively having that discussion now. I will just say that 25 minutes past 11 will be here fairly soon, and it would be helpful if we could complete this clause and perhaps the more technical aspects of the other two clauses in this group. That is what I suspect we might like to do, but I am in your hands.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

I am grateful for that indication and I am sure that we are all keen to make steady but serious progress as the Bill moves through Committee. To take on your challenge, I will now continue apace with the points that I wish to make. The clause would require local authorities to consider fostering for adoption placements as soon as adoption becomes a possible outcome for a child, which could be as soon as the child becomes looked after. Crucially, it means that the child can remain in that placement, unless their permanence plan does not become adoption, and will not be subject to a series of temporary placements—the point that the hon. Member for Sefton Central made.

It means that where the local authority considers adoption as an option for that child and the child cannot live with the birth parents, it may place the child with foster carers who are approved prospective adopters—if that is the most appropriate placement for the child—some time before they formally decide that adoption is the right option for the child. The child will be able to move in and live with the foster carers straight away while his or her permanence plan is considered further. I must stress—as I have on a number of occasions—that this is a foster placement, and remains so until the court makes a placement order or parental consent to adoption is given.

It might be helpful to explain how the new duty will work in the context of section 22C of the Children Act 1989 and in particular in relation to the existing requirement to give preference to kinship placements, to tackle head-on the question asked by the hon. Member for Wigan. As hon. Members will no doubt know, local authorities are required to place children who cannot live with their birth parents in the most appropriate placement available. Fostering for adoption does not change that. The first decision that they have to make is whether the child can live with his or her birth parents. That remains the case. If that is not reasonably practicable and consistent with the child’s welfare, the local authority must consider placing the child with someone else who is able to care for them. The local authority might deem that a placement with family and friends is the most appropriate placement available. If that is the case, they are required to place the child in that placement. I reiterate: fostering for adoption changes none of this.

The local authority might deem that a placement with family and friends or relatives is the most appropriate placement available. If that is the case, they are required to place the child in that placement. Local authorities do not need to delay placing a child unreasonably while they carry out extensive searches for distant relatives who may not be known to the child. Again, fostering for adoption does not change this. Where adoption is not the plan, the Children Act 1989 assumes that if the child cannot live with the birth parents, the next best thing would be a placement with the wider birth family or a connected person. However, where adoption is likely to be the outcome for the child, it can no longer be assumed that the best thing is for the child to stay with the wider birth family in every single case. In that scenario, it would not be right to require the local authority to give preference to kinship placements in every case, regardless of the circumstances. The local authority will be required to consider a fostering for adoption placement and need not give priority to kinship carers unless that is the most appropriate placement for the child.

The duties to try to rehabilitate the child with birth family or, failing that, to place the child in the most appropriate placement, are ongoing duties. If rehabilitation becomes possible after a child has been placed in a fostering for adoption placement, that course must be pursued. Likewise, should a suitable family or friend carer be identified after a child has been placed in a fostering for adoption placement, the local authority must consider whether that would be the most appropriate placement for the child. Local authorities must act compatibly with the European convention on human rights in relation to the care of any looked-after child for whom they are considering adoption as a possible option.

Once the local authority has been through all these steps and where the plan becomes adoption, the adoption decision-making process will start. The agency decision maker will consider the case, and if he or she decides that the child should be placed for adoption, the local authority will apply to the court for a placement order. It is for the court to decide whether to make a placement order. If parental consent to adoption has been given, the local authority may decide not to apply for a placement order. It is only when the court agrees to make a placement order, or parental consent is given, that the placement can become an adoptive placement.

To make that clear and to set out the practical effect of the clause for social workers and other practitioners, we will amend statutory guidance on care planning placements and case review, to give local authorities guidance about fostering for adoption, so that what I have just articulated for the benefit of the Committee will be articulated for the benefit of practitioners who have to put this into practice.

Lucy Powell (Labour, Manchester Central)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

Briefly. I am aware of the Chairman’s remarks

Lucy Powell (Labour, Manchester Central)

I am absolutely mindful of your remarks, Mr Havard. Will the Minister give further clarification for local authorities on the option of permanent placements within the extended family being of equivalent status to fostering for adoption? If it is deemed that a child needs a permanent placement elsewhere, does fostering for adoption become the automatic route rather than a special guardianship arrangement or some other arrangement within the extended family, which would in many cases be more beneficial to the child?

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

There are two parallel considerations that social workers have to make, through their training and through the guidance provided to them. The guidance makes it clear—and, as I have said, we will revise it to make it absolutely clear on the changes that clause 1 brings in—that those considerations are finding the most suitable placement, and then finding the permanence for the child that is in their best interests and is going to be most consistent with their welfare. None of those decisions can be made without the court going through the processes it has to go through to satisfy itself that that is exactly what has happened. I have made it clear that the guidance will be revised to provide complete clarity on those points.

Having set out the implications of clause 1, I turn to amendments 3 and 5. The amendments would require local authorities to consider placing a child with carers who could become the child’s permanent carers, as part of the child’s permanence plan and before they consider a fostering for adoption placement. I fully appreciate what hon. Members are trying to achieve in the amendments. However, a duty to consider permanence planning at the point of considering placement options would effectively conflate the two decisions that I have just mentioned to the hon. Lady: the decision about the immediate plans for the child’s care and the decision about the long-term plans for his upbringing, which could be quite different.

Fostering for adoption placements are to be used where the local authority has not yet decided what the permanence option for the child is. It has not yet decided that adoption is the plan, although it is considering it; in concurrent planning cases, the local authority will not know whether the child might be able to go home. The issue is finding the most appropriate place for the child while the permanence decision is reached. To include the measures proposed by amendments 3 and 5 in section 22C of the Children Act 1989, which deals with ways in which looked-after children should be accommodated and maintained, would not be appropriate.

Turning to amendment 11, I hesitate to say so, but I believe that hon. Members’ concerns might originate in a misinterpretation of the clause. Local authorities are required to place children who cannot live with their birth parents in the most appropriate placement available, and I have set out how clause 1 works in respect of considering placement with family or friends. The clause does not prevent local authorities from placing children in a family and friend placement where that is the most appropriate placement; it simply removes the statutory requirement to give preference to such a placement in every case where an authority is considering adoption for a child. If the duty to give preference to family and friends placements was not disapplied in a fostering for adoption scenario, it would mean that even where a local authority had considered and discounted kinship care placements as the permanence option for the child, and believed that adoption was the probable outcome for a child because the birth family and wider circle of relatives were not able to care for the child, the local authority would still be required to give preference to kinship carers who would not be likely to become the child’s permanent carers, rather than to approved prospective adopters who could—if adoption became the plan for the child, and subject to the approval of the court—become that child’s permanent family.

Amendment 12 seeks to reinstate some requirements under subsections (7) and (8) of section 22C of the Children Act. Those are the requirement to give preference to a placement with family and friends of connected persons who are also foster parents; the duty to ensure that the placement does not disrupt the child’s education or training; the duty to place the child with siblings who are looked after by the local authority; and the duty to ensure that accommodation is suitable where the child is disabled.

I have already explained why we have disapplied the duty to give preference to a placement with family and friends. The reason we have disapplied the other subsections that the hon. Members’ amendment would reinstate is to make sure that the local authority can place the child with the best possible potential carers. The local authority is still under the duty in section 22 of the Act to safeguard and promote the child’s welfare, and the duty in section 22C(5) to place the child in the most appropriate placement available. Local authorities should therefore balance the competing interests, to find the right potential carers for the child while at the same time doing what is best for the child in terms of placing them within the local authority boundaries to maintain contact with the birth family, have continuity at school, be placed with a sibling or, in the case of a child who is disabled, be provided with suitable accommodation.

New clause 4 would add two new presumptions to the Children Act relating to the benefit to the child of continuity of care across a wide range of family proceedings. I thank the hon. Member for Wigan for drawing the Committee’s attention to the extremely important issue of continuity in the living arrangements that are made for children. The reality is that there is still too much instability in the care system and, although the retention of social workers has improved, there is still too much churn that needs to be addressed. One of the areas where I commissioned some work is how we can better measure stability in the care system so that those who work in it have a better understanding of the implications of the decisions they make and the effect they have on children who are not just being moved from one placement to another, but from one school or one general practitioner. That should be far more at the forefront of their mind when making decisions which they deem to be in the best interests of that child.

The Government completely understand the importance of not disrupting children’s care unnecessarily. I have reiterated that on a number of occasions, both here and elsewhere. We are reforming the family justice and adoption systems so that they can deliver better for children and families. Our aim is to deliver decisions more swiftly and to keep children’s needs at the heart of the process. Our reforms will tackle damaging delays in the system, foster closer collaboration between local authorities and the courts, and ensure that children’s best interests remain at the heart of decision making, and in doing so improve practice around placement continuity.

Within the context of care proceedings, our reforms do not affect existing safeguards under the Children Act. Section 22 of that Act sets out the general duties that a local authority has in relation to children it is looking after, including the duty to safeguard and promote the child’s welfare. Ensuring continuity of care for the child, consistent with the child’s welfare, will be a key part of that. Courts must also consider the wishes and feelings of children and their parents where practicable before making decisions.

Inevitably, a local authority may need to act to seek to remove a child from their home where that is necessary to safeguard that child. If a local authority cannot place a child back with his or her birth parents, it must place the child in the most appropriate placement available, which may be with wider family or friends. Section 22C sets out the way in which looked-after children are to be accommodated and maintained and explicitly refers to the need to ensure, where practicable, that a child lives near to his or her home, that the child’s education is not disrupted, and that the placement allows the child to live with any sibling who is also in the care of the local authority.

Given these existing safeguards, a new clause that establishes a presumption in favour of continuity of care is not necessary. However, the hon. Member for Sefton Central is right to pinpoint continuity of care and perhaps add the word “consistency” as a key feature of stability. As ever, I am happy to continue to engage with him to discuss how we can do more on the ground to try to improve stability in the care system. More widely, let me reassure him that our reforms to the family justice system will not prevent children from being raised within their wider family or by a close family friend where the court decides that that is right for them.

We have undertaken a programme of reform to support the improvement of social work, both to ensure that where kinship care options are available they are explored and to prepare cases for court where a court application remains the best way forward. That work includes supporting local practice, in conjunction with the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, ADCS and the Children’s Improvement Board. We continue to promote the use of services such as family group conferences, to identify family members before the start of court proceedings. The Department for Education is funding the Family Rights Group over a two-year period, to build and implement a framework of accreditation for family group conferencing and further its use in pre-proceedings. For those children for whom adoption is the right option, we have introduced changes in the Bill that will minimise disruption and delay and focus on the child’s needs.

New clause 11 seeks to introduce new duties on local authorities in section 47 of the Children Act. It requires that local authorities, before initiating care proceedings, identify and consider the willingness and suitability of any relative, friend or other person connected with a child to care for them as an alternative to their being looked after by unrelated carers. It would also require the local authority to offer the child’s parents a family group conference. I commend the hon. Members for Wigan and for Washington and Sunderland West on the motivation behind their new clause. For much of the Bill, we share the same motivation. I agree with the intention to support effective pre-proceedings work with families, as it is important to do that well before a case reaches court.

When giving evidence to the Committee about pre-proceedings, Andrew Webb from ADCS said:

“The professional impact of the culture shift will be massive. There is absolutely no doubt about that, but it is the right thing to do because, going back to the detail of David Norgrove’s analysis of the family justice system, the issue is well worth tackling. If we reduce the costs of looking after children while they are going through protracted care proceedings—fostering costs and so on—we can resource the sharp end of assessment.”––[Official Report, Children and Families Public Bill Committee, 7 March 2013; c. 145, Q299.]

I completely agree. It is correct that, before the local authority applies to court, it should seek to do all it can to establish whether family members or friends can meet the needs of a child and promote his or her welfare. We all agree that promoting children’s welfare is our foremost concern. That is exactly what this Bill seeks to achieve.

As I understand it, the intention behind the new clause is to apply the change to all children who could become looked after, rather than just those who have been the subject of a section 47 investigation, so I will speak on that basis. I reaffirm our commitment to high-quality social work pre-proceedings, and I have illustrated some of the work we are doing to try to raise our game.

I have no doubt that changing legislation alone will not bring about the changes we all want to see in the care system. We are working in partnership with the Children’s Improvement Board and the College of Social Work to support the improvement of social work in this area. We have also funded research to ensure that social workers can base their judgments on the most up-to-date information available.

Establishing what family support is available for a child is an essential part of the pre-proceedings process. It is a task that social workers routinely carry out in their assessment of how a child’s needs can best be met. Family group conferences are one way of achieving that, and from my own practice I am aware of the difference that family group conferences can sometimes make. They are an extremely helpful way of enabling wider family members to contribute to decision making where there are child protection concerns. As the current guidance recognises, they are an important means of involving the wider family early so that they can provide support to enable the child to remain at home. We intend to revisit and update that guidance in the light of the changes that the Bill introduces so I am grateful to the hon. Ladies for raising the issue in Committee.

Family group conferences perform a vital role in identifying early any family members who may be potential carers, thereby reducing delay and uncertainty by preventing the need for further assessments at a later stage in proceedings. The real strength of family group conferences is that they encourage children’s participation in family decision making when that is appropriate, ensuring that their voice is heard—my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire made that point—and letting them make some input so that they are involved in decisions about their future.

To help with that valuable pre-court work, the Department for Education continues to support the use of family group conferences before proceedings to identify family members from the onset of cases, and is funding the Family Rights Group for two years to implement a framework of accreditation. Although I support the use of family group conferences, I do not think it would be advisable to introduce a statutory requirement to offer such a conference in every case. My recollection of cases I have been involved in is that sometimes a family group conference may not be appropriate or helpful. That goes to the nub of the issue.

I have made it clear that family group conferences can be very valuable. It is important that if a family member can give a child the loving home they need, that family member should be properly considered. Instead of creating additional statutory duties on local authorities to achieve that, my aim is to build professionalism more widely, and to ensure that social workers are well-equipped for the difficult tasks they face without piling on requirements about how they practise.

New clause 11 may be motivated in part by the concern that more rapid proceedings might make it more difficult for family members to put themselves forward to care for a child, and I am extremely mindful of that concern. We have explicitly made provision for extensions of time when necessary to conclude cases justly, having particular regard to the impact on the child’s welfare. That is an important safeguard in ensuring that, when it is genuinely necessary to extend a case, it can be done. The Select Committee on Justice said in its pre-legislative scrutiny report:

“As to the concerns that the clause may make it more difficult to involve the wider family and friends of the family, we consider that improvements to pre-proceedings work should enable kinship carers to be involved at an early stage in the care process.”

I am confident that our package as a whole is the right one to reduce delays and to put children’ welfare back at the heart of the system. Lord Justice Munby highlighted that in his evidence to the Committee:

“The delays in many parts of the country are coming down very rapidly and there are already parts of the country that are achieving 26 weeks and less. It is therefore entirely attainable—it is not a target, but a maximum—and I am quite convinced that it can be done without prejudice to the welfare of children, or to a fair and just system.”––[Official Report, Children and Families Public Bill Committee, 5 March 2013; c. 29, Q69.]

