Members present:

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

Witnesses:

Mr N Rooney )
Mr T Boyle ) North and West Belfast Health
Mr J Growcott ) and Social Services Trust

The Chairperson: I welcome Mr Noel Rooney, Mr Tommy Boyle and Mr John Growcott from the North and West Belfast Health and Social Services Trust. Thank you for your documents, which have been very helpful. Please go over the main points so that my Colleagues will have time to ask questions.

Mr Rooney: I thank the Committee for the opportunity to speak about the Children (Leaving Care) Bill. Mr Boyle and Mr Growcott will say something about our response and will be able to answer questions in detail, and I will make several key points about the issues we have raised in relation to the legislation.

We welcome the principles and direction suggested in the proposed legislation and the opportunity that it offers as regards those principles. There are around 380 children in care in our trust area; one of the highest number in any trust area in the Province. It is projected that approximately 10% of those children will leave the care system every year. In other words, around 38 children will leave the care system in our patch annually, and we must make provision for them.

Integrated planning needs, and how we cope with those 38 children leaving care given their life histories and emotional stability and their social and intellectual strengths, are reflected in the legislation. The availability of informal support, including contact with extended families, is a major issue for us.

Given the importance of training and education, our trust particularly welcomes the emphasis on an inclusive, comprehensive, planning pathway for the transition from care to independent living. That emphasis is underpinned in the Children (Leaving Care) Bill by an individualised needs-led assessment model, the promotion of training and educational themes, and the proposed role of the personal adviser.

We are concerned about the proposed financial arrangements and how they could negatively impact on the young person’s relationship with the trust. We are especially concerned about the proposal to move income support from the Social Security Agency to the trusts because that will impact on the independence of young people who leave care. We will talk about that in more detail. It also changes the relationship between the social worker and the young person.

The resources that will be required to implement the legislation must be considered. Young people who leave care require intensive, well-resourced, diverse and flexible provision. Research carried out in England suggests that children who leave care find themselves in difficult situations; they may become homeless or find themselves in prison. It is, therefore, important that the correct provision is put in place.

The participation and views of young people are central to ensuring responsible and effective service. An integrated, dynamic and robust collaboration between all agencies, including those that deal with education and housing, is important and will inform the strategic vision that addresses the role of the voluntary sector too. It will also provide an integrated model of service delivery, which is imperative.

Thirty eight children a year leave care in our trust area, which indicates how many young people do so in Northern Ireland each year. Moving a child from care to independent living is a cost-intensive process. Although it is a small number of children overall, it will cost the trusts a substantial amount to fulfil the requirements of the legislation. Therefore, adequate resources are essential.

The Committee will be aware of the problems encountered in the implementation of the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995 because adequate resources were not provided. The Committee was involved in the report ‘Children Matter: A Review of Residential Child Care Services in Northern Ireland’ and in the inquiry into residential and secure accommodation, which both highlighted measures that should have been funded by the Order. We had serious problems as a consequence.

Mr Growcott: Mr Rooney referred to the planning process, which from the trust’s perspective is one of the great strengths of the proposed legislation. It mandates a multi-agency inclusive approach that acknowledges the centrality of young people’s perspective and their role in planning for themselves. It is a dynamic process that will demand a response from the agencies involved by forcing them to recognise its needs-led dimension. It should be individualised, with a pathway plan developed with the young person.

The key theme that the staff group discovered through talking to young people is the sense of isolation, loneliness and vulnerability that is so typical in young people who leave the care system. The continuum of need is substantial. The trust has experience of exceptionally damaged young people who require intensive support and of young people who have successfully managed their lives and careers. The trust has several young people at university. We must, therefore, provide a service that straddles that continuum of need and is responsive to the circumstances of young people.

We wish to highlight the importance of appropriate accommodation provision and, as noted in the legislation, the significance of employment and education. Young people who are without family and who, in many respects, lack the social competencies and maturities that are expected of young people of their age must have accessible and responsive services available to them on their terms. Those services must respect their autonomy and their right to make decisions about their own lives and seek to provide for their needs through balanced and supportive parenting.

Mr Boyle: I will briefly concentrate on areas where the trust could have difficulties in implementing the proposed legislation.

One area, which I am sure has been commented on, is the transfer of moneys from social security to social services. That is a potential problem, not because of the administrative bureaucracy and difficulties that it would cause the trust, but from a young person’s point of view. Young people are already stigmatised when leaving care and may be further stigmatised by their peer group. They will have different circumstances to other 16-and 17-year-olds who claim income support.

We understand why that provision is built into the legislation. Many young people leaving care drift away from the trust or social services, and having an income is a means of keeping them tracked on board; as a corporate parent, it is important to do that. There may be particular difficulties in relation to the income provision in the legislation and linking it with social services. It may also, as Mr Rooney said, cause further difficulties with the social worker/young person relationship. The legislation has a participative theme in that it aims to bring young people along. There is a paternalistic aspect to the income support provision.

Another point worth highlighting is the resource issue. Mr Growcott mentioned the differentiated group — those leaving care. In our trust area around 40 young people leave care every year, and one third of them come from children’s homes. Their behaviour can be particularly difficult and demanding, and they may also be in conflict with the law. Some current provision comprises hostels such as the Starting Points Hostel and hostels provided by the Simon Community, which may not be able to meet those young people’s demanding behaviour. We will need resources to negotiate with the Housing Executive and other housing providers to have a range of provision for those young people leaving care.

