Members present:

Dr Hendron (Chairperson)
Mr Gallagher (Deputy Chairperson)
Mr Berry
Rev Robert Coulter
Mrs Courtney
Mr Hamilton
Mr J Kelly

Witnesses:

Ms T Caul ) Children’s Law Centre
Mr L Mackle )

The Chairperson: We will now consider the Children (Leaving Care) Bill. The Committee’s briefing paper contains submissions from the Children’s Law Centre and the North and West Belfast Health and Social Services Trust. I welcome Mr Liam Mackle and Ms Tara Caul from the Children’s Law Centre. Thank you for your documentation. I appreciate that this is an extensive topic and that the issues are important, but we would appreciate it if you could give us main headings rather than details. That will give my Colleagues time to ask questions.

Ms Caul: I thank the Committee for asking us to speak this afternoon. My colleague and I are from the Children’s Law Centre in Belfast. I propose to briefly address some of the points in our main submission, which we have updated and provided for you today. Mr Mackle will then deal specifically with the proposal to exclude young people from the benefits system.

As you will be aware, the Children’s Law Centre is an independent charity established in 1997. We provide training, information, research, advice and representation on children’s law. We often advise young people who are looked after, and we thank you for the opportunity to speak to you about these matters.

I want to address our main submission. The first point that we made relates to the consultation process. In our submission to the Department, we said that there should be consultation with children and young people on the Bill. We remain of the view that young people should inform the decision-making process, perhaps particularly in relation to their proposed exclusion from the benefits system.

I will give people the opportunity to look at the document.

The Chairperson: Does anyone wish to comment at this point? It would be better if you finish your points, and then my Colleagues will comment.

Ms Caul: Everyone has the document?

The Chairperson: Yes, we have.

Ms Caul: We welcome the introduction of a duty to assess and meet needs, which obviously strengthens the position of care-leavers under the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995. We recommend that that new duty should apply to as many young people leaving care as possible, and that any discretionary element should be removed. There is no detail in the current Bill about eligibility criteria, and it is essential that consultees be given the opportunity to address the detail required for regulation at a later stage in this process. In particular, we recommend that the category of relevant children include children and young people who, when they reach the age of 16, are detained in hospital or in a juvenile justice or young offenders’ centre.

We are concerned about the comment, on page 11 of the initial consultation document, that, under the new arrangements, existing spending on aftercare services and benefits would be drawn together and used by trusts to provide support and assistance. In our opinion, the issue of additional resources must be addressed as a matter of urgency before this Bill is enacted. In England, the introduction of similar legislation 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. In our view, for the proposals in this Bill to be effective, additional funds must be allocated to support its implementation.

My next point concerns emergency assistance. The trust must retain the power to help young people in an emergency or where there has been a breakdown in relations with a social worker. We recommend that it be a duty of trusts to prepare and review pathway plans for all young people leaving care, and that that duty last until the young person is 21, or 24 where the young person is continuing in education. We believe that the current Bill purports to do that.

The task of the young person’s adviser appears exceptionally onerous. We therefore ask whether substantial and significant funding will be provided to introduce them. We also recommend that the adviser have an advocacy role on behalf of the young person and should contact an independent advocate or solicitor should matters in relation to pathway plans not be agreed.

The Bill should reflect the need for assessment and planning to be carried out in whatever manner is in the child’s best interests, rather than being driven by financial considerations. We are keen to see regulations introduced to govern suitable accommodation for care-leavers. There must be detailed consultation about what constitutes suitable accommodation for a care-leaver. The Bill does not outline minimum standards for financial support, and the term "maintaining" must be defined more specifically.

We shall deal with the issue of exclusion from benefits after we have dealt with the point about education.

We believe that there should be a legal duty on trusts to assist with the costs associated with a young person’s education until they are 24, and that the proposed new article 35B should be amended to use the word "shall" instead of "may".

My colleague Mr Mackle will address the issue of exclusion from benefits.

Mr Mackle: One of the Bill’s professed aims is to streamline the whole system of financial payments to young people. Under the current system, young people leaving care may be able to claim income support in some circumstances and jobseeker’s allowance in others — and, more often than not, allowances for training programmes that they undertake. We support the submission made by First Key that the current proposals are not the best way of streamlining the financial arrangements for children leaving care and that a far more satisfactory provision would be to amend schedule 1B to the Income Support (General) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1987 and add "relevant 16- to 17-year-olds" as a group entitled to income support.

That would remove from the trusts the onerous responsibility of taking care of these people’s financial considerations as well as of their welfare. The social security system already has the technical capabilities to deal with this, but a whole new tier of administration would be created by transferring those responsibilities to trusts. The number of people in this group in Northern Ireland is small compared to that in England and Wales. In Northern Ireland, we may be dealing with fewer than 1,000 young people a year. It would not be cost-effective to transfer those responsibilities to the trust, so the Social Security Agency should undertake this work. Removing the financial considerations would leave the young persons’ advisers free to concentrate on other aspects of the pathway plans, such as education, building independent living skills and building capacity for coping with adult life. We support First Key’s proposals on the financial provisions made yesterday.