I therefore urge the hon. Member for Wigan to withdraw the amendment.

Dai Havard (Labour, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney)

Before proceeding, may I explain that no decision will be made today on Mr Esterson’s new clause 4? That will be come towards the end of our consideration, so he does not need to decide at the moment whether he wishes to press it to a vote. I will ask the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson to speak, but I am mindful of 11.25 am, and it would be helpful if she would indicate whether a Division will be required.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

Thank you, Mr Havard. I am grateful for the Minister’s assurances, particularly for making it clear that it will still be a requirement that preference is given to arrangements with the birth family and kinship care arrangements. However, I found his articulation of why that is not in the Bill or in the accompanying policy statement unconvincing. There is still a risk of real confusion, but, on the basis that we have been able to proceed this far with helpful dialogue and assurances, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Dai Havard (Labour, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney)

We now move to amendment 4 to clause 1. This group of amendments relates to the fostering to adoption process, and the debate needs to be narrower in scope than the one that we just had.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I beg to move amendment 4, in clause 1, page 1, leave out line 9 and insert—

‘satisfied that C should be placed for adoption—’.

Dai Havard (Labour, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 6, in clause 1, page 1, line 11, after ‘adopter’, insert—

‘after a matching process has been conducted’.

Amendment 13, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, at end add—

‘(9C) A child must not be considered for placement with a foster parent who has been approved as a prospective adopter under subsection (9A) unless both parents (and anyone else with parental responsibility for the child) have been referred to free legal advice and have consented to the placement except where there is an interim or full care order in place.’.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I will try not only to narrow my remarks to the content of the amendments, but to ensure that we do not repeat the earlier debate, although we have made progress. The amendments are designed to ensure that safeguards are built into the process to prevent the overlooking of important factors that could result in decisions that are detrimental to children’s welfare and which run counter to their best interests. In particular, amendment 4 states that local authorities will need to be satisfied that a child should be placed for adoption, as opposed simply to considering that as an option.

The charity, TACT, made the point that the Government’s decision to change their approach was made as a direct response to the recommendation from the Lords Select Committee on Adoption Legislation to broaden the scope of the duty. That Select Committee also recommended that the point at which a fostering for adoption placement should be considered is when the child’s permanence report is prepared, yet clause 1 takes an earlier point as the trigger: when the local authority is considering adoption as the option for the child. The Government have made it clear that that describes the point at which the adoption agency first considers that adoption is one of the possible options for the child, which may be as early as the first week that the child is in care. The same response makes it clear that that duty kicks in before the agency makes that decision. Hence it allows children to be placed in fostering for adoption placements before the local authority has decided on adoption as its plan.

Like the Lords Committee, I am deeply concerned about the redrafting of the clause to bring forward the point at which a fostering for adoption placement is made. The Committee said that that widens the scope of the measure considerably, creating the possibility of bonds forming with greater risk to the adoptive family.

Bill Esterson (Labour, Sefton Central)

I completely agree on the dangers that the Lords Committee have highlighted.

Dai Havard (Labour, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney)

Short interventions, please.

Bill Esterson (Labour, Sefton Central)

I will certainly do so, Mr Havard. Is my hon. Friend aware of the submission from the Fostering Network, which had an additional concern? It said that there was the risk

“of subverting the role of the foster carer before a decision is made by the court, which is to support the child to make the transition to whatever long-term plan is decided for the child by the local authority and the courts”.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that contribution; I will address that in a moment. Part of the purpose of the clause is to ensure that it is the adult, not the child, who bears the risk. The Minister was right to articulate that, but there are two problems: the first is that this part of the Bill is designed to ensure that more children are adopted. We share that aim, but at a time when we are desperately short of foster carers—it is estimated that 9,000 are needed, according to the Fostering Network—as well as adoptive parents, the Committee must ask whether the measure may put people off adopting, not encourage more to do it. Certainly, ACDS and Barnardo’s think that that is a risk.

It would be helpful if the Minister would give an indication that it is his intention that local authorities should conduct an appropriate matching process first, in line with amendment 6, with regard to the welfare checklist, to ensure that we do not reach the situation described by my hon. Friend, in which placements break down after a child has already considered that they are with their “for ever family”. As the Minister said, that is more damaging for the child than not making the placement in the first place.

Our second concern, having read carefully the views of children as told to the children’s right director—hon. Members have mentioned it—is that it is not clear that this is just about the adult bearing the risk. Listening to the views of children, they too bear a considerable risk in this regard, given the early trigger point in the redrafted clause.

In evidence to the children’s rights director, three quarters of children were in favour of fostering for adoption, but, crucially, that was because the option put to them was the Government’s original proposal, where a decision had already been taken that adoption was in their best interests. Children also highlighted concerns about the court refusing the application, which means that it is important that we get this right in the first place, to ensure that those decisions are not routinely refused by courts because they have not been thought through. Children wanted it to happen, in the words of one child,

“only when you know it’s going to be forever”.

Some 80% though that the most likely thing to go wrong with those placements would be the court refusing the application. One child said that

“you wouldn’t be sure you could stay with that family and you’d be getting worried that you might have to leave them”.

I am not convinced that, unless we slow down the process to ensure that we get the correct decision for children, the adults will bear the risk. There is a considerable risk that children will deal with the anxiety of that ongoing uncertain situation and, potentially, a negative outcome. In the evidence that was given, other children said that the provision would not be right for all children. We ought to be mindful of that. One child said that they thought that the decision needed to be relevant to each individual case, as some were much more complex than others. That is why I have tabled amendments to introduce safeguards in the system, to ensure that in more complex cases social workers are not rushed into making a decision about fostering for adoption that is clearly not in the child’s best interests and which will have to be reversed later.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central has said, children mentioned the importance of a foster family in the transition. That is significant, because foster carers are often skilled people. They are not necessarily interested in becoming adoptive parents, but are skilled at helping children make that difficult, painful transition from the destruction of an old family to the creation of a new family. That can be a positive experience, but it can also be difficult. We should not underestimate the skill of foster carers who are able to do that. One child said that

“going to court and staying with the foster family is something I will treasure”.

The foster parent is also there as back-up support for the adoptive parents. Another child said that

“being in foster care gave me the opportunity to adjust”.

Children felt strongly that children’s views should be taken into account. It was important to them that parents understood what was happening.

Amendment 13 deals with informed consent. It is important to children that their parents understand what is happening and have the opportunity to come to terms with it. I have already talked about the difficulties of the lack of legal advice, particularly for parents whose children are accommodated under section 20 of the 1989 Act and may then be put into foster to adopt placements.

When the Adoption and Children Bill was introduced in the late 1990s and debated in Parliament, there was widespread concern that mothers of newborn babies might not be in a fit state to consent to their child being placed for adoption for six weeks after giving birth. Hence the safeguards in that Bill. Fostering for adoption is primarily aimed at very young children and even newborn babies, but that is a real risk.

I want to draw to the Minister’s attention the situation of fathers, because research shows that fathers are often overlooked in such cases, especially if they do not live with the mother. A sample file audit in three authorities found that contact phone numbers were missing for more than half the fathers whose children were involved in child protection processes or were looked after. I dealt with a horrific case in my constituency of a father whose child died while in the care of the mother and nobody thought to notify him for several weeks.

Since the mother, in many instances, has parental responsibility, if she agrees to the child being accommodated the social worker does not need the father’s agreement. He may therefore be ignored in many cases, unless the mother is in touch with him, and so too his family may be ignored. Fathers may be unaware of what is happening to their baby or that they could or should get legal advice until after the child has been placed with fostering for adoption carers. We ought to take that seriously, given that the trigger point in the clause is much earlier than originally envisaged by the Government.

Christopher Chope (Conservative, Christchurch)

I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following:

Amendment 6, in clause 1, page 1, line 11, after ‘adopter’, insert—

‘after a matching process has been conducted’.

Amendment 13, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, at end add—

‘(9C) A child must not be considered for placement with a foster parent who has been approved as a prospective adopter under subsection (9A) unless both parents (and anyone else with parental responsibility for the child) have been referred to free legal advice and have consented to the placement except where there is an interim or full care order in place.’.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

As I was saying, children feel strongly that their views ought to be sought. That leads to another problem with the early trigger point. As the Government have made clear, the duty arises potentially before the looked-after children review, which is usually held at one month. The independent reviewing officer will attend that review, quality-assure the plan, and ensure that the children’s wishes and feelings are given full consideration.

I have seen for myself how important that review is; it ensures that the youngest children, and even babies, have their predictable wishes and feelings taken into account. Thought is given to the impact on the child’s later life, even when that child is very young. That is why I share the concerns of adoption agencies about the early trigger point, and why I am not convinced that fostering to adopt placements should be considered before that has happened. Those are often difficult judgments to make. Scrutiny matters, and children have a right to be heard.

In her impact assessment on the clause, the Children’s Commissioner for England warns that a great take-up of the clause would breach article 21 of the convention on the rights of the child. In particular, she asks where the requirement is that children’s voices be heard. In her view, that is a serious omission that breaches article 12 of the convention on the rights of the child. I expect the Minister to take that level of criticism seriously, knowing the weight he places on ensuring that children’s views are taken into consideration, especially on such a serious matter.

The process by which the decision is arrived at is very important; article 21 of the convention on the rights of the child requires us to take it seriously. It is important that children’s views are taken into account, that other forms of kinship care have the opportunity to be considered, and that social workers and independent reviewing officers have the time and space to make good decisions.

In the light of those concerns, I would be grateful if the Minister considered the amendment, which seek to draw attention to the difficulties created by redrafting the clause to move the trigger to an earlier point, so that the child is considered for adoption before the social worker is satisfied that the child ought to be placed for adoption.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

The amendments in this group deal with the process that a local authority goes through before placing a child in a fostering for adoption placement. I want to reiterate what the hon. Member for Wigan said before we broke for lunch: it is not right for all children to be put in a fostering for adoption placement. That is absolutely clear. It is right that all local authorities under a duty to do so consider each individual case on its merits, and ensure that the welfare of the child is paramount and that their best interests are central to all decision making.

There are many skilled foster carers who help provide stable, loving homes for many children—the three quarters of those who go into care who find themselves in a foster placement. We want to ensure that they continue to play an important role in providing those placements. However, there are many foster carers, as I can verify from personal experience, who also adopt. They can take both those roles simultaneously.

I grew up with a long-term foster brother who was with us from the age of six to adulthood. At the same time, two children were adopted into our home. I want to ensure that we offer foster carers the opportunity to consider both improving their skills as foster carers and the role they might play in offering an adoptive placement.

Amendment 4 would require local authorities to consider fostering for adoption only once the agency decision maker had decided that the child should be adopted. Hon. Members will be aware that I initially published a draft clause for pre-legislative scrutiny by the House of Lords Select Committee on Adoption Legislation. That draft clause would have required local authorities to give preference to a fostering for adoption placement at the point at which the agency decision maker had made a formal decision that the child should be placed for adoption, and had matched him or her for adoption with prospective adopters—a later point in the process than in the current clause.

As the hon. Lady said, the amendment seeks to move the trigger for considering a fostering for adoption placement back to the point of an agency decision maker’s decision. The Select Committee was supportive of the principle and the aim of the clause, but felt that it could be broadened to benefit more children. The Select Committee recommended that the trigger for the duty should be earlier, at the point at which the child’s permanency plan is agreed. It said:

“We agree with the Government that where possible children should be placed at the earliest opportunity with the carers who will become their permanent carers…We urge the Government to widen the scope of the proposed duty to require all local authorities actively to consider a foster for adoption placement for all children for whom adoption is the permanency plan. Broadening the duty in this way should mean that more children benefit from early permanency.”

Those views were also expressed by representatives of the sector, whom we consulted. The evidence that the British Association for Adoption and Fostering and Coram gave the Select Committee said that the time between the agency decision maker’s decision that the child should be placed for adoption and the placement order being made is only on average two months. Therefore, if the duty applied only at the point of the agency decision maker’s decision, it would have little impact on reducing the time that a child has to wait before moving in with his or her prospective adoptive placement, albeit that those two months are still a crucial part of a child’s life. In addition, to use that as the trigger point would not encourage concurrent planning cases, where the child is placed with foster parents who are also approved prospective adopters before the agency’s decision. I gave that evidence and the recommendations of the Committee careful consideration, and amended the duty in a way that I think best fulfils the wishes of the Committee and the recommendations of the experts who contributed. Most importantly, I believe it now better meets the needs of children.

Amendment 6 would require local authorities that are considering placing a child in a fostering for adoption placement to go through a formal process of matching the child with carers before making the placement. It is important that we are clear about the Government’s intention. The first and most important point is that the placements described in clause 1 are fostering placements, and local authorities will be bound by the duties under the Children Act 1989. Matching is a feature of the adoption process and a precursor to a child being placed for adoption with his or her prospective adopters. It is the process by which the adoption agency decision maker, assisted by the recommendation of the agency’s matching panel, decides which prospective adopters are the best people to become the child’s adoptive parents. That process, which is described in the Adoption Agencies Regulations 2005, does not take place until the adoption agency has come to the conclusion that the child ought to be placed for adoption.

For those reasons we do not think it appropriate, in the context of a fostering for adoption placement, to require the local authority formally to match the child and carers in the same way. Indeed, it would be premature to do so, bearing in mind that the fostering for adoption placement will, in the vast majority of cases, be made before the local authority has decided that adoption is the definitive permanency plan for the child.

However, we recognise the importance of ensuring that the child is placed with the right carers. That is important in every placement of a looked-after child, and certainly so in a fostering for adoption placement, which may well, in due course, become a placement for adoption. The placement decision is governed by the principles of the Children Act 1989, which provides the framework and appropriate safeguards for placing a child in a fostering for adoption placement. The local authority is under a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of the child, and to give due consideration to the parents and, subject to his or her age and understanding, the child’s wishes and feelings. I echo the hon. Lady’s point about the child’s views and voice.

As I have said, under section 22C of the 1989 Act, the local authority has a duty to place the child in the most appropriate placement available. I would like to assure hon. Members that we will provide further statutory guidance to local authorities making the important decision about matching children with the right foster parents in a fostering for adoption placement. The proposed clause on widening the scope of the adoption register will also help to ensure, through the more informal matching process, that the right placement is found.

Amendment 13 is concerned with the placement of children who are accommodated voluntarily with a local authority. The duty to consider a fostering for adoption placement applies in relation to all looked-after children, including those who have been voluntarily accommodated under section 20 of the 1989 Act, and those who are subject to care orders and cannot live at home, and for whom the local authority are considering adoption as an option. Indeed, under the current law, section 22C already allows a local authority to place a voluntarily accommodated child in a fostering placement with foster parents who are also approved prospective adopters. As we have heard, the amendment seeks to introduce certain safeguards into the fostering for adoption process in relation to voluntarily accommodated children. It would require the local authority to ensure that the parents and anyone else with parental responsibility for the child had been referred to free legal advice, and had given consent to the fostering for adoption placement.

