Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Lords Chamber

I would have thought that any well-run organisation such as a local authority would not object to collecting this data because it would want to know how well its services were performing. That is all part of being a well-managed public body. So I cannot see what the arguments are against the principle of Amendment 35. It is all about getting value for money, good performance and better outcomes for children—so what is not to like about an amendment of this kind that makes a local authority a better manager of its particular services?

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I rise briefly and with some trepidation to give a word of warning about Amendment 35. Having previously chaired corporate parent panels and attended foster carer forums, which included listening to the views of looked-after children, I am aware that we need to remember that at the end of these checks—I am going to speak particularly about physical health checks—there is a child. In the past, looked-after children were often pulled out of class for a medical check-up with a GROUP—which, of course, their peers sitting around the classroom did not have to do because they had parents who would monitor their health. So, while it is really important that we collect the data, ready for report, the assessments for looked-after children have to be made extremely sensitively so that they are not stigmatised as they have been in the past.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I have a question about the data on outcomes. In the recent care leavers strategy, it was published that 90% of care leavers up to the age of 21 are in satisfactory accommodation. But the data that that was based on suggested that 81% were in satisfactory accommodation. Will the Minister take that away and get back to me to explain why those outcome measures seem not to agree with each other? I hope that that is clear enough.