Members present:

Dr Hendron (Chairperson)
Mr Gallagher (Deputy Chairperson)
Mr Berry
Rev Robert Coulter
Mr Hamilton
Ms Ramsey

Witnesses:

Ms N Ferris ) Barnardo’s
Mr B Nellis )

The Chairperson: The Committee welcomes Ms Nuala Ferris and Mr Brendan Nellis from Barnardo’s. Thank you for providing documentation.

Mr Nellis: Ms Ferris and I have over 40 years’ experience of working with young people in care and disadvantaged young people. It is important to emphasise that ours are practitioners’ perspectives. We are standing in for our project officer and policy expert, who was on leave when the Committee invited Barnardo’s to give evidence. Our presentation is based on our experience of young people in care.

I want to focus on the point that Sue Ramsey raised about the article, 34C(2), proposed in clause 2(3). The word "appoint" is not about choice; rather, it involves the allocation of work with a young person. Had the word "arrange" been used, as we wanted, it would have allowed the young person an element of choice as to the personal adviser they wanted. As Ms Coyle and Ms Keenan from First Key (NI) said, choice is important for young people, and our work with them is about working in partnership and allowing choice. Young people are experts on themselves. They should have a right to their say, especially on big decisions that affect their lives. They should have a right to choose with whom they need to work.

Today, we will look at those specific clauses in the documentation if the Committee wishes. We thought that the clauses were self-explanatory when we planned this. With Ms Ferris’s support, I propose to go through the 10 points of our submission. Those 10 points are in the legislation, and we will try to elaborate on them from our practical experience.

Point 1 in our submission states:

Mr Nellis: Our first point is about stigmatisation: labelling young people to be different. That would happen in the proposed system. We call it the free school meal syndrome. Young people who got free school meals were sometimes seen as different to those who had to pay for school meals.

In point 2, we note:

Social services act as any good parent would, by helping young people buy clothes and with expenses such as TV licences and insurance policies. If the young people have gathered up TVs or other equipment for their homes, and those things are stolen, they have no means of replacing them, since they are living at subsistence level.

In other words, social services can act as a good parent by giving the young people the extra money. If we move the entitlement to income support to social services, that will put pressure on them to provide the young people with a basic income for food, rent and so on, removing the extra allowances that they also need. Even if they want to socialise or travel, young people currently have very little money for it. The role of social services as a good parent giving money whenever needed is indispensable. That is one of the major points that we want to make concerning young people and poverty.

Mr Nellis: Point 5 concerns the question of passport benefits, which is a question that we shall leave with you. Who will pay, and where will the money come from? Perhaps there is an answer, but we do not have it. We are highlighting a matter of great concern to us. If the passport benefit is income support, who pays for the free dental treatment and prescriptions for glasses?

In our experience, you must be on some type of income support to gain access to the social fund. For example, a young person going for an interview can apply to the fund. We always encourage them to try for a grant rather than a loan. If they cannot get a grant, they will get a loan, meaning they can buy a suit for the interview. That facility is to be taken from them, with the result that they will be attending the interview in trainers. That is only one issue regarding passport benefits. We worry about exclusion of these young people.

Point 6 concerns the experience in England and Wales; currently, many social-work departments find their funding inadequate. Like the witnesses from First Key (NI), we worry about funding also.

Ms Ferris: Northern Ireland has received £0·5 million to implement the legislation, while the Scottish Executive were given £10 million for young people’s education alone. In England, the quality protects programme brought in several hundreds of millions to back up the legislation. Despite that, colleagues in Barnardo’s in England tell us that the funds are already insufficient.

Mr Nellis: On point 7, we argue that the legislation should be seen as an opportunity for young care leavers to get out of poverty. We worry about the discretion as to income levels for care leavers. In times of financial stress, we worry that the minimum subsistence will become the norm, not the exception. For example, if is promised that income support payments will not go below £42 a week, that amount will become the norm. Therefore, young people who need extra for whatever reason — every young person is unique and their situations will be slightly different — will find limited resources to help them. That is especially worrying in an atmosphere where there is much financial pressure and squeeze on social services and the Health Service.

That brings me to point 8. There, we are talking about ring-fencing the money. In England, they were able to ring-fence it for two years. We worry about what happens after two years, because other money that was not ring- fenced was moved to primary care. If the money is not ring-fenced, young people are definitely going to lose out in the long term.

Ms Ferris: Point 9 is about restriction. If we make social services responsible for paying out the income to young people, that will remove their current flexibility to assist young people as a good parent. We understand that the Bill makes some provision for helping young people in education, but in one of the clauses it uses the word "may": social services "may" help them. It should be made a "duty" that they help them. Otherwise, on a stretched budget, it will not be made a priority for these young people.

Mr Nellis: I understand that your submission does not include point 10; I apologise for that. Point 10 should read:

It is important that the social security system can at least offer independent access to income that is not dependent on a compulsory relationship with their social workers.

Mr Nellis: I want you to know about the young person’s perspective. Their voice must be heard. This is work that we carried out with our young users, and their chairperson came up with this.

He said that he was against financial support, as young people would become dependent on the social worker for everything. He mentioned the changing relationship that I referred to and the idea of a social worker becoming like a civil servant.

He said that a young person must be allowed to flap his or her wings, make mistakes, be brushed down and helped to move on. At one time in his young life when he moved out of care, he did not have money for electricity because he used it on other things. After that he always kept £5 for an electricity card, having learnt from his experience of living in a cold house with no lights. That is not to suggest that all young care leavers should ever have to do that. However, he is saying that if the legislation is based on requirements of the trusts and social services and personal advisers are appointed, it does not allow for that movement. That is a young person’s perspective; it is not necessarily my own, although I endorse it.

We have talked about his next point, which is that aftercare should remain voluntary and not compulsory. He went away and came back after a couple of years for more support, then disappeared and came back again. There was no compulsory nature to his aftercare, and he thought that that faith was very supportive. He also said that money should not be mixed up with social support. Young people are forced to stay in the care system for longer whether they want to or not, and that ties up limited resources.

Rev Robert Coulter: Thank you. Your presentation has answered my question.

Ms Ramsey: Point 7 states that the minimum income level set for care leavers is at the discretion of social services. Given that the level of funding for social services across all trusts is poor, does that mean that children served by the North and West Belfast Health and Social Services Trust could receive a lower income than children served by the Foyle Community Trust?

Mr Nellis: That is possible.

Ms Ramsey: In the information you sent us you said that the equality impact assessment failed to identify people under section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 such as those from ethnic minorities. In the memorandum that came with the Bill, the Department told us that it does not see any difficulties on the equality issue.

Mr Nellis: That depends on how you define equality. Our definition of equality is that all young people, regardless of whether they are homeless, from ethnic minorities or coming from care, should be treated equally. As Ms Keenan said, the detail of equality is about labelling and stigmatisation as well as resource implications.

The Chairperson: Thank you very much for your documentation and presentation.