I appreciate what the amendment is trying to achieve, and I am sympathetic to the cause of ensuring that the birth parents are appropriately supported and represented. I stress, however, that local authorities are already able, under the 1989 Act, to place a child without the birth parents’ consent with foster parents who are also approved adopters. The new duty does not change that. Just because a child is looked after with the consent of the parents does not mean that adoption and the fostering for adoption placement, or concurrent planning, can never be the right permanent option. For example, a fostering for adoption placement might be best for a child in order to avoid the unnecessary disruption of moving them from foster parents to new adoptive parents, should adoption be the outcome.

I want to pick up two points made by the hon. Member for Wigan about voluntary accommodation under section 20 of the 1989 Act. The first relates to legal aid. Under the provisions of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, which comes into force on 1 April 2013, legal aid will be available to parents for legal services provided for specified public law proceedings. At the moment, advice and assistance with regard to the voluntary accommodation of children is in scope, and this work will remain in scope under paragraph 6 of part 1 of schedule 1. The advice would usually be provided under legal help and would be subject to a means test. If the parents of a voluntarily accommodated child decided that they wanted to withdraw their consent to their child being looked after by the local authority, and it became necessary for the local authority to apply for a care order, any legal advice in relation to any contemplated care proceedings would be within the scope of the relevant schedule.

The second point raised by the hon. Lady related to the position of fathers and ensuring that they were involved and consented to whatever arrangements were in place. When an adoption agency is considering placing a child for adoption, regulation 14 of the Adoption Agencies Regulations 2005 stipulates that where a father does not have parental responsibility for a child, but the agency is aware of him, the agency should provide a counselling service to him and to ascertain his wishes and feelings about the child, the placement for adoption and so on, if it is appropriate to do so. The paramount consideration must be the child’s welfare throughout his or her life. The agency must also ascertain whether the father wants to acquire parental responsibility under the 1989 Act, or intends to apply for a residence or contact order under section 8 of the Act or a contact order under section 34 of the Act.

On birth parents, I further assure hon. Members that local authorities are required to attempt the rehabilitation of a child they are looking after, whether voluntarily accommodated or through a care order, with their birth family. It is only when that is not possible in the short or longer term that they must place the child in the most appropriate placement available. Once again, fostering for adoption does not change that. It is only when adoption is being considered as a possible option that the local authority would be required to consider fostering for adoption, which is a fostering placement.

All the amendments raise important questions about how clause 1 will work, and I hope that I have managed to provide assurances. I therefore urge that the amendment be withdrawn.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I am grateful to the Minister for taking seriously our concerns. However, the Lords Select Committee on Adoption Legislation, which was distinctly more critical of the redrafted clause than his remarks suggested, said that

“it is in the implementation of the new provisions that risk of challenge under Articles 6 and 8…emerges.”

That is also true in terms of the messages that we give children about whether this is a fostering placement, as the Minister seems to suggest, or a fostering for adoption placement; the latter will lead children to expect that they will live with that family for the rest of their lives unless something extraordinary happens.

Although I will for now accept the Minister’s assurances about what will be in the statutory guidance, it would be helpful if the Committee could scrutinise it and consider its impact on individual children—children whom, as I have said before, we may never meet, but on whom our decisions will have a profound impact. It would be helpful to get a commitment that we can see that guidance as soon as possible, and certainly in time to consider it as part of the legislation. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Bill Esterson (Labour, Sefton Central)

I beg to move amendment 1, in clause 1, page 1, line 10, leave out ‘local authority foster parent’ and insert

‘foster parent (whether or not a local authority foster parent)’.

Amendment 1 is about an issue raised by Coram in its evidence to us last week: the definition of “foster carers”. Clause 1 refers to a “local authority foster parent”. The Minister has explained to me that that term is consistent with other legislation on the statute book. However, as Coram put it last week, this is a technical matter, as it is not only local authority foster parents who are important in this regard but all approved foster carers, and of course many foster carers are approved by fostering agencies. The important point that Coram raised was that it wants to be absolutely sure, and I agree with it, that there is no danger of some foster carers being excluded from the legislation.

This very short amendment—this will be a very short contribution from me—would ensure that all foster carers were considered, and that there was no oversight or omission of foster carers. I am sure that the Minister will be able to clarify the issue.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for tabling this amendment. To put his mind at rest—we have had an opportunity to discuss the issue outside the Committee—clearly the intention of the clause is not to prevent the widest possible group of foster carers from being considered for a fostering for adoption placement. By definition, we would not want to restrict the scope to local authority foster parents.

The concern is based on an understandable confusion about the legal definition—as is often the case, I am afraid—of a local authority foster parent. To be clear, a local authority foster parent could be a person trained and approved either by an independent fostering provider or by a local authority fostering service. Anyone who has been approved and assessed as a foster carer, whichever route they take, would fall within the definition. Either of these types of carer would be eligible to foster a child in a fostering for adoption placement.

A local authority foster parent is defined in section 22C(12) of the Children Act 1989 as

“a person who is approved as a local authority foster parent in accordance with regulations”,

and the regulations that are relevant are the Fostering Services (England) Regulations 2011. They provide for the approval of foster parents by fostering agencies and local authority fostering agencies. They do not use the term “local authority foster parent” and they make no distinction between those foster parents who are approved by fostering agencies and those who are approved by local authorities.

Our fostering for adoption clause is about placement with foster parents, regardless of whether they have been approved to foster by an independent fostering provider or by the local authority fostering service. I am very happy to put that on the record, and I hope that now that I have done that and given those reassurances, the hon. Gentleman will feel that his amendment is not necessary. I urge him to withdraw it.

Bill Esterson (Labour, Sefton Central)

I am reassured by what the Minister has said. No doubt the same point will apply elsewhere in the Bill: where the term “local authority foster parent” is used, it means all foster carers who have been approved, because they are covered by the same jurisdiction. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 2 - Repeal of requirement to give due consideration to ethnicity: England

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I beg to move amendment 7, in clause 2, page 1, line 15, at end insert—

‘(1A) In subsection (4), after paragraph (f) insert—

“(g) the child’s religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background, although this paragraph does not apply to an adoption agency in Wales, to which subsection (5) instead applies.”.’.

Christopher Chope (Conservative, Christchurch)

With this it will be convenient to discuss clause stand part.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I should have said earlier that it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope, given that the Minister managed to make that clear earlier to Mr Havard and I did not.

We share the Government’s frustration at the fact that black and minority ethnic children wait on average a year longer than other children to be placed for adoption. Like the Minister, we believe that it is important to eradicate all unnecessary delay for all children, so we welcome the Government’s decision to focus on this group of children and young people, who wait longer than others.

We also agree with the Minister that it is somewhat anachronistic that this consideration is written into primary legislation, while other important factors relevant to a child’s life and identity are set out in secondary legislation. Consideration of ethnicity ought to remain one important, but not overriding, consideration in determinations about a child’s future. We agree with the House of Lords Select Committee on Adoption Legislation that it ought to be placed on to the welfare checklist to be considered alongside other important aspects of a child’s life and identity.

When the former Children’s Minister, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), first raised the issue while speaking to Community Care magazine, he talked about “hints of political correctness” among social workers searching for a “dream ethnic match.” Research simply does not support the belief that political correctness is the main reason why black and minority ethnic children wait longer to be adopted; nor does it explain why fewer black and minority ethnic children are adopted altogether. The Minister will be aware of the recent Ofsted report, “Right on Time”, which made that point strongly and noted

“little evidence of delay caused by an unrealistic search for a perfect ethnic match.”

It also said that inspectors had found that

“Processes for matching children with adoptive placements were generally robust.”

In addition, research by Professor Julie Selwyn, who gave evidence to the Committee, found that the most important factor in delays in adoption for black and minority ethnic children was the age at which they came into care. Her research also found that other factors were important, such as children from black and minority ethnic communities having a more complex or patchy medical history, which is relevant to prospective adopters, and young people coming from overseas with no medical history. Research by Thoburn et al. has shown that, for cultural reasons, certain communities, such as Caribbean communities, prefer long-term foster care to adoption. Just because fewer black and minority ethnic children are adopted, it should not be assumed that that is necessarily an indication that the outcomes for those children will be poorer, or that the placements will not be as appropriate.

Professor Elaine Farmer has also done some research, of which I know the Minister is aware, that is extremely relevant to our discussion. She found that ethnicity was a cause of delay for a significant number of young people, but she also found that other factors were significant, and I want to draw the Committee’s attention to them. Although, as I said, we very much welcome Ministers choosing to focus on this group of young people to ensure that all unnecessary delay is eradicated, the picture is complex. Ethnicity often goes to the heart of the child’s identity and can be, in itself, a reason for delay, if the child feels that it is important.

I do not deny that, in some isolated incidents, political correctness or caution on the part of social workers may result in black and minority ethnic children facing unnecessary delay because their ethnicity is taken to be more important than it actually is. The research is extremely clear that it does not happen routinely. Where it does happen, it should be eradicated, but I agree with the witnesses to the House of Lords Select Committee who strongly said that they did not consider it to be an issue of legislation; in fact, they considered it to be an issue of practice. That is why I started my remarks by saying that although we very much welcome the Minister’s decision to focus on this group of children, we are not entirely convinced that the change that Ministers seek to make is the right approach for children or will solve the problem.

Like the previous Government in their 2007 guidance, this Government have rightly sent out a strong message to the profession that a loving home for every child should be the priority, and that considerations of ethnicity should never get in the way of that, where that is in the child’s best interests. Ethnicity can be very important to children, however, especially those who come into care at an older age. That is relevant because when we talk about black and minority ethnic children in the care system, one of the features of that group is that they tend to come into care at an older age. That is one reason why Professor Julie Selwyn said that they tend to be less likely to be adopted. We know that age is a strong predictive factor in whether children will be adopted. For older children, being able to take forward ongoing issues about their previous identity into their new family and knowing that they will be respected is incredibly important. That is why article 20 of the United Nations convention on the rights of the child sets out that children who cannot be looked after by their own family have a right to special care and must be looked after properly by people who respect their ethnic group, religion, culture and language.

Young ambassadors from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children have made that point strongly. When I visited ChildLine just a couple of weeks ago, NSPCC staff said that children participating in their online forums over the past few weeks had said strongly that ethnicity and particularly religion mattered to them. Those aspects had helped many of the children who were involved in that discussion make sense of their place in the world. They wanted the message to be passed on to me and to this Committee.

I am having an online chat with some of the young ambassadors this evening. I will check with them again, but they felt extremely strongly about the matter only two weeks ago and I have no reason to believe that they would change their mind.

Craig Whittaker (Conservative, Calder Valley)

Is there any evidence or research that suggests that ethnicity, culture and language should take precedence over a stable and consistent home life, or vice versa?

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I am not aware of any evidence that says that that should take precedence, nor am I aware of any children who believe that to be the case. Many children feel strongly that they want the right match. The Association of Professors of Social Work calls it the chemistry between the child and the new family. We should never ever forget that, nor let other considerations get in the way. That is certainly not the position of my party, and I am certain that that is not the Minister’s position either. However, it is an important consideration, not to all children but to some, and it is very important to a small number of children.

Charities have expressed concern that the policy may send the wrong message to social workers that they cannot consider ethnicity at all. Given that there has been no great clamour for a change in the law, as I have pointed out, and that there is no great evidence that there is poor practice that puts politically correct considerations above children’s best interests, the policy runs the risk of sending the wrong message to social workers about whether they should consider ethnicity.

The provision in the Adoption and Children Act 2002 was introduced as a result of damaging placements that took no account of ethnicity. We are concerned that, by removing the consideration from primary legislation but not giving it a place among the other factors in the welfare checklist, as our amendment would allow, the Government might unintentionally swing the pendulum back that way.

A recent report on interracial adoptions by the British Association of Adoption and Fostering highlighted a number of issues. The first was that interracial adoption can be a positive experience. The Committee should not ignore that; it can be important for young people. However, it also highlighted the real and lasting damage that may be done to some children by ignoring aspects of their identity that are important to them. It was the first study of the long-term impact of interracial adoption in Britain, considering the experience of Chinese orphans who came to the UK from Hong Kong and who were adopted largely by white British parents. Overall, their experiences were positive, but for some, the negative impact was significant. More strikingly, the report said that many women stressed that being internationally and transracially adopted added another specific dimension to the adoption experience that should not be ignored.

Instead of removing this entirely, we would like to see it remain a consideration. This is not simply so that those young people for whom it is important are placed with a family whose ethnicity matches their own. Even where they are not, we must give thought to the importance that they place on those factors. We must also increase the likelihood that those young people are supported to ensure that those aspects of their identity remain and to help those aspects to flourish.

The Minister said previously that placing the factors in question in the welfare checklist would give them excessive weight. I do not accept that. By definition, they would have to be considered alongside other factors. Children believe that they are as important as age, gender and other factors. On this occasion, we really ought to listen to them.

Finally, it is clear that legislation in this area is no substitute for better practices. None of the witnesses to the House of Lords Select Committee on Adoption Legislation called for wide ranging changes to legislation. Instead, they said that

“there was overwhelming evidence that the big issues of concern—delay in the adoption system and the shortage of adopters—were the result of failures in practice.”

The hon. Member for Upper Bann has previously mentioned the shortage of adopters in particular. We would like to see the Government and local authorities do more to target black and minority ethnic communities to bring a greater supply of prospective adoptive parents. We would like to see greater support and training for adoptive parents in order that they can meet the race, religious and cultural needs of the child. However, we would also like to see those factors placed in the welfare checklist so that they can be considered, as children wish, among other factors.

Steve Reed (Labour, Croydon North)

I agree with my hon. Friend that placing a child with parents of a different race certainly adds a dimension that should be considered when the placement is made. But of course I accept, and agree with her, that the most important consideration is to ensure that a child is placed in a loving, supportive and stable placement as quickly as is appropriate given the complexity of the circumstances in that particular case. I also welcome efforts to speed up the adoption process, and indeed to increase the number of adoptions for children from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. Children from those backgrounds are over-represented in the care system but are less likely to be adopted for a variety of reasons—including the age at which they enter the system to which my hon. Friend referred in her presentation.

However, any potential adoptive parents need to understand the identity of the child whom they seek to adopt. That includes their religious persuasion, their racial origin and their cultural and linguistic background. The 2012 British Chinese adoption study refers to cases of children adopted from Hong Kong and brought into the United Kingdom. It explores how they found being brought up in families of a very different cultural and racial background. One of the conclusions was this:

“For some it was not easy living with the fact of being from a different ethnic background and visibly different from their adoptive families.”

That could result in

“a sense of not belonging or not feeling able to identify with either white British or Chinese communities.”

It will benefit the child as well as the adoptive parents if concerns that that may be a consequence of a placement are taken into account while the placement is made and while the adoptive parents are considering how best to bring up the child placed into their care.