The Chairperson: Ms Caul, in your submission you recommend

Mr Berry: With regard to former relevant children and education, other submissions have argued that young people leaving care need at least as much ongoing care and support in, for example, education and training beyond the age of 18, as children in a stable family environment do. Given what your submission says about education, you may not think that the Bill delivers in this area. Will the Bill ensure that trusts provide the level of support needed for young people beyond the age of 18? Is that what you are referring to in the section on education?

Ms Caul: Yes. In the section on education, we refer to a change to a proposed new clause in article 35B of the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995. We recommend that the word "may", which implies discretion, should be deleted and replaced with the word "shall", which would strengthen the duty.

Mrs Courtney: Exclusion from benefits is one of the key issues. The Department intends the Bill to bring together all of the resources available for children leaving care. It will be the duty of trusts, acting in place of the parent, to safeguard and promote the welfare of a relevant child by providing financial assistance, as well as giving advice and support. This is linked to the expectation that children leaving care move straight on to the benefit system. The aim should be to improve their chances through education and training systems and bring them into full employment, rather than have them rely on benefits. You support the proposal by Barnardo’s to delete clause 6 of the Bill and amend the Income Support (General) Regulations 1987 to entitle 16- and 17-year-old carers to claim income support. How would this improve the situation for young people? Surely it is better to keep them out of the benefit system?

Mr Mackle: This provision is supposed to ensure that 16- and 17-year-olds have some financial arrangement for their weekly maintenance. Neither the current system nor the proposals as they stand adequately achieve that. When training placements fail, entitlement to income support is essential. It is also important to cut away much of the current system, as, when such a situation arises, young people and their social workers have to fish through the social security system for something that will provide an income.

The current system places rigorous training demands on vulnerable young people such as care leavers while they are making that transition from care to independent living. When that falls apart the social security system is not there to pick up the pieces. The proposals for income support will provide a stable weekly income through the social security system, which will remove any questions about their entitlement to a weekly allowance rather than social security dependency. It is a weekly allowance at the age of 16 and 17 to get those young people through that transitional period. There seems to be no better proposal for dealing with that, and to place other considerations on top of those that already exist is not the best way to proceed.

Mrs Courtney: I agree with that.

Rev Robert Coulter: Many of your concerns are naturally to do with how the Bill will work in practice. Are you content with the Department’s proposal for developing provisions in the Bill such as the use of regulations to define accommodation, the appointment of personal advisers and a complaints procedure? Can you give us some steer on what those definitions should be?

Ms Caul: We are happy with the regulations as long as there is consultation with the appropriate agencies to enable them to comment on, for example, the definition of suitable accommodation. In England, regulations are very detailed on eligibility criteria, accommodation, the role of personal advisers and the complaints procedure. We are particularly concerned about those areas, and we hope that there will be widespread consultation on them.

Mr Gallagher: You seem to be concerned about the role of trusts in emergency situations or protecting the duty of trusts to help out in an emergency. Do you remain concerned about how that has been handled in the Bill?

Ms Caul: Yes, particularly when a young person moves from one trust area to another and perhaps arrangements in that other area fall through very quickly. We would like an emergency provision in the Bill to deal with that and also to deal with financial support.

Mr Gallagher: Would you like a provision to deal with young people who are caught up in an emergency situation?

Ms Caul: Yes, perhaps when accommodation falls through and there is a need to move on, or when payments do not come through for housing benefit.

Mr Mackle: One worrying aspect of the Bill is the absence of a safety net for young people who fall out with their personal advisers or have bad experiences in care, and they become estranged from a trust or do not want to engage with it beyond the age of 16. They are excluded from the benefits system, and if they are not minded to approach the trust there is no support available for them. That is very worrying, and it defeats the whole purpose of the proposed aims of the Bill.

The Chairperson: Your documentation states that people going into care are entitled to a guardian ad litem and a solicitor, and it seems that young people moving out of care would also need that sort of legal advice.

Ms Caul: Part of the young person’s adviser’s role would be to tell young people that if there is a fundamental disagreement on the content of a pathway plan, they can approach a suitably qualified solicitor or someone to advocate on their behalf. I am thinking, for example, about additional moneys for an education placement that is not agreed by the trust or might cost more than a placement provided by the trust.

Rev Robert Coulter: What happens to a young person of 16 years of age who comes out of care and gets married? Are any provisions made for that instance?

Mr Mackle: There is nothing in the Bill to address that. There may be social security benefits available to a 16-year-old in that situation, but the rules are complex. There may be some way of accessing the social security system, but the rates of benefit for married couples under 18 years of age are very low. The situation is unclear: it is not dealt with in the Bill.

Rev Robert Coulter: There does not seem to be any consideration of any kind for a 16-year-old who leaves care to get married.

Mr Mackle: Involvement with a trust or any other form of support would end if that person were to marry someone over the age of 18. [Inaudible due to mobile phone interference].

The Chairperson: Thank you.