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SUBMISSION BY THE CHILDREN’S LAW CENTRE
PROPOSALS FOR A CHILDREN LEAVING CARE BILL
INTRODUCTION
The Children’s Law Centre is an independent charity
established in September 1997 founded on the United Nations
Convention On The Rights Of the Child. We provide training,
information, research, advice and representation on domestic
and international laws affecting children and young people.
We often advise young people who are looked after and leaving
care and we are therefore aware of the complexity of many
of the difficulties faced by young people. Thank you for affording
us the opportunity to comment on these proposals.
We broadly welcome the proposals for a Children Leaving Care
Bill, which will provide the opportunity for debate on this
important issue.
The proposals are at this stage broadly defined and, particularly
in relation to benefits entitlement, we would welcome sight
of detailed proposals in this regard to enable us to forward
detailed comments.
We suggest that it will be necessary for the Department of
Health, Social Services & Public Safety to consult further
about the detailed implementation of these proposals so that
any legislative change will provide a specific remedy for
the difficulties encountered by young people leaving care
at present in N Ireland. This will involve consultation with
leading organisations in this area such as First Key (NI)
who have carried out a considerable amount of research about
young people leaving care. Consultation should also be conducted
with aftercare teams and with children and young people themselves
on the contents of the proposals. It would be useful to produce
a young person’s summary of the document and for future
consultation exercises.
THE PROPOSALS
Our view is that Article 35 of the Children (NI) Order1995
is too discretionary at present. The weaknesses are as follows;
DUTY TO ASSESS AND MEET NEEDS
Article 35 only refers to advising, assisting and befriending.
We agree with the proposal in the consultation document that
there should in fact be a duty to assess and meet the needs
of each individual young person leaving care.
DUTY TO APPLY TO ALL CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE LEAVING
CARE
The duty to advise and befriend should apply to all children
and young people leaving care. The Children (NI) Order 1995
makes a distinction at present between different categories
of young people leaving care. Those who have been looked after
by a Trust or accommodated on behalf of a voluntary organisation
are owed a duty by the Trust in terms of advice and assistance.
The Trusts retain discretion in relation to the provision
of such a service to young people who have been accommodated
in a children’s home, privately fostered or accommodated
for a consecutive period of at least three months in Education
& Library Board accommodation, residential care home,
hospital, nursing home or any prescribed accommodation.
We recommend that the new duty to assess and meet needs should
apply to all of the above young people and that any discretionary
element should be removed. We recommend detailed consultation
in relation to the regulations, which will be drafted in relation
to “eligible children” and prescribed periods. There
is no detail in the consultation paper about eligibility criteria
and it will be essential that consultees are given the opportunity
to address the detail required for Regulation at a later stage
in this process.
RESOURCES
We are extremely concerned by the comment on page 11 of the
consultation document, which reads as follows;
“ Under the new arrangements existing spending on aftercare
services and benefits would be drawn together and used by
Trusts to provide support and assistance”
The issue of additional resources must be addressed as a
matter of urgency before this Bill is enacted. The purpose
behind this Bill should be to improve the lives of young people
leaving care. We need to acknowledge that despite some excellent
work being carried out by leaving and aftercare teams and
voluntary organisations in N Ireland that the reality is that
services in this area are under funded. Research in N Ireland
has shown that young people are leaving care too young, they
are leaving with lower educational attainment, they often
experience periods of homelessness and they often live in
poverty or on a very limited income. [1]There needs to be
an open acknowledgement that the reason we need further legislation
is because in the past not enough has been spent on our care
leavers.
“ Adding the money currently spent together will not
produce the better outcomes we are looking for”[2]
We note that in England the introduction of a similar Bill
was supported by new funding from the Children’s Social
Services Special Grant, which was set up by Local Authorities
as part of The Quality Protects Programme.
It is our view that in order for the proposals in this Bill
to be effective, there must be additional funds allocated
to support its implementation. We are concerned that a simple
amalgamation of budgets will lead to care leavers in fact
being financially worse off than they are at present.
EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE
The Trust needs to retain the power to help young people
in an emergency.
PATHWAY PLANS
We support the introduction of a statutory requirement to
provide a pathway plan for each young person leaving care.
We suggest that again there needs to be detailed consultation
about Regulations in relation to assessments carried out for
a pathway plan and in relation to mandatory contents of a
pathway plan. For example, we would suggest that Regulation
or Guidance in this regard makes specific reference to consultation
with the young person about the Pathway Plan. The Regulations
should also require that discussion about pathway plans with
young people begin at least a year before the child/young
person is due to leave school to allow for input from school
and the education sector.
We recommend that it should be a duty on Trusts to prepare
and review pathway plans for all young people leaving care
and that the duty to review should last until the young person
is 21, or 24 where the young person is continuing in education.
YOUNG PERSONS ADVISERS
The task of the young person’s adviser appears to be
a very onerous one. We understand the position to be that
leaving and aftercare teams throughout N Ireland currently
support children and young people leaving care on limited
budgets and that in fact aftercare services are increasingly
being provided by the voluntary sector.
We therefore need to know whether substantial significant
funding will be provided to implement young persons advisers.
We note that the young person’s adviser has the task
of negotiating an agreed pathway plan for the young person.
Is the YPA totally independent of social services? We note
from the original consultation document in England, Me, Survive,
Out There? that there was a proposal for an Independent Review
Tribunal which could fast track complaints in relation to
pathway plans. As we all know, agreement is not always possible
and in our view the role and remit of the YPA needs to be
very carefully defined. There also needs to be a clear method
of redress for a young person if agreement cannot be reached,
for example if the young person chooses to go to a college
which is a further distance than the local college and the
Trust will not pay the bus fares or the young person has identified
property, which is perhaps slightly more expensive than usual,
but is in an area where the young person will be close to
relatives etc.