My hon. Friend also referred to some of the views expressed by the NSPCC’s young ambassadors on the matter of interracial adoption. It is worth quoting a couple of those to put them on the record. The first was, “It is important that young people can find similarities and understanding with new adoptive parents around race and religion.” Another young person said, “If the child and adoptive parents had contrasting cultural beliefs that could cause problems.” Those are both very sensible points of view. It is right to ensure that we take the views of children into account as we shape this legislation.

David Simpson (DUP, Upper Bann)

Previously, I expressed an interest in the issue and said that I had been through the adoption process. It so happened that the adoptions were interracial. What the hon. Gentleman said is correct; it should not be a barrier to be adopted from, say, India or Paraguay. It has not been an issue, but if a match can be found, that is fine, but there should not be a barrier. We have certainly not experienced that and the family has been very happy.

Steve Reed (Labour, Croydon North)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I agree with what he says. It is a factor to be taken into account, but it should certainly never be allowed to become a barrier to an appropriate placement.

The removal of the provision runs the risk of important factors of identity being neglected in making a matching decision. I strongly support my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan in her position, which she expressed so eloquently in her contribution, that it might be best to include points about ethnicity, race, religion, culture and language in the welfare checklist to ensure that they are taken into account as appropriate but not allowed to become a barrier to a good placement. I very much hope that the Government support that change.

Andy Sawford (Labour, Corby)

I rise to support my hon. Friend’s comments. It is to everyone’s credit, and the Minister’s in particular, that there is a huge amount of cross-party support for many aspects of the Bill. He will have been as struck as I was by the evidence from Dr Maggie Atkinson last week when she said:

“We consider that what is in the legislation at the moment is not a hindrance to children from BME backgrounds being adopted.”––[Official Report, Children and Families Public Bill Committee, 5 March 2013; c. 89, Q196.]

It is a measure of our intent to build a consensus around many aspects of the Bill that my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan has proposed something that is fairly modest that will enable us to continue to take into account ethnicity. I hope that the Government will take that on board and support the amendment.

The particular comment that Dr Atkinson made that really struck me was when she quoted a young person from a black minority ethnic background, who said:

“You have to understand who I have been and who I am, as well as where I am going and who you want me to be.”

Dr Atkinson said that that was one of the strongest things that had ever been said to her as the Children’s Commissioner. She described him as a very proud young man

“who considered that his background, ethnicity and religion were not being taken into account where he was.” ––[Official Report, Children and Families Public Bill Committee, 5 March 2013; c. 89, Q196.]

We all want those things to be taken into account. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North has spoken powerfully about why those factors are important to a young person and why they must be considered. The modest recommendation that they should be in the welfare checklist is something that we all hope the Minister can support.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

In speaking to the amendment and clause stand part, I thank hon. Members who have contributed to this short but important debate. It is a serious issue and one that we do not deal with lightly, hence the long consideration over the most appropriate way forward, which always has the child at the very heart of our thinking.

The clause amends section 1 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 so that subsection (5) does not apply in England. This removes the explicit requirement to give due consideration to a child’s religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background when matching a child and prospective adopters. As we have heard from the hon. Member for Wigan, we propose to do that because of the unacceptable situation in which black children take, on average, a year longer to be adopted than white children or children of other ethnicity. The express legal provision has caused some professionals in some local authorities to place too much weight on that one factor. I agree with Sir Martin Narey, the Government’s adviser on adoption, who said that the fact that there is a problem is not in doubt.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

Given the overwhelming opposition to this from Coram, the Law Society, Barnardo’s, TACT, the Family Rights Group, the College of Social Work, the LGA, the BAAF, the Magistrates’ Association and the Children’s Commissioner for England, will the Minister tell us where the evidence is coming from that there is reluctance on the part of social workers to place children into otherwise appropriate homes because of undue considerations of ethnicity?

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

First, I am not sure that the list that the hon. Lady has provided is a list of groups and organisations that are implacably hostile to our position, which is at one with that of many other groups. As we heard from the hon. Members for Upper Bann and for Croydon North, ethnicity should not be a barrier to a match and an adoption placement, but it should be one of the factors that has to be taken into consideration.

I will come on to how the welfare checklist has operated since 1989. From the cases I have done in court, I have seen that within the welfare checklist, which mentions the age, sex, background and characteristics of the child, those characteristics should not be an exhaustive list. As soon as one tries to specify particular elements of a child’s characteristics in an exhaustive list, one then starts to prioritise one characteristic over another. The checklist has always operated in a non-exhaustive way. That means that elements of a child’s characteristics that may be to do with their ethnicity, religion, culture or language—I have seen all those in cases before the courts—can all be considered in the welfare checklist that is already in operation under the “characteristics” element. That can ensure that anything, including ethnicity, is taken into account, but not as a factor that will override other factors and be a barrier to a successful match.

Andy Sawford (Labour, Corby)

The Minister refers to the “many others” who support the proposals. My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan intervened to ask what the evidence is. Who are the “many others”, and what is the evidence?

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will give me time to complete my answer—I apologise if it was too long for him to wait for me to do that. The hon. Member for Wigan pointed to Professor Julie Selwyn, who has done some research on exactly this issue. Her conclusion was:

“We found that local authorities were much quicker at changing the decision away from adoption for minority ethnic children than they were for white children. They looked harder and longer for families for white children… There were a great number of minority ethnic children for whom no families were found and the decision was changed away from adoption.”––[Official Report, Children and Families Public Bill Committee, 5 March 2013; c. 18-19, Q42.]

Recently, Birmingham City Council brought out an honest report after speaking to a number of prospective adopters who had been through the process of being matched. In one case, for example, a respondent said:

“We feel we were quite broad minded … However we were effectively barred from … adopting non-white children by the system”.

We do not want to see any cases where ethnicity becomes a barrier. Even one case is too many. As the hon. Member for Upper Bann rightly pointed out from his personal experience, he is acutely aware of issues that prevent a child from getting a loving and stable family home as soon as possible. The hon. Member for Croydon North made that point.

There is good and strong evidence, from Julie Selwyn’s research and from the recent report by Birmingham City Council about the experience of prospective adopters within its local authority area, that black children taking longer to be adopted remains a problem. In evidence to the Lords Select Committee on Adoption Legislation, Barnardo’s stated:

“It is our understanding that it was not the intention of the Children Act 1989 that ethnicity should be the main determinant of whether a child is put in a particular placement. Ethnicity was only supposed to be one factor to be taken into consideration”.

We agree with that. Barnardo’s continued:

“Over time, Barnardo’s believes that the importance of ethnic matching as a prime determinant when making placements has become exaggerated, and this is not supported by the original legislation”.

That was why when the list was read out of organisations deemed to be against the Government’s position, I made the point that I was not sure that that was necessarily in the context in which they had set out their position.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

My point was not that they were opposed to the Government’s position, but that they, like us, were concerned about where the Government had decided to go, and in particular their decision to remove the provision from primary legislation without placing it into the welfare checklist. Barnardo’s says that

“we do not agree that the proposed change to existing law is necessary”.

That was my point, and I would be grateful if the Minister took that into account as we discuss this, to ensure that those concerns are heard and met.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

I reiterate to the hon. Lady what Barnardo’s said:

“Ethnicity was only supposed to be one factor to be taken into consideration…Over time, Barnardo’s believes that the importance of ethnic matching as a prime determinant when making placements has become exaggerated”.

We agree with that point. Far be it from me to be at odds with Baroness Butler-Sloss, having crossed swords with her in a different environment, but throughout this whole debate there has been a misconception. As I have already articulated, there is provision within the welfare checklist—there has been for the past 25 years, nearly—for the characteristics of each individual child to be taken into account.

The hon. Lady said at the start that this issue should not be one for legislation. We are removing specific reference to some aspects of a child’s characteristics from legislation and putting them all on an equal footing, which is what the welfare checklist was originally intended to do, so that we do not reach the point—as Barnardo’s believes we already have—at which ethnic matching becomes an exaggerated element of any placement decision. I am not sure that the Government and the Opposition are a huge way apart in our analysis of the situation.

Amendment 7 follows the recommendation of the Select Committee on Adoption Legislation, which some hon. Members spoke about on Second Reading. I have carefully considered that Committee’s recommendation on the wording relating to a child’s ethnicity being placed on the welfare checklist, and the rationale behind it. I understand the concern raised by hon. Members about removing the wording altogether, and their desire find a compromise. I am afraid that I find the present situation unacceptable, and I have articulated why, citing the support of Sir Martin Narey, as well as research by Professor Julie Selwyn and the recent report by Birmingham city council. It cannot be right that, for some children, their race and racial background seems to be the most important thing to some professionals. That situation has arisen despite the attempt in the 2002 Act at some form of balanced wording. I therefore do not share the confidence of hon. Members that the subtle change that the amendment proposes—moving the wording of the 2002 Act into the welfare checklist and putting it a couple of lines higher—will cause that misguided practice to change.

As I said on Second Reading, we are not saying that ethnicity should never be a consideration. We know that there are cases in which it is in the child’s best interests to be placed with prospective adopters who match them in cultural background or religion. We do not want to prevent children from being matched on that basis in appropriate cases. Adoption agencies will continue to be required by section 1(2) and (4) of the 2002 Act to make a child’s welfare throughout his or her life their paramount consideration, and to have regard to a range of matters, including the child’s needs, wishes and feelings, his or her background and other relevant characteristics in reaching a placement decision. They will therefore continue to be required to consider a child’s ethnic background in that process, along with all other relevant factors.

In practice, my experience is that if one were to trawl through reports from a children and family reporter and look at the cases in which children have an ethnic, religious, cultural or linguistic element to their characteristics that needs to be taken into account, one would find that that element is taken into account by children and family reporters and by social workers both as part of their training and good practice and because it is set out already in the welfare checklist that they have to take all characteristics into account. Local authorities are also required by section 1(3) of the 2002 Act to bear in mind that any delay in coming to a matching decision is likely to prejudice the child’s welfare.

In summary, section 1 of the 2002 Act, amended as we propose in clause 2, will most effectively serve the best interests of children. Ethnicity should not be considered more important than a child’s other characteristics, background and needs. We have to listen to the views of children, but this measure does not go against their view that their ethnicity has to be a consideration when a decision is being made. There might be medical, emotional or behavioural needs to consider as well as the child’s ethnicity, religious persuasion, culture and linguistic background. There may be specific circumstances that make language or religion, for example, a pressing issue for a particular child; our proposed change will still allow for that and will be very much in the continuing spirit of the Children Act 1989. As currently drafted, clause 2 will in our estimation make a significant difference to the lives of some children who, because of some of the practice that still prevails, do not have the opportunities that they should. I urge the hon. Member for Wigan to withdraw the amendment.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I am incredibly disappointed by the stance that the Minister has taken and continues to take, given the reasonableness of the position set out by the House of Lords Committee and the Opposition in asking for ethnicity to remain one important but, as the Minister says, not overriding consideration in a child’s life. I am particularly disappointed that he chose to ignore the overwhelming view of both children and the host of organisations, which is that he is simply not taking the right approach.

I am also particularly disappointed that he did not address any of my points about practice, which many other organisations raised with us. Like them, I believe that the issue is not generally one for legislation, but is one of practice. How social workers chose to deal with the issue on the ground will be central to the key questions about whether a child’s identity is upheld. Yet we have heard nothing from the Government about how they intend to encourage a greater supply of black and minority ethnic adoptive parents, nor have we heard anything about making greater training available to prospective adoptive parents from all backgrounds to ensure that they best meet the needs of children, whatever their ethnic backgrounds and considerations.

Coupled with the fact that the thrust of the Bill is about getting greater speed into the process and reducing unnecessary delay, and the fact that social workers are under intolerable pressure—as are independent reviewing officers, who currently often report case loads of two or three times the recommended amount—the Government are mistaken in not listening to the whole host of organisations outside Parliament that work day in, day out with those children or to the children themselves, and in not saying that the issue must be given some prominence if it is not to get lost in practice.

Although we do not disagree with the Government’s position in principle, I am extremely disappointed that they continue to close their ears to the evidence and views from outside Parliament telling them that they are doing the wrong thing. I am very disappointed, but I know that the Minister is a reasonable man, and I want to give him the opportunity to go away and consider the matter further. I expect that we will return to this discussion as the Bill progresses, but on that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 3 - Recruitment, assessment and approval of prospective adopters

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I beg to move amendment 8, in clause 3, page 2, line 32, at end add—

‘(4) The Secretary of State must set out in writing the reasons for issuing a direction under subsection (1).

(5) A direction given under subsection (1) will not come into effect until the Secretary of State has reviewed the decision to issue the direction on an application by the local authority upon whom the direction was issued.

(6) If the Secretary of State is satisfied that the local authority is taking steps to remedy the reasons for issuing the direction, the Secretary of State may revoke all or part of the direction.’.

We tabled the amendment because we are concerned about the power granted in clause 3. If implemented, that power has the potential to do great damage, unless adequate safeguards are built in to ensure that it is used proportionately and wisely, which is what our amendment seeks to do. The amendment sets out that when making a decision to remove some or all of a local authority’s adoption services, the Secretary of State should give his or her reasons in writing. It would provide for a specific right of appeal to the High Court against the decision of the Secretary of State to ensure that such decisions are subject to scrutiny. It would also allow a local authority to ask the Secretary of State to review the decision to require its adoption services to be carried out by other adoption agencies.

We share Ministers’ concerns that local authorities can be too reluctant to make use of voluntary adoption agencies, and those of the House of Lords Committee that that reluctance is often because of a misplaced belief that costs are higher. I emphasise “misplaced”, because in reality the costs are not higher. We welcome Ministers’ work to reform the inter-agency fee and how it works.

We also share concerns expressed to the Lords Committee about local authorities not having an incentive to over-recruit. They often recruit the number of adoptive parents needed in their area, as a result of which they may turn away people who could easily adopt children from other areas and provide them with a good home. Ministers are right to try to deal with that, but it ought to be tackled by the development of better working relationships between local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies. This should include informing people of alternative routes to adopt if no suitable match can be found there, and more use of partnerships between local authorities. The Minister referred to one of those partnerships, the tri-borough partnership, in his evidence to this Committee. My own area, Wigan, has also done something similar, although with a slightly different model to fit the circumstances and needs in my own local authority, partnering with Warrington and St Helens to ensure that more children are found a loving home. As the Local Government Association points out, it is also doing this on the ground in practice through working with SOLACE and the Association of Directors of Children's Services to overcome disincentives on local authorities to over-recruit adoptive parents.

The voluntary adoption agencies do a tremendous job, and have an especially good track record in recruiting black and minority ethnic adopters and placing children with disabilities. However, the voluntary agencies say with one voice that they do not have the capacity to take on this role in its entirety, and nor do they have the capacity to significantly scale up. Were a Secretary of State—whether this Secretary of State or any Secretary of State in the future—to decide that that is what he or she wanted them to do, they make the point very strongly that local authorities currently recruit more than 80% of adoptive parents. This is in part because the inter-agency fee does not cover the cost of adoption, so the VAAs are forced to subsidise their costs through other strands of work, reserves and fundraising. This means that they could not scale up to the extent that would be required, even if they wanted to. That is why the Children’s Commissioner for England warns that any use of this power would have to be taken only after careful consideration of the capacity of voluntary adoption agencies to upscale. Yet this clause as it is currently drafted, without amendment 8, sets out no safeguards and no provision to do this. It gives the Secretary of State the power to take this decision without those safeguards.