The Chairperson: The Bill will impose extra duties on trusts. How prepared is your trust to meet the needs of young people leaving care? The Homefirst Health and Social Services Trust is well on its way with pathway planning.

Mr Rooney: We support the concept of integrated care and pathway planning, which covers being in care, through the transition to independent living. We have an aftercare team currently operating in north and west Belfast, which is funded by some of the money that the trust received from the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995. That aftercare team will help us to facilitate the transition in legislation needed because of the proposed legislation. We are preparing for that.

Mr Growcott: We have a model of review that, in many respects, pre-empts the pathway plan. There is a review structure for each young person in our care, and we are developing a system to capture, regularly review and update the progress of young people who have left our care system. The trust’s leaving care team will play a key role in this process. We encourage young people and agencies that work with and represent young people to attend reviews. We want to develop advocacy arrangements for young people to ensure there is an independence element. Hopefully our practice shadows the proposals in the legislation, which capture best practice. We are striving to reach those standards.

Mr Berry: Thank you for your presentation. How will trusts determine when a young person is ready to leave care? Will that impact on your resources? Will the Bill pressurise trusts to move young people out of care before they are ready to make way for incoming young people?

Mr Growcott: The decision to move a young person on is one that must be paced on the basis of the young person’s needs. The notion of volition — of a young person acceding to being involved intricately in the decision — is critical. Therefore it is inappropriate and over-paternalistic for someone to decide that a young person’s time in care had come to an end. It must be paced to meet and reflect a young person’s needs. The review process is in situ and the pathway planning process seeks to reinforce that.

As Mr Boyle and Mr Rooney mentioned, there will be pressure on the current resources to provide appropriate facilities and on the development and expansion of a resource base to meet those commitments. As part of our ongoing residential strategy and the development of services in the trust we wish to address that matter as proactively as we can. As far as any coercive dimension is concerned, it is not our practice to impose a decision on a young person which they were not party to.

Mrs Courtney: Your submission highlighted the resource implications of the Bill. The Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety has had to bring together: the existing resources of the trust; the funds from the Department for Social Development; £500,000 to underpin implementation in the first year, with higher amounts in future years; and a further £1·2 million from the Executive programme funds over three years to establish leaving care and aftercare services. Is the money currently available enough to make the Bill work? If not, which areas need further resources?

Mr Rooney: The Committee will be well aware of the problems we have with the implementation of the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995. The Committee has been instrumental in bringing us resources to implement that Order over the past couple of years, and we are grateful. We have put several systems in place in the aftercare team; the leaving care team is a recent development based on some of the resources available.

It is the correct way to capture all the resources. Whether it be housing, social security, juvenile justice or social services; we must get together to ensure that young people do not "fall between the stools" when they leave care, which is a problem across the UK. They tend to fall between the different agencies once they reach 17 or 18 years of age. It is a good idea to fuse those resources, and we agree with the principles behind that. However, the difficulty for trusts is that we will develop, for example, different types of accommodation, and we will have to work with the Housing Executive in a different way. The Housing Executive already finds accommodation for older people and adults with mental health difficulties: now they will also have to find accommodation for young people who are leaving care. Resources will be needed so that trusts can work closely with the Housing Executive.

Advocacy on behalf of young people, for example, will create substantial resource implications right across the trusts — and particularly in our patch because of the higher number of young people leaving care. We will need resources over and above the existing pockets that are available, and that has to be taken into consideration.

Mr Boyle: One resource issue involves the young people leaving care with a learning or physical health disability. Although they would be small in number, they would be a huge draw on resources.

Rev Robert Coulter: You have stated that the provision will ensure that trusts do not lose contact with care leavers, but it may promote overdependence and stigmatise them. Is that a realistic expectation? How do we reconcile these opposing outcomes?

Mr Rooney: It is a vital issue for us. On one hand we have a corporate parenting responsibility for the 380 children that I referred to, and we have to discharge that responsibility.

Under existing legislation, once children reach the age of 18 they are no longer our responsibility. They drift off to different places, and all of the evidence shows that there are significant problems. On the other hand there is the issue about how we keep in contact with those young people. The Bill proposes that if trusts were to be responsible for young people’s benefits once they reached the age of 18, they would keep in contact with us. However, young people believe that they are entitled to the same independence as everyone else.

The Chairperson: I am sorry to interrupt you, Mr Rooney, but I am afraid that someone’s mobile phone is on and it is interrupting the transmission. Would everyone please make sure that his or her mobile is switched off? Thank you.

Mr Rooney: The transfer of funding would ensure that contact between the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety and the young people is not lost. There may be a third way; after all, social security payments are the entitlement of all children, particularly those who leave care. There may be other ways of maintaining the relationship between social services and children after they leave care. For example, an aftercare fund could be established to enable us to provide funds.

Mr Growcott mentioned the example of three children in our care who have gone to university. As corporate parents, we provide support while they are at university. There is no reason why we cannot establish a fund to assist the development of young people who have reached the ages of 17 and 18. It will not necessarily mean that their social security income transfers to us as well. It should be possible to create special circumstances to maintain the relationship.

The Chairperson: Thank you very much, Gentlemen, for your interesting and informative presentation.