Young people who are going into care are entitled to a Guardian
Ad Litem and a solicitor to represent them. Surely young people
leaving care should be entitled to separate representation
if a disagreement arises also? We would recommend that the
YPA has a role to advocate on behalf of the young person and
to advise the young person to contact a solicitor should matters
not be agreed. We endorse the comments made by The National
Deaf Youth Association in relation to the support of deaf
young people leaving care.
THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE CHILD
The bill should reflect the need for assessment and planning
to be carried out in a manner, which is in the child’s
best interests and not driven by financial considerations.
ACCOMMODATION
We note from the Northern Ireland Leaving Care Factsheet
prepared by First Key NI recently that whilst a few Trusts
have semi independent flats linked with children’s residential
homes, voluntary organisations are the only providers of specialist
leaving and aftercare accommodation (most of which is in the
Eastern Board area.)
It is essential that this Bill requires Trusts to provide
suitable accommodation for care leavers. Suitable accommodation
is not bed and breakfast accommodation or hostel accommodation
for homeless people. There are specific issues in relation
to what constitutes suitable accommodation for young single
mothers or for young people with mental health difficulties.
The issue of accommodation is not dealt with in the consultation
document in any detail. In our view there needs to be specific
regulation and a specific legal duty to provide suitable accommodation
and “suitable accommodation” needs to be defined.
We would urge the Department to consult about this important
issue with a view to drafting a specific clause and accompanying
Regulations to remedy this situation.
FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE
At present the provision of financial assistance to care
leavers is discretionary under The Children (NI) Order 1995
and unfortunately there is no regionally agreed protocol in
relation to the amounts payable to young people for setting
up home or for travel expenses/ educational expenses. The
current Bill needs to address these difficulties. We would
welcome further clarification in relation to the amounts of
money payable to care leavers under the new system. The amounts
set will have to recognise that young care leavers need help
with furnishing their homes, education, clothes, socialising,
sports, hobbies etc as well as assistance with day-to-day
living costs.
We recommend that the power to provide financial assistance
should be amended to become a duty. Further discussion and
information needs to be provided about the amount of financial
assistance, which will be available. We are interested in
looking in detail at the interaction between the social security
system and the Trusts and perhaps further details could be
sent to us in due course in this regard.
EDUCATION
1 It is essential that Guidance is developed in relation
to the education of children in the care system and that personal
education plans are used to ensure that children in the care
system whether in foster or residential placements .We commend
the efforts of The Northern Board in this regard. It is essential
that issues such as suspension, exclusion and special educational
needs are addressed as part of these detailed plans and in
the overall pathway plan.
2 There should be a legal duty on Trusts to assist with costs
associated with a young person’s education up until they
are 24. This should include the payment for books and for
“out of term time” accommodation (young person should
be able to receive the payment themselves and choose accommodation).
3 It is important that care leavers have access to careers
advice and guidance and the plans for accessing guidance should
be incorporated into the requirements for the leaving care
plan.
4 There needs to be some flexibility in the eligibility criteria
to provide financial assistance to young people who have left
care, but who do not immediately go into further education.
Where there has been a break, the young person will need financial
assistance at an older age to continue with education and
this needs to be provided for.
CONCLUSION
We would ask the Department to forward these proposals again
to us in further detail once this initial consultation exercise
has been completed.
Whilst we generally welcome these developments we are of
the view that we need to see the proposed legislative changes
in draft and proposed Regulation and Guidance in detail before
we could comment further.
There are two major issues, which concern us at this time.
Firstly the proposals implemented in England in The Children
(Leaving Care Act) 2000 were part of the wider initiative
of Quality Protects and the legislation attracted considerable
additional funds for implementation. Children leaving care
was identified as one of the six priorities for use of the
£375 million allocated under The Children’s Social
Services Special Grant. It has been indicated in the proposals
For A Children Leaving Care Bill in this jurisdiction that
budgets will be joined together, which suggests that there
will be no additional monies allocated. It is impossible to
see how the legislative amendments proposed could possibly
be nil cost. In our view many of the proposed services should
be in addition to the work of the leaving and aftercare teams
already in existence.
Secondly, The Quality Protects Programme in England covers
both children looked after and children in need generally
and as part of this initiative an assessment framework has
recently been introduced as a mandatory requirement in England.
We are not suggesting that it is necessary to duplicate the
entirety of Quality Protects, but we certainly see the need
for research to be carried out as to how to implement a similar
initiative in N Ireland.
It is difficult for us to address the issue of children and
young people leaving care in the absence of a wider framework.
There are serious related issues in relation to the lack of
provision of residential care, the implementation of Children
Matter, the difficulties associated with accessing special
educational needs services and mental health services for
children and young people in care, the low educational attainment
of many children in care, which all need to be addressed in
the same context as this current Bill if real progress is
to be made.
In future it would be helpful if policy initiatives for children
could be set in the context of the Assembly’s wider strategic
framework for improving the lives of our children and young
people.
We thank you for affording us the opportunity to comment
at this stage and we would welcome being involved in discussion
in relation to the detailed proposals for the Bill and for
associated Regulations and Guidance.
Tara Caul
Children’s Law Centre
3rd Floor
Philip House
123-137 York Street
Belfast
BT15 1AB
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[1] Meeting the Challenge; 1996;Pinkerton, J and Mc Crea,
R
[2] P 26 Me, Survive, Out There? Department of Health.
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