At Second Reading the Minister pointed out that the funding provided to VAAs had created additional capacity. He was right to do so, and we very much welcome this. A larger market with individual providers working across local authority boundaries could lead to economies of scale, but Barnardo’s points out that this is not an inevitable result of this clause. It is worth the Committee pausing for a moment and thinking about the extent of this power as it is currently drafted. The directions that are set out in this clause can be applied to

“(a) one or more named local authorities in England,

(b) one or more descriptions of local authority in England, or

(c) all local authorities in England.”

This means that the Secretary of State can now at one stroke strip all councils of any role at all in recruiting and approving adopters, irrespective of their performance.

Barnardo’s points out that this may ultimately be an attempt to introduce a market-based approach to adoption, but it also rightly makes clear that agencies are prevented from making a profit from adoption, to prevent people trafficking and all sorts of harmful and perverse outcomes. A simple market model, where new entrants are enticed into a market in order to make a profit, could never exist. I think they are right to make this point, and I would be grateful for the Minister’s thoughts on this. Could he outline for the Committee whether that was the intention behind this clause? Does he see a simple market model operating in the adoption system? In particular, what is his thinking on adoption by for-profit companies, whether or not that arm of their business was run not for profit? I would be grateful for an assurance that this clause does not seek to entice more for-profit companies into the market.

The College of Social Work also makes a very important point, which I think is worth the Committee considering. It believes that this role must be carried out by skilled social workers, and that outsourcing to independent bodies risks losing these skills, making it harder for social workers to look at permanent options for the child. In fact, the concern of many people about this clause is that adoption and a match for a child should be considered alongside all the other aspects of the child’s life. The all-party parliamentary group on child protection has made this point as well, and would be very concerned about any greater distance opening up between skilled child protection workers and permanent options for children. The Children’s Commissioner says:

“Adoption specialists tend to be among the most experienced social work professionals and assist in the assessment of the best interests of a wide group of children. It would not be beneficial to other children to have this expertise removed from the local authority.”

The trouble with the clause as currently drafted is that that could be the consequence; the Secretary of State could do that as soon as the Bill comes into force as there are no safeguards.

As serious as that risk is the warning from TACT:

“The new power granted by the clause risks over-politicising adoption services, with adoption potentially becoming a political football.”

Having considered that carefully, I agree that that is a risk because the Secretary of State is not required to provide any evidence or meet any minimum criteria, so there is nothing to stop this Secretary of State or future Secretaries of State intervening in a local authority—as TACT points out—simply because they do not like that local authority and they do not approve of the direction that they are taking and what they are doing. That is not the sort of power that we should grant over decisions being made about the most vulnerable children, for whom the state are the parents. At the very least, we believe that the grounds on which the Secretary of State could take that action ought to be specified: they should be required to set their decision out in writing and there should be a mechanism for appeal or repeal as judicial review, which would apply, can consider only the legality of the decision. We consider the measures that we have set out in our amendments are important.

TACT says:

“This potentially allows…future governments to contract out the entire adoption system, and does little to quell suspicions within the sector that this power could be the first step in privatising the adoption system.”

Will the Minister assure us that he and his Government do not intend to do that? The proposed legislation is for not just this Government; the power will be granted to any future Secretary of State if the clause is accepted as drafted. That is why we believe that if the clause is to remain part of the Bill, there ought to be, at the very least, adequate safeguards to prevent harm from being done to children. No consultation took place on this measure: it was announced two weeks before the Bill’s publication and the Government should consider carefully the opposition to this measure from all the VAAs and local authorities. We do not see why the clause, as currently drafted, should allow such vast powers to be given to the Secretary of State.

Lucy Powell (Labour, Manchester Central)

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case for her amendments and for further consideration of the clause. In addition to the points she makes, does she agree that there is an issue about where capacity in the voluntary sector might come from? It fills me and the many others who lobbied us and gave evidence to the Committee last week with horror to think that the adoption services could go the way of A4e, G4S, Atos and the number of other disasters that we have seen in terms of contracting out, particularly when we are talking about vulnerable children. If we are to proceed down this road, I would like to see more caution and the safeguards that she outlines.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. That was the point I tried to allude to earlier about the introduction of for-profit companies: whether they make a profit out of the adoption arm of their business. I was a little dismayed to hear noise from the Government Benches that seemed to suggest that some hon. Members thought that that may be a good idea, so I would be grateful if the Ministers would make it clear to us and the people outside that that is not the case.

The truth is, with this clause, as with many others in the Bill, our disagreement is not necessarily with the Government’s intention, but we are concerned about what the practical, real world implications may be if it goes through without safeguards. I would be grateful if, in his response, the Minister set out what safeguards there will be, because at present we do not see why the clause should allow the Secretary of State such vast power.

Christopher Chope (Conservative, Christchurch)

The hon. Lady has introduced a wide-ranging debate. In the light of that, I do not propose to have a separate debate on clause stand part, so any hon. Members who wish to speak on clause stand part should do so now.

Steve Reed (Labour, Croydon North)

I want to express similar concerns about allowing the Secretary of State to remove local authorities’ powers to run their own adoption services or to recruit their own adopters. Local authorities currently recruit about 70% of all adopters. Taking the main player out of the local marketplace could hugely damage the ability to find parents who are willing to take part in adoption placements. A series of reforms is currently under way that already shows huge potential to improve and speed up the adoption process. Early signals show that the new two-stage approval system is speeding up the process by as much as 50%, which allows local authorities to recruit and approve more adopters with the same resources. As my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central said, we must be cognisant of the risk of placing a burden on local third sector organisations that they do not have the capacity to meet, because we may inadvertently damage the adoption process that operates in a particular area.

I am sure that we all want to correct failures in the system where they occur, and I refer the Minister to the model of sector-led improvement that operates in local government in relation to child protection. That model has been successfully implemented following the scandal of Baby P and similar cases. The Local Government Association acts as the lead body, and there are regional improvement boards in each area of the country. The model involves peer mentoring, engaging lead elected members and senior officers in identifying failings early and intervening to correct them by bringing in expertise and people who have the ability, capacity and experience to improve such services. It closely engages professionals and advocacy groups that speak on behalf of a client group. Most importantly, it works. Rather than being a centralising measure, it is in line with the localism agenda that the Government profess to support. I suggest to the Minister that that model may be worth his consideration as he seeks ways to improve adoption services where underperformance occurs.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

I am grateful for the contributions from across the Committee. I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to amendment 8, which would require the Secretary of State to give reasons for issuing a direction to a local authority requiring them to outsource their recruitment assessment and approval service. It would also provide for the direction not to take effect until any review requested by the local authority had been completed, and it would allow the Secretary of State to revoke the direction if he or she was satisfied that the local authority was taking steps to remedy the problems identified by the direction.

Clause 3 is an essential part of the Government’s reform of the adoption system. We know that the earlier children are adopted, the better their outcomes, but thousands of vulnerable children wait far too long to be adopted because of a shortage of adopters. Last March, “An Action Plan for Adoption” set out the changes we are making to speed up the adoption system, and in “Further Action on Adoption” published in January, we set out our proposals for finding enough adoptive parents. As at 31 March 2012, there were 4,650 children waiting to move in with a new family whose plan is for adoption. We need more than 600 additional adopters a year just to keep up with the growing number of children waiting to be adopted. That is a significant national problem that arises as several local problems compound one another.

We have too many adoption agencies. At present, there are about 180, of which more than 150 are local authorities while the rest are made up of voluntary adoption agencies that recruit and assess on average 17 adopters a year. Many of them carry out only a handful of assessments, which means that they cannot be really efficient and cost-effective. Understandably, as the hon. Member for Wigan said, their primary duty is to their own children—local authorities focus on the needs of their own areas—which is a narrow scope that contributes to a critical national shortage of adopters. Some local authorities turn away would-be adopters because they are not needed in their local area.

Local authorities tend only to go to a voluntary adoption agency for an approved prospective adopter when other options have been exhausted, resulting in a system that is unable to make best use of the national supply of potential adopters and unable to respond to demand. I will try to put that in context. Last year, about 20,000 people professed an interested in adopting, which resulted in just over 4,000 people going through the assessment process, of whom just over got through the adoptive process and became prospective adopters. There is huge interest out there, which has been helped by the higher profile that adoption has been given by national adoption week and, as the hon. Member for Croydon North said, by local authorities working with the Government to raise the profile across the sector of the importance of tackling the shortage.

We are not alone in expressing such worries. The House of Lords Select Committee on Adoption Legislation stated in its report on 6 March that it shared

“the Government’s concern about the fragmentation of adopter recruitment”

and the national shortage of adopters. It would remiss of us not to listen to those concerns and act on them.

Lucy Powell (Labour, Manchester Central)

I agree with the Minister’s synopsis of how we might encourage more adopters into the system. Was he as alarmed as I was to hear Janet Grauberg’s evidence last week to the Committee? She said that there was widespread concern about the clause and, in particular, she said that

“it does not create the incentive for economies of scale”––[Official Report, Children and Families Public Bill Committee, 7 March 2013; c. 146, Q304.]

She said that it would do exactly the opposite of what the Minister seeks to deliver in the clause.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

The hon. Lady might be surprised to hear that I do not agree with the evidence given by Janet Grauberg from Barnardo’s on that specific issue. My interpretation of what Janet Grauberg said in the context of the clause is that there was a short-term risk during the period of transition of outsourcing. We must remember that the process is not one of outsourcing necessarily from local authorities to voluntary adoption agencies. It could be outsourcing to another local authority.

To give the hon. Lady an example, I visited East Sussex, which has an excellent adoption service. It has latent capacity in its area to over-recruit more adopters than it does at present and to work with neighbouring authorities, as Wigan is doing with Warrington and St Helens and, as the tri-borough is doing in London, rather than recruiting only within its own local authority boundaries. Those authorities are working together in a consortium to break down those barriers.

The clause would enable that process to take place as a result of intervention from the Secretary of State. It can already take place now, which is where the sector-led improvement challenge comes in, and economies of scale can be investigated to see how adopters can better be recruited throughout the south-east, London and the whole of England. Such action is very much the motivation of the clause. It might be an apt moment to assure—and I am happy to do so—those hon. Members who expressed worries that this is the thin edge of the wedge of the privatisation of adoption. That is not the case.

The measure is not about making plans to allow profit within adoption. It is simply a pragmatic response to a national crisis in adopter recruitment. The system of more than 180 separate adoption agencies is not providing those who want to come forward to adopt with the best possible chances of doing so but, more importantly, it is not providing those children whose plan is for adoption with the best possible chance of being matched with their respective adopters in a timely and far more effective way.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I am grateful for the Minister’s generosity in accepting adoptions. I take his point about the fact that the clause could enable the Secretary of State to take positive steps. I am concerned, however, about what it could enable the Secretary of State to do that is not positive. The Minister has not explained why it is necessary that the Secretary of State can at a stroke strip all councils of any role in recruiting and approving adopters and why any of the measures that we have proposed in amendment 8 would harm the situation that he outlined.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

I am sure the hon. Lady will appreciate that I was responding to the points that were raised in a previous intervention. I was coming on to the detail of the point she raised. I hope she will bear with me for a few moments.

We believe that a system in which local authorities routinely match children with adopters recruited and approved by a wide range of adoption agencies, rather than adopters recruited and approved by that local authority, would best address the problem. There are many examples, as I have said, of innovative local authority solutions to address their local needs. We welcome that, but it will not in itself bring about the systemic change needed to resolve the problem. Things need to change quickly and dramatically to address the current unacceptable situation.

It is clear that the structure of the current system inhibits the necessary growth in the recruitment and assessment of adopters, and we are committed to reforming the adopter recruitment and approval system for the benefit of children. There is latent capacity both in the local authority sector and among voluntary adoption agencies, which have seen year-on-year growth in the last two years of 20%. The £1 million that we recently granted to the Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies is meant to address the agencies’ latent capacity and provide them with the tools to up their game.

The provisions in the Bill would therefore enable the Secretary of State if necessary—I stress, if necessary—to require a named local authority or some or all local authorities in England to outsource their adopter recruitment, assessment and approval function to one or more other adoption agencies. It is worth remembering at this juncture that voluntary adoption agencies already carry out, as the hon. Member for Croydon North said, in the region of 20% to 30% of recruitment and assessment of adopters. That relationship with local authorities already exists, so this is not a new venture in many respects.

We recognise that change of this order is not without risk, and we are committed to managing risk in partnership with the sector. I have had a number of meetings with the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, the Local Government Association and voluntary adoption agencies to discuss exactly that. We are working closely with the sector to reform adoption and will do what we can to support radical improvement under the leadership of the sector. We would welcome a sector solution to the problems. As I have said, we are open to any alternative proposals for sustainable system improvements that the partners can introduce. In many respects, as this is an enabling clause, the best outcome would be that we do not need to use it and that the sector can bring about the change that we all agree, both across the sector and within government, needs to happen. However, if the sector is unable to make the critical change that needs to happen, we will not hesitate to intervene.

As the hon. Member for Wigan said, we have provided significant funding to try to facilitate that change within local authorities with £50 million ring-fenced, of which £25 million is to help equalise the inter-agency fee which has been a running sore, particularly for voluntary adoption agencies that find themselves at the back of the queue as a consequence of the inequality that currently exists. The other £25 million is to help those hard-to-place children who are awaiting adoption who may have more complex needs, and there is £100 million on top of that to deal with the other reforms that are taking place in the adoption system. We are committed to taking this new power so that we can act swiftly to change the role of some or all local authorities at local, regional and national level to address the issues that we have outlined. We cannot let the best chance of happiness and well-being for thousands of children continue to be wasted or placed at risk.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I would be grateful if the Minister told us what he objects to in the amendment. What is the problem with asking the Secretary of State to set out his or her reasons in writing when choosing to exercise such a sweeping power that could have such profound consequences?

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

I have a great deal of sympathy with the hon. Lady’s desire to make sure that decisions, particularly ones of this importance, are transparent, and that the process is fair. The amendment is not necessary because the Secretary of State has to act fairly and reasonably in his office. It is not necessary to impose an explicit duty on the Secretary of State to give reasons for giving a direction. If a local authority believes that it was not given sufficient reasons, or that the process was unfair because it was not given sufficient opportunity to make representations, the remedy is judicial review. It is not just about the legality of the decision; it is also about the reasonableness of the decision, which is an important element of the judicial review that the local authorities have at their disposal.

I can reassure hon. Members that the Government are committed to putting in place a fair and transparent process. Local authorities know what is expected of them, and we have actively engaged with the sector to make that happen. It is in nobody’s interest—particularly not mine or the Government’s—to put in any doubt the potential to improve the level of adopter recruitment. That is at the heart of the clause. We are committed to working with the sector to find a sector-led solution to the crisis. We will look at its alternative proposals and consider the evidence of progress in the implementation of any alternative approach and agreements before we consider whether to give a direction.

Before we give a direction, we will give local authorities the opportunity to make representations. It will not be a one-way exercise; it will be a conversation, so that we ensure that we do not undermine the good work that is being done. We will ensure that any change that we make exemplifies that good work and makes it stretch more widely, whether through consortia arrangements or trying to get voluntary adoption agencies to work more widely across the sector.

Finally, I assure hon. Members that there is no need for an explicit power to revoke a direction. The power to make a direction includes the power to revoke it. I therefore urge the hon. Member for Wigan to withdraw the amendment.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I am grateful to the Minister. However, of all the assurances he has given me on the Bill, his assurance that the Secretary of State has to act fairly and reasonably is more likely to keep me awake at night than reassure me that the process will be fair. On the other hand, I take his point that the Government will set out what constitutes a fair process, including the local authority’s ability to make representations. I am not convinced at all that the Government are unable to write more safeguards into the Bill. I am always suspicious of wide-ranging provisions that grant power not just to the current Secretary of State, but to future Secretaries of State. Notwithstanding those concerns, I would like to give the Minister the opportunity to consider this more fully. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 4 - Adoption support services: personal budgets

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I beg to move amendment 14, in clause 4, page 3, line 33, at end insert—

‘(k) about the prescribed agencies from which adoption support services can be purchased, which must include voluntary adoption agencies.’.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to the amendment in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West. It would allow adopters to buy their services from voluntary adoption agencies if they have adopted thorough the local authority, and vice versa. As with other measures in the Bill, we support the principle behind what the Government are trying to do. In general, we support the idea of personal budgets, and we believe that they can provide a useful package for other groups of children, such as those with disabilities, although my hon. Friend is more of an expert than I am. She has often made the point that personal budgets can be extremely useful, but they have to go hand in hand with a decent level of support for those who exercise them.

We seek clarification from the Minister about the fact that the clause enables parents to use their budget with voluntary adoption agencies if they have adopted through the local authority, and vice versa. We believe that there are practical reasons for that, not least because voluntary adoption agencies often have specialist services that local authorities lack, and because other local authorities might provide services that that local authority lacks. I talked about that a little earlier in relation to children with disabilities or special educational needs, and in relation to children from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. Since every child is unique it seems to make sense that parents have access to a range of good-quality services to meet their child’s needs to the full. Subsection 4(e) of new section 4A of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 refers to the description of adoption support services to which personal budgets may relate.

In a policy statement on the clause made available to the Committee yesterday, the Minister said that he would set out the provision further in regulations. We do not have the detail of those regulations, so I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed whether that allows the scenario I described of local authority adoptive parents being able to buy services elsewhere, such as voluntary adoption agencies.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

In the amendment, the hon. Members for Washington and Sunderland West and for Wigan seek to ensure that the regulations to be made in relation to personal budgets under subsection (4) of new section 4A of the Adoption and Children Act, which would be introduced under clause 4, prescribe the agencies from which adoption support services can be purchased, and would ensure that they include voluntary adoption agencies.

I recognise the important role that voluntary adoption agencies play in offering high-quality support to adoptive families, and I appreciate that the aim of the hon. Member for Wigan is to ensure that they can provide adoption support services. We know how important they are to many families. They have developed excellent resources that are clearly of benefit and are producing results for many children moving into adoptive placements.

I can assure the hon. Lady that the amendment is not necessary, because the law is already clear about who can provide adoption support. Such services can be provided by a local authority, a voluntary adoption agency, a registered adoption support agency, an individual providing adoption support services under contract with a registered adoption support agency or an adoption agency, a local health board or, at the moment, a primary care trust. I fully expect that many adoptive parents will choose to use their personal budget to secure support from voluntary adoption agencies, and the law as it stands would allow them to do so. I can assure the hon. Lady that that will be clearly set out in the regulations to follow. I hope that, in light of these assurances, she will withdraw the amendment.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I am grateful to the Minister for that response. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Christopher Chope (Conservative, Christchurch)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Clause 5 stand part.

New clause 3—Assessment and provision of adoption support services—

‘(1) Part 1 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 is amended as follows.

(2) In section 4, leave out subsection (1) and insert the following new subsections—

“(1) Subject to subsection (1A), a local authority must in each year offer an assessment of those persons’ needs for adoption support services to—

(a) any of the persons mentioned in paragraphs (a) to (c) of section 3(1), or

(b) any other person who falls within a description prescribed by regulations (subject to subsection (7)(a)).

(1A) Any requirement for an annual assessment under subsection (1) can be postponed for one or more years with the agreement of the persons concerned.

(1B) Following any assessment under subsection (1) the local authority must—

(a) provide the persons concerned with the findings of the assessment;

(b) specify in writing what services will be provided to meet these needs;

(c) explain in writing where the local authority is unable to provide services to meet identified needs; and

(d) keep a record of all unmet needs and the reasons for them.”.’.

New clause 5—Long-term post-adoption and fostering support—

‘A local authority must ensure that its adoption support services, special guardianship support services and fostering support services are provided in a way which is in the long-term interests of those for whom they are provided.’.

New clause 6—Status, rights and remuneration of non-biological parents—

‘(1) Before the end of one year beginning with the day on which this Act receives Royal Assent, the Secretary of State must—

(a) carry out a review of—

(i) options for the professional recognition of carers who look after children who are not their biological children, to include foster parents, residential social workers and adoptive parents;

(ii) the status and rights of these carers; and

(iii) arrangements for the remuneration of these carers; and

(b) publish a report of the conclusions of the review.’.

New clause 8—Special guardianship support services: personal budgets—

‘In Part 2 of the Children Act 1989, after section 14F (Special guardianship support services), insert—

“14G Special guardianship support services: personal budgets

(1) This section applies where—

(a) after carrying out an assessment under section 14F, a local authority in England decides to provide any special guardianship support services to a person (“the recipient”), and

(b) the recipient is a child being cared for by a special guardian or a special guardian.

(2) The local authority must prepare a personal budget for the recipient if asked to do so by the recipient or (in prescribed circumstances) a person of a prescribed description.

(3) The authority prepares a “personal budget” for the recipient if they identify an amount as available to secure the special guardianship support services that they have decided to provide, with a view to the recipient being involved in securing those services.

(4) Regulations may make provision about personal budgets, in particular—

(a) about requests for personal budgets;

(b) about the amount of a personal budget;

(c) about the sources of the funds making up a person budget;

(d) for payments (“direct payments”) representing all or part of a personal budget to be made to the recipient, or (in prescribed circumstances) a person of a prescribed description, in order to secure any special guardianship support services to which the budget relates;

(e) about the description of special guardianship support services to which personal budgets and direct payments may (and may not) relate;

(f) for a personal budget or direct payment to cover the agreed cost of the special guardianship support services to which the budget or payment relates;

(g) about when, how, to whom and on what conditions direct payments may (and may not) be made;

(h) about when direct payments may be required to be repaid and the recovery of unpaid sums;

(i) about conditions with which a person or body making direct payments must comply before, after or at the time of making a direct payment;

(j) about arrangements for providing information, advice or support in connection with personal budgets and direct payments.

(5) If the regulations include provision authorising direct payments, they must—

(a) require the consent of the recipient, or (in prescribed circumstances) a person of a prescribed description, to be obtained before direct payments are made;

(b) require the authority to stop making direct payments where the required consent is withdrawn.

(6) Any special guardianship support services secured by means of direct payments made by a local authority are to be treated as special guardianship support services provided by the authority for all purposes, subject to any prescribed conditions or exceptions.

(7) In this section “prescribed” means prescribed by regulations.’.

New clause 9—Special guardianship support services: duty to provide information—

‘In Part 2 of the Children Act 1989, after section 14G (Special guardianship support services: personal budgets), insert—

“14H Special guardianship support services: duty to provide information

(1) Except in circumstances prescribed by regulations, a local authority in England must provide the information specified in subsection (2) to—

(a) any person who has contacted the authority to request information about special guardianship support,

(b) any person within the authority’s area who the authority are aware is a special guardian for a child, and

(c) any person within the authority’s area who is a special guardian and has contacted the authority to request any of the information specified in subsection (2).

(2) The information is—

(a) information about the special guardianship support services available to people in the authority’s area;

(b) information about the right to request an assessment under section 14F (assessments etc for special guardianship support services), and the authority’s duties under that section and regulations made under it;

(c) information about the authority’s duties under section 14G (special guardianship support services: personal budgets) and the regulations made under it;

(d) any other information prescribed by regulations.’.

New clause 10—Review of impact of under-occupancy penalty on prospective adopters, prospective special guardians and foster parents—

‘Before the end of one year beginning with the day on which this Act receives Royal Assent, the Secretary of State must—

(a) carry out a review of the impact of the housing under-occupancy penalty on prospective adopters, prospective special guardians and foster parents, and

(b) publish a report of the conclusions of the review.’.

As hon. Members will realise, there is a wide range of issues to discuss. We have grouped the clauses and new clauses together because the interaction between them makes one debate sensible. If an hon. Member wishes to speak to new clause 5, for example, that should be during this debate. Having said that, I ask the Minister to speak to the question that clause 4 stand part of the Bill.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

I will now speak to this large group of clauses and proposed new clauses, which I know will make the hon. Member for Hyndburn ecstatic. The new clauses deal with the new adoption support duties laid on local authorities by clauses 4 and 5 and are designed to extend similar arrangements to other forms of care.

Christopher Chope (Conservative, Christchurch)

Before the Minister proceeds, I should make it clear that he does not have to respond at this stage to the new clauses in the group unless he wishes to—he does not have to anticipate the debate. I will leave it to him as to how he divides up his time. If he wishes to address the entire group in anticipation of the arguments, that is fine.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

I am extremely grateful for that guidance, Mr Chairman. I will proceed to speak to clauses 4 and 5.

Adoption support services play a vital role in helping to address the specific issues that adoptive parents might encounter with an adopted child. Many adopted children have unfortunately been victims of past abuse, or have specific needs or disabilities that require some particular extra support, which adoption support services provide. Such support can cover a wide range of services, including therapeutic services, financial support, training and respite care.

The adoption support system can be opaque for parents. If, following an assessment, the local authority agrees to provide an adoptive parent with adoption support services to meet an identified need, it is entirely in the hands of the local authority to decide how such support should be provided and by whom. As we have heard, personal budgets are designed to change that by giving adoptive parents the right to take control of decisions about who provides the adoption support they have been assessed as needing, and how that support is provided.

A personal budget is a sum of money that a local authority decides is necessary to meet an individual’s particular identified needs. It might be a notional budget that the individual can devise with the local authority, which then spends it on their behalf at their discretion, or it might be direct payments to the recipient, which the recipient spends themselves. We believe—I am grateful for the Opposition’s support for this—that personal budgets will help to provide a greater degree of control for adoptive parents in the adoption support services system and empower them to play a more active role in identifying and securing the help that best meets their needs and circumstances.

We also believe that personal budgets have the potential to stimulate the market in the provision of specific adoptive services. More choice and control for parents is a step in the right direction, and we think that providers of related services might be encouraged to go further in the adoption support services market, as parents will have different preferences in the type of provision they want. That should also lead to increased competition, including among existing providers, with the most cost-effective providers being more sought after by parents and less effective providers needing to grow and develop their services to meet demand.

Of course, appropriate quality standards will still need to be met by providers of adoption support services, even with more choice for adoptive parents. Although the recipient of a personal budget will be free to choose which provider delivers the support they have been assessed as needing, and in what way it is delivered, providers will still need to be a registered adoption support agency, another local authority, a local health board or primary care trust, or be otherwise legally allowed to provide adoption support, usually through a contract with the local authority or an ASA. It is in that second category—those contracted to the local authority or ASA to provide adoption support services—that we expect the biggest growth to occur, particularly in the short term. Importantly, that will provide continuing safeguards in relation to the quality of provision, with clearly inappropriate providers unable to provide adoption support services.

As I said, the overriding aim of personal budgets is to give adoptive parents more choice and control. The right to a personal budget would, under the provisions in clause 4, be available to any adoptive person or adoptive parent where the local authority agrees to provide adoption support following an assessment of their needs under section 4 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002. However, we know that not all parents will want a personal budget, and that is why we are placing the choice in the hands of individuals: the local authority will not be forced by the provisions to prepare a personal budget for someone who does not want one. Where adoptive parents do want a personal budget, they will have the option of either a notional budget or a direct payment, or even a combination of the two, which will put them in the driving seat to decide on the most appropriate provision to meet their identified needs.

I assure hon. Members that we will ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place to guard against misuse of public funds. Whether the person opts to receive a notional personal budget or a direct payment, the recipient will not be free to spend that budget however they choose: the services purchased with the personal budget will be agreed with the local authority, drawing heavily on the local authority’s own assessment of the recipient’s particular support needs; and the provider of the support services must be legally permitted to provide such services.

In cases where a notional personal budget is prepared, the local authority will remain the effective bank for the budget. Although the recipient of the personal budget will decide, along with the local authority, how the budget should be spent, the local authority will purchase the provision on behalf of the recipient. Even in cases where direct payments are made—the recipient of the personal budget receives the money directly and purchases the provision that they require themselves—we will ensure that appropriate measures are in place to guard against the misuse of public funds. Regulations to be made under subsection (4) of the clause provide the means to put such measures in place.

Although the clause already provides for a number of safeguards, we want to do all we can to get the implementation of personal budgets for adoption support services absolutely right. We hope that adoption support personal budgets will demonstrate similar results to the special educational needs individual budget pathfinders, which tested the development of personal budgets for disabled children. Families who participated in those pilots reported improvements in satisfaction about the services they received and increased choice and control. We are making our reforms to adoption support to improve service provision and to be more responsive to families’ needs and preferences. Personal budgets give parents the opportunity to exercise greater choice about adoption support service provision and the ability to play a far greater role in decisions about service provision for their family.

The primary purpose of clause 5 is to ensure that prospective adopters and adoptive parents receive better information about the adoption support services that are available to them. A greater awareness of adoption support services has the potential to aid the recruitment of prospective adopters, make adopters more open to adopting harder to place children and reduce the chances of adoptions breaking down. However, prospective adopters and adoptive families have to be aware of the adoption support that is available to take advantage of it, and we know that many prospective adopters are unaware of the adoption support services that are available. Evidence published last year highlighted that 64% of adoptive parents were unaware of their entitlement to an assessment of their need for adoption support. That clearly suggests that the existing duties on local authorities regarding the provision of advice and information on adoption support services are simply not effective. They are too weak and there is too much scope for inconsistency in the information provided.

The new duty to inform will strengthen the existing duties on local authorities and send a clear signal about the importance of ensuring that information about adoption support services is readily available to those who need it. Although local authorities are free to decide how they fulfil the duty, we expect the majority to choose to do so through a locally tailored version of the new adoption passport, which will include information on adoption support services as well as national entitlements such as pay and leave from work. Local authorities will remain under a duty to appoint an adoption support services adviser, and we expect that that person will play an important role in fulfilling the new duty.

However local authorities decide to fulfil the new duty to inform, it will ensure that all prospective adopters and adoptive parents are provided with a range of information about adoption support, including their entitlement to an assessment of their needs for adoption support services and information about the adoption support services offered by their local authority. As I have said, regulations will provide the flexibility to prescribe circumstances where local authorities do not have to provide information. This might be appropriate, for example, where adoptive parents made multiple inquiries within a specified time period.

With better information, prospective adopters will be more able to make informed choices about adopting, while adoptive parents will be much clearer about what support is available to help them if and when they need it. It is clear that adoption support can make the difference between a successful placement and a distressing breakdown, but only if the families that need it are aware that it exists. I urge the Committee to support the clause and help to ensure that all prospective adopters and adoptive parents are aware of the support that is available to them.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I very much welcome what the Minister has said. In the light of his comments, I wish to speak to new clause 10, tabled by me and my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West. Our purpose was ensure that prospective adopters, foster carers and special guardians were not adversely impacted by the housing under-occupancy penalty, or the bedroom tax as it has become more widely known. I have been slightly overtaken by events following my question to the Minister a couple of weeks ago, because the Government announced today that foster carers and foster children will count for the purposes of that policy. That is extremely welcome, and I am sure it had everything to do with the question that I raised in the Commons a couple of weeks ago, but I know the Minister has been making representations about the matter since before he became a Minister, so it certainly had something to do with him as well. In a spirit of generosity, I congratulate him on helping his colleagues to see sense.

Concerns expressed in new clause 10 remain, however: I am worried about the arrangements for prospective adopters and special guardians, and I will outline why the proposals may have an adverse impact on them. If the Bill is intended to ensure that more people come forward to enable children to live in the form of care that is right for them, we ought at the very least to conduct a review of the impact that the policy will have on those groups, if not exempt them entirely, as we do foster carers.

That concern is particularly pertinent to this part of the Bill, which covers the support that is available to parents. The Minister says he wants to ensure that prospective adopters are aware of the support available to them, because if they are aware of that support they are more likely to come forward, and more information will enable prospective adopters to make a more informed choice about a placement. It is also relevant to existing adoptive parents, many of whom decide to adopt another child. When I talked to charities about the impact of the measures, I came across a parent who had posted on a website:

“We have one adopted daughter and have recently moved into a bigger home so we can adopt another child… Our local authority insist that all adopted children have their own bedrooms. At present we do receive a small amount of housing benefit. With the introduction of bedroom tax very soon I would like to know if they make exemption for children who are not allowed to share rooms due to adoption?”

The Minister has clarified that adopted children will count for the purposes of a bedroom, although not necessarily for a spare room, but there was real concern among the parents on that site about what would happen to prospective adopters who were waiting to be approved for adoption, and whether it would adversely impact on their ability to adopt a child if, in the meantime, the room that they were reserving for that child was deemed to be a spare bedroom.

It is not only adoptive parents who have raised such concerns, but organisations such as Action for Children and Adoption UK. Recently, Adoption UK stated:

“Because of their early childhood experiences and circumstances of their adoption, it is often a requirement that adopted children have their own bedroom. If we are to strive for the best outcomes for these children, we must not be implementing reforms that hamper those decisions that are made with the needs of the child in mind.”

As I made clear to the Minister at Education questions a few weeks ago, that is echoed by Department for Education guidance, which rightly sets out that children may well need their own bedroom when they join a new family, especially because of previous experiences but also because it can be an unsettling experience. According to Adoption UK, the issue is particularly problematic given that

“recruiting more families for the thousands of children waiting for an adoptive placement is high on the Government’s agenda. We are surprised that the Government hasn’t taken this into consideration in drawing up the proposals and we hope to see this changed”.

Bill Esterson (Labour, Sefton Central)

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the concerns about the impact that the bedroom tax will have on prospective adopters. She is concentrating on the need of individual children for their own bedroom, but the issue becomes even more complex with sibling groups, which are much harder to place. The size of the bedroom tax increases when more than one bedroom is involved. Does she agree that the matter needs to be given as much attention as the impact on foster carers, which, happily, has been resolved?

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

My hon. Friend has been raising these issues for some time, and his experience of going through the adoption process makes his contributions really telling. I agree with him that we ought not to make it more difficult for people to adopt children, particularly those children who are the most difficult to place. That is of course a pressing concern. I am grateful to him for drawing the Committee’s attention to that matter.

I was intending to talk about the impact on foster carers but, given today’s announcement, I do not need to spend a great deal of time doing so, which is welcome. However, charities have highlighted the experience of foster carers who are trying to seek information about the discretionary fund to which they would have to apply in order to make up the shortfall if they have a foster child. This is very relevant, given that special guardians and prospective adopters will still have to go through that process.

Those charities highlight alarming stories from across the UK. Some fosters carers were told that they could not have access to the discretionary fund at all—they were not eligible. Others were told that they would only receive a contribution, rather than the full amount to compensate them for the loss of housing benefit. Many reported receiving visits and letters from the housing department saying that they would have to downsize. Some foster carers were told that they would have access to the discretionary fund but would have to apply every four to six weeks, even though the children were placed with them on a long-term or permanent basis. Such accounts are very instructive if we are thinking of asking special guardians and prospective adopters to go through the process as well. The National Housing Federation has said that the discretionary fund that will help parents to plug that gap, whether they are special guardians or prospective adopters, will fall short by £100 million. Will the Minister commit to make money available if the fund falls short, to ensure that children are not denied a loving home because of the impact of this policy?

Grandparents Plus is also very concerned about the impact on special guardians. It says it is aware of many cases of special guardians who will be adversely affected by the introduction of housing under-occupancy provisions, especially those people whose own children have now left home and who have not yet reached retirement age. Grandparents Plus makes the point that many special guardians are dependent on benefits directly as a result of having to give up work to take on the care of vulnerable children. We should not seek to penalise those people further.

Grandparents Plus provided a number of examples. The first is a grandmother living in a council house with three bedrooms, one of them a box room, who is raising two grandchildren. She faces loss of housing benefit because her grandson and granddaughter are under the age of 10 and are deemed to be of an age where they have to share. That raises all sorts of problems: there is the obvious problem that, if she moves house, she will have to move again in a few years’ time. My hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central made the point about the vulnerability of the children involved in such cases. They have been forced to leave their home, where they were living with their mother and father, to go into new arrangements, and we should not say that they must have a lesser standard of care. Why do those children not need their own bedroom, when the Department for Education guidance makes it clear that other children in very similar situations, albeit with a different form of legal guardianship, do? We are very concerned. We would prefer a guarantee that the bedroom tax will not apply to prospective adoptive parents and children in special guardianship arrangements. We will be grateful for the Minister’s assurance about that today, given what we have now learned about the arrangements for foster carers.

The purpose of new clause 10 is to ensure at the very least that, when the policy is independently monitored, specific consideration will be given to the impact on these families. The Government have made a commitment to independent monitoring that will cover the impact on housing supply, rural areas, people who are unable to share rooms, vulnerable individuals, health and well-being, family life and so on. If the Minister will not give an assurance today that children in those arrangements matter just as much as children in foster placements and in their own families, will he at least commit to ensuring that those children are very visible in the impact assessment, that they are considered specifically, and that the impact on the supply of special guardians and prospective adoptive parents is also considered?

Bill Esterson (Labour, Sefton Central)

I will speak to the new clauses in my name in the group, as well as supporting new clause 10, which stands in my name and that of my Front-Bench colleagues, my hon. Friends the Members for Wigan and for Washington and Sunderland West.

I completely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan about the bedroom tax. Everybody who has made the case for foster carers being exempted has done a fine job for some of the most vulnerable children in the country, and should be commended. As recently as yesterday’s Department for Work and Pensions questions, I asked the Secretary of State about it, so we kept the momentum going. I think that the largest number of Members that I have seen since I have been in the House stood up to try to ask a supplementary question on that issue, which shows the strength of feeling across the Chamber. Broadly, the right decision has been made, but the long-term implications still need to be reviewed. New clause 10, including its provisions on the impact on foster carers, remains valid because of the one-year period referenced in what the Government have proposed today.

My hon. Friend is right to talk about the other people who look after vulnerable children who are still affected by the bedroom tax, and the review will be extremely important. I will need to hear extremely strong reasons from the Minister to persuade me that the new clause should not be pressed to a vote at the appropriate time.

Speaking to clause 5 stand part, the Minister mentioned increasing awareness of the availability of post-adoption services. That is undoubtedly important, but I have a concern that I think will be raised at other points in our proceedings—for example, when we come to the local offer for special educational needs. We can have all the information in the world on post-adoption services, which are incredibly important, but if the financial situation is so dire that local authorities are unable to make sure that those services are available, access will be difficult. I would like to hear from the Minister how signposting will improve the level of service, and not just provide information about what may or may not be an adequate service. That is why I tabled my new clauses.

In its written submission, Barnardo’s drew the Committee’s attention to the poor quality of child and adolescent mental health services. It said that

“all adopted children and those in foster care, with special guardians and in the care of family and friends should have priority access to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services”.

I know from personal experience that having good mental health services for children in care and children who are adopted is very important. I also know just how difficult it is to access those services—in some parts of the country they are more or less non-existent, which is a grave concern. I am sure the Minister is aware of that, and I hope he will take it on board.

We heard similar remarks from the ADCS in our oral evidence sessions last week. Debbie Jones made the point that neither a review nor signposting on its own is enough. The Minister has made it clear that the intention is that there will be a review process to demonstrate whether or not services are adequate, but as Debbie Jones of ADCS said:

“The danger is that there will be a perpetual cycle of review that ends up not pleasing anyone. You are in a position of having raised expectation without being able to produce the resource. Actually, what you want to be able to do is to get it right, or near right, first time. That is the aim behind it. So I think there is a risk there”.

The risk she talks about is that the services will not be available, however good the information. As TACT told us in its written submission:

“Addressing the chronic shortfall in the number of adopters”—

which it welcomed—

“is only one part of the puzzle: it is also crucial to improve the support available after the adoption order has been granted to give these adoptions the best chance of working. Adopted children and their families are likely to be faced with many emotional and physical challenges due to the impact of the abuse or neglect that led the child to being taken into care. Families need access to expert support to help them deal with these issues. The silence of the Bill on this issue represents a short-sighted approach to adopter recruitment and a significant missed opportunity”.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I was just trying to make sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central did not give birth in the middle of the Committee Room, but I am sure it has been dealt with. I will continue listening with interest to what he has to say.

Bill Esterson (Labour, Sefton Central)

I am extremely grateful for that intervention. I was getting worried about the cause of the disquiet next to me.

My new clauses address the point that TACT made about the silence of the Bill. The point was made at Second Reading that the Bill is notable for what is not in it rather than for what is. That is something that I have tried to highlight with my new clauses, as have my hon. Friends on the Front Bench. Kevin Williams from TACT also told us last week that:

“Certainly, we have some concerns that the Bill is a missed opportunity to think about post-adoption support. That is not just post-adoption support during the early years of adoption. Our experience is that post-adoption support is required throughout the life of the child and the life of the placement, particularly at the onset of adolescence. We see a number of placement disruptions occurring or adoptive families experiencing difficulties as adopted children become adolescent. These are children with very complex needs from poor early life histories”.—[Official Report, Children and Families Public Bill Committee, 5 March 2013; c. 19, Q43.]

That statement from TACT is the reason I tabled new clauses 3 and 5: this is a long-term commitment and support needs to be there.

Bill Esterson (Labour, Sefton Central)

New clause 3 says local authorities must assess the needs of adopted children each year and make it clear if services cannot be provided. New clause 5 addresses long-term needs in adoption, fostering and special guardianship.

Debbie Jones from the Association of Directors of Children’s Services told us:

“Post-adoption support is crucial. The issue about post-adoption support is that frequently, particularly if children are placed at a young age, the difficulties may emerge very much later. The issue of looking at ways of finding resources into the longer term is a significant one. If you are talking about a child who is placed at four and has few problems, you are having to predict what will happen when they are 14, 15 or 16. We want to ensure that these placements last, and adopters should have the same right of access to support.”

Andrew Webb of ADCS added:

“if it is a child whose needs appear to be well met in the early years of an adoption and they become more problematic later, the sort of intervention that is required is usually very specialist. An attachment disorder that manifests itself in really extreme behaviour in the early or mid-teens generally does not respond to the routine services that are available. So it is a question not only of how you keep the money sitting there to draw down over an extended period, but how you ensure that those specialist resources for family therapy or child and adolescent psychiatry are actually there, because it goes beyond what is on offer in many places, and there is a sort of clinical priority waiting list approach to the services, which we would want to short-cut.”––[Official Report, Children and Families Public Bill Committee, 7 March 2013; c. 148-49, Q307.]

We have that evidence from the local authorities about the importance of long-term planning when it comes to support for adoption, fostering and special guardianships, and new clauses 3 and 5 attempt to address that. I hope that the Minister will take those concerns on board.

New clause 6 would improve services over the long term by addressing some of the problems involved in recruitment and retention. It deals with the status, rights and remuneration of everybody who is involved in caring for the vulnerable children who end up in the care system. Those people are caring on behalf of the rest of us, and their status is often not particularly high, as is evidenced when foster carers, adoptive parents or special guardians meet other professionals such as teachers, health professionals or the police. They are not seen as equals in the professional sense; they are seen as parents or carers and at a much lower level. As carers for those who have gone into the care of the state, they have as much right to professional status, support and encouragement as any of the other professions that I have mentioned.

Through new clause 6, I seek to recognise that status, and ask the Government to review what might be done about the problem through professional qualifications, remuneration or other approaches. After all, if we want more adoptive parents, foster carers, well qualified residential staff in care homes, kinship carers and special guardians, we need to find ways of attracting them. The new clause would help us to do that.

Lucy Powell (Labour, Manchester Central)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. I reassure the Committee that I am not about to give birth and that I will, I hope, be here for the duration of the Committee’s deliberations. I echo my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan in congratulating the Minister on his lobbying for the concession that was announced today, which exempts foster carers from the bedroom tax. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan said, we can go further, and I hope that the Minister will use his leverage to make the necessary amendments to this otherwise quite damaging piece of legislation.

New clauses 8 and 9 are supported by the Kinship Care Alliance, which includes the Family Rights Group, the Grandparents Association, Grandparents Plus, the British Association for Adoption and Fostering and the Fostering Network, among many others. I thank them for their support in constructing the new clauses. I am sure that the Government do not intend to create a two-tier system within personal budgets, but I fear that by excluding special guardians from the provisions for personal budgets and from the duty to provide information, they will create exactly that. Special guardians, foster carers and adoptive parents play equally valuable roles in meeting the needs of vulnerable children, and I would like special guardians to be given the same rights as adoptive parents. As BAAF has said,

“It is not acceptable as the Bill does in this clause to introduce a difference that separates adoption from special guardianship when the children are the same children.”

As we discussed earlier, in many cases, special guardians are kinship carers, and do not want to go down the route of full adoption because of complex family dynamics and for other reasons, but they provide the permanency and stability that an adoptive family ultimately provides to a child.

There is an issue, as was made clear in the evidence that we heard last week, to do with permanent foster arrangements becoming special guardian or adoption arrangements. Many families lose support when they go from being foster carers to special guardians. Last week, Kevin Williams from TACT said:

“The difficulty with special guardianship and residence orders is the loss of support—both the financial support that is awarded to foster carers, and the ongoing practical support. We think that the Bill is a missed opportunity to secure permanence for children, not just through adoption, but through other legal means”––[Official Report, Children and Families Public Bill Committee, 5 March 2013; c. 20, Q46.]

That was echoed in other evidence given to us last week.

I am sure that all of us on this Committee understand the value of special guardianship orders, and the vital part that they play, but many families are unable to get the support that the personal budgets part of this Bill is intended to give adoptive parents. Special guardian parents are unable to get that extra support, which might pay for transport, the cost of visiting a child’s parents, or dealing with a traumatised child. Family holidays are another example where a normal childhood experience needs to be on offer, but many parents with the special guardianship right are unable to afford that. I hope that the Minister will extend this part of the clause not just to adoptive parents but to special guardian parents.

On the duty to provide information in new clause 9, although special guardians already have some rights to receive information, it is patchy. The Bill is an opportunity to ensure that all local authorities have a duty to provide information to special guardians. Many of them describe challenges in finding and sorting out school places for their children, getting assessments and access to services to meet a child’s special needs, and moving or making changes to their house—a point that relates to the issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan raised about the bedroom tax. Special guardians have for a number of years struggled to get access and assessments that are needed if a child has special needs. Often, they do not have access to the networks and the knowledge that would help them get the specialist services that they need. They often find it difficult to get legal advice as well.

Given the support for the new clauses, the fact that they would not add a huge burden to local authority budgets—they are just about sharing best practice, and making sure that existing provision is protected and given as a right—and that the Minister would not want to create a two-tier system under clauses 4 and 5, I hope that he will consider my new clauses.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

This has been an important debate on elements of the adoption system that we desperately need to improve. Before I respond on new clauses 3, 5, 6, 8 and 9, it is probably pertinent to speak to new clause 10. I thank hon. Members who have been kind enough to judge that I had some responsibility for the decision in the Department for Work and Pensions. It is true that I had a number of discussions with the Secretary of State and the Minister responsible, and we are in agreement that this is the appropriate response.

I am, of course, delighted that the Department for Work and Pensions has today agreed to change the under-occupancy rules in relation to foster carers. As the Committee will be aware, this morning, the Government laid before Parliament amending regulations that will mean that approved foster carers will be allowed an additional bedroom. That will apply to foster carers who have a foster child living with them, and to those who are between placements, so long as they have become an approved foster carer within the last 12 months. Crucially, it will apply to foster carers in both the social rented sector and the private rented sector. That is an important distinction, and it is an improvement on the current position.

To address the other elements of the new clause, if a child has been placed with a prospective adopter, has been adopted, or is being cared for under a special guardianship order, they are already included in the calculation of how many bedrooms their household needs. Approved prospective adopters who have a spare room ready for a child and intend to adopt, as well as people seeking a special guardianship order, will be able to apply for support from the discretionary housing payment fund. I want to reassure the hon. Member for Wigan and other hon. Members that we will monitor the use of the fund to ensure that those particular groups are not adversely affected by the under-occupancy rules.

It is right to point out that the rule has not yet come into effect. As it comes into effect in April, there is nothing to evaluate at the moment, apart from surveys on fostering undertaken by The Fostering Network and others. However, I can commit to reviewing and monitoring progress from April to assess the impact of the changes. I hope that this reassurance will comfort the hon. Lady.

Lisa Nandy (Labour, Wigan)

I am grateful to the Minister, both for the reassurance and for the spirit in which he has approached the debate. Will he confirm that his assurances will apply to prospective adopters in cases in which the child has not yet been placed with them? I gave the example of a family with a spare room; the bedroom tax was about to come into force, and they were not sure whether it would kick in at that point.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

Neither the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the Minister with responsibility for Welfare Reform—Lord Freud—nor I want the spare room subsidy to deter foster carers, prospective adopters or, for that matter, prospective special guardians. We have been working to resolve this, and I have given the hon. Member for Wigan an undertaking that we will continue to look at it. In fact, we have already gone further today than her new clause on foster carers. I hope that demonstrates the Government’s commitment to the issue. Certainly, from my point of view, it is important to keep this under close review, so that the wider reforms to the adoption system are encouraged by the overall package of support that we are able to offer those who look to adopt in future. As I have provided those assurances, I hope that the hon. Lady will not press the new clause to a Division.

New clause 3 would change the trigger for local authorities to assess a person’s adoption support needs by amending section 4 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002. I share the wish of the hon. Member for Sefton Central to ensure that local authorities properly assess the needs of both prospective adopters and adoptive families. As I have already explained, too many adoptive families are not aware of their right to an assessment. In addition to the steps taken to address this through clause 5, we are also helping to increase awareness by making this information available through the adoption passport that I mentioned earlier, and via the adoption gateway.

Bill Esterson (Labour, Sefton Central)

The difference between what the Minister is proposing and what I am proposing is that he is making information available for people who cannot find it, and I am suggesting that there should be an automatic right to an assessment. There is a significant difference between those two positions. I hope that the Minister will acknowledge that.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

There is currently a right to request an assessment. However, as the hon. Gentleman acknowledges, new clause 3 seeks to achieve something similar to what we have proposed. His new clause requires local authorities to offer to undertake an annual assessment of the person’s need for adoption support, unless the local authority has agreed with the person involved to postpone it. I hesitate to say it, but there are a number of difficulties with that approach. First, the new clause, as he presents it, would remove a large degree of flexibility from the system. At present, prospective adopters and adoptive parents are able to request an assessment of their support needs at the most appropriate time for them, depending on their particular circumstances and when support needs arise.

New clause 3 would remove that flexibility by requiring assessments to be offered annually, which may not coincide with the presentation of adoption support needs. That could lead to a situation where an adoptive family have an assessment in January and are found to have no support needs, but such needs present themselves in June. Having already had their yearly assessment, there would be no duty on the local authority to assess them again on request, as there would be now. Our proposal will provide flexibility.

Secondly, new clause 3 would present a difficulty for local authorities, because adoptive families may move from one area to another, and there is, rightly, no requirement on them to inform local authorities about their movements, because they have the full and sole legal responsibility for the children in their care. The new clause would mean that a local authority would be in breach of its statutory duty if it did not offer an annual adoption support needs assessment to prospective adopters and adoptive families within their area, or obtain agreement from the persons involved that the annual assessment could be postponed. The new clause would be impossible for a local authority to comply with in relation to adoptive families and prospective adopters of whom the local authority were unaware. In addition, new clause 3 would require the local authority only to offer someone an annual assessment of their adoption support needs but not actually to carry out such an assessment.

I assure the hon. Gentleman that existing legislation addresses the issues that proposed new subsection (1B) in new clause 3 addresses. Local authorities are already under a duty under section 4 of the 2002 Act to prepare a plan when they decide to offer adoption support services. Additionally, regulation 17 of the Adoption Support Services Regulations 2005—I am happy to supply that to the hon. Gentleman, as I am sure he will want to go through it with a fine-tooth comb—requires local authorities to give notice to the person who has been assessed of their decision about whether to provide adoption support services and invite them to make representations. Regulation 18 places a duty on local authorities to notify the person concerned about their decision and the reasons for it.

New clause 5 is designed to ensure that local authorities provide adoption, special guardianship and fostering support services in a way that is in the long-term interests of the recipient families. Clearly, adoption support services play a vital role in addressing specific issues, such as behavioural problems and forming attachments, that adoptive parents might encounter with an adopted child. Many adopted children have, unfortunately, been victims of abuse or neglect. The provision of a range of adoption support services is a crucial element of the statutory framework introduced by the 2002 Act. Such support includes therapeutic services, financial support, training for adoptive parents and respite care. We want to ensure that adopters and their children receive the best possible support whenever they need it. That is the motivation behind clauses 4 and 5.

It might be helpful to say a few words about special guardianship, which was introduced relatively recently—in December 2005—to provide an additional permanence option for children who cannot return to their birth families. Special guardians do an important job, and I and, I am sure, other hon. Members appreciate their work and desire to support them. The role is relatively new, and we still have much to learn about the way it is working.

The Department commissioned the university of York in March 2012, six years after the introduction of the order, to carry out a two-year research project to investigate how special guardianship is working in practice and the rates and reasons for any breakdowns. The final report is expected in the summer of 2014. That major piece of research—the first of its kind on special guardianships—will help us to understand how well special guardianships support children and their families. We will take the findings into account when considering whether any changes need to be made and will involve both the voluntary and statutory sectors in those discussions.

Unlike for adopted children and those cared for under a special guardianship order, foster carers care for their foster children on behalf of the state. Responsibility for protecting and promoting foster children’s welfare and for meeting their maintenance costs therefore lies with the responsible local authority. The authority must set out the child’s needs and how it intends to meet them in the child’s care plan. It should include any support the foster carer might require to meet the child’s needs.

Regulations also place a duty on fostering services to provide their foster carers with the training, advice, information and support that they need to care for their foster child. The Government set a national minimum allowance that is the minimum that we expect any foster carer with a child in placement will need. Foster carers should not be expected to subsidise the cost of caring for their foster children. The recent court case that has been in the news illustrates the importance of local authorities doing just that.

As part of our improving fostering services programme, which I spoke about earlier, we have spoken to approximately 300 people, including many foster carers, about what works and what could be done better. As a result, we are planning a number of improvements. That includes plans to improve support for long-term foster care placements. We want there to be support that reflects the enduring and committed nature of those relationships and that is flexible and responsive to the continuing needs of long-term foster families.

The Government are committed to ensuring that families who adopt or foster, or who care for a child under a special guardianship order, receive the support that they and their children need. Support is already in place for those families, and we are considering how that might be improved. Of course, we will continue to keep that under review and look at how we can do it better in the future.

Turning to new clause 6, I understand the concern of the hon. Member for Sefton Central that those who care for vulnerable children should be recognised and remunerated. His new clause makes specific reference to staff working in children’s homes, foster carers and adopters. As we know, adopters open up their homes and make a lifelong commitment to the children whom they adopt. Although they are not the child’s biological parents, they are the child’s parents legally and in every other sense. They are looking after their own children and should not be required to undertake core training and hold minimum qualifications, as is the case with foster carers and children’s home staff, who are responsible for looking after children on behalf of the local authority. I hope that the range of improvements that we are making to the adoption system will support them better in their sometimes demanding role.

I acknowledge that the professional contribution of children’s home staff and of foster carers is important. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that they carry out very important work in looking after some of our most vulnerable children. Children’s homes are required to provide looked-after young people with security, stability and support, yet children’s home staff may be some of the least qualified and trained professionals responsible for looked-after children.

As I have already mentioned, the next steps in our children’s home reform programme, which will be announced shortly, will involve consideration of what measures might be necessary to improve the skills, knowledge and training of children’s home staff. That will involve discussion with children’s home providers, local authorities and other interested parties. That process allows us the opportunity to consider whether there would be benefits from professional registration, which would bring arrangements in England more in line with practice under the devolved Administrations. I will be happy to discuss with the hon. Gentleman at a later date the progress that we are making.

Andrea Leadsom (Conservative, South Northamptonshire)

Does my hon. Friend the Minister acknowledge that as important as the professional skills of those working with very young children is ensuring that they have the right level of empathy skills? All too often, someone who is extremely highly qualified does not have the empathy to be able to give a child an appropriate hug or word of encouragement or love, which children very often crave.

Edward Timpson (Conservative, Crewe and Nantwich)

As ever, my hon. Friend makes an important contribution to the debate. Clearly, we want to have working with children highly skilled, professional people who have not only a strong academic background to fall back on, but what are often called soft skills—what she has described as empathy. We are talking about the use of emotional intelligence, which can be a very powerful way of providing the right level of care and support, understanding the situation that the child is in and being able to adapt to the child’s situation, which will bring out the best in the child, rather than just sticking to a rigid learning structure that they have used as a way of ensuring that they are fulfilling their duties as a professional. My hon. Friend touches on a very important point.

It is the case that 75% of all looked-after children are cared for by foster carers. The dedication, commitment and skills that they bring to the role are huge. The children whom they look after have often experienced severe neglect and trauma, and that should not be underestimated. Foster carers need support and training to enable them to carry out that complex task, but they also need to be respected, key members of the team that is responsible for the child’s care. In the past, foster carers’ experience has often been overlooked in assessing the needs of an individual child who is in care and how they can be better supported. Improving the status, training and support of foster carers is central to our improving fostering services programme.

Alongside that, we have recently consulted on provisions to help local authorities to improve the way in which day-to-day decisions about the care of foster children are delegated to foster carers. We spoke earlier in the debate about the delegation of haircuts, sleepovers and holidays, and effective delegation is crucial if foster carers are to be empowered to deliver their parenting role. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Sefton Central for offering me the opportunity to outline some of our plans for improving the status of, and the support for, children’s home staff and foster carers.

I am conscious that we have only five minutes, so I will quickly speak to new clauses 8 and 9. New clause 8 would extend our proposals for personal budgets for adoption support services to special guardianship support. I emphasise to the hon. Member for Manchester Central that we are not creating a two-tier system. As the hon. Member for Wigan pointed out, I am on record, as was my predecessor, as saying that there is no hierarchy within the care system; it is about finding the right permanency for each individual child. That may be special guardianship, and we have seen a large rise in the number of special guardianship orders in recent years, which is why we need to evaluate their impact carefully and understand what effect they are having.

We plan to pilot personal budgets in adoption support over the next two years to see how they work in practice and whether they deliver the expected benefits. I am grateful for the support across the Committee for those plans. The pilots will give us a much better understanding of the possible benefits of personal budgets, which, alongside the richer understanding that we will have of how special guardianship is working, will allow us to reach an informed view about the potential for personal budgets for special guardians. I reassure the hon. Member for Manchester Central that we will continue to look at the matter as we understand more about the role of special guardians and what support is effective for them in providing the best care possible.

New clause 9 would place a new duty on local authorities in England to provide information on special guardianship support services to specified people. That would replicate the duty to inform in clause 5. Unlike for adoption support services, we have no evidence at present about the levels of awareness of support services among special guardians or those who are interested in special guardianships. The research that we have commissioned, which I have mentioned, into special guardianship will tell us more about the information and support needs of special guardians. We do not believe that it would be right to take the steps outlined in the new clause without having considered that research. I reiterate, however, that we will evaluate the research carefully and look at whether personal budgets might form part of the support services available to special guardians in future. In the light of my assurances and the issues that I have outlined, I hope that the hon. Member for Manchester Central will agree that the new clauses are unnecessary.