Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Hughes of Stretford and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park

Monday 11th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 121 to 125, regarding child death reviews in the multiagency local safeguarding arrangements. These proposed new clauses require the child death review partners—the local authority and clinical commissioning groups in a local authority area—to carry out a review of each death of a child normally resident in the area. They will be required to analyse the information obtained from child death reviews to identify issues that are relevant to the welfare of children in the area or to public health and safety and, in doing so, to consider whether it would be appropriate for anyone to take action in relation to any matters identified.

Amendment 122 will enable the child death review partners to request information and enforce compliance from any person or body in pursuance of their functions. Amendment 123 will allow child death review partners to agree to make payments to support the joint working arrangements which they are establishing for the reviews. Amendment 124 will allow the child death review partner areas to be made up of more than one local authority area, where there is more than one local authority or clinical commissioning group. This proposed new clause will allow the relevant child death review partner to delegate the review functions to one local authority or one clinical commissioning group. This is a practical provision, which enables the child death review partners to utilise more streamlined arrangements in a manner which they consider would work best for their area. These proposed new clauses do not change the individual existing responsibilities of each partner to exercise their functions with regard to child death reviews.

Amendment 125 will require child death review partners to have regard to any statutory guidance issued by the Secretary of State in regard to their functions. I believe that the partners will find guidance of this sort helpful in aiding their decision-making.

The death of any child is a tragedy, whether it is as a result of a health condition, an accident or abuse and neglect. Parents and the professionals who support them through this extremely difficult time will want full details of what happened in their case and to know whether anything could have been done to prevent this death happening. England was the first country in the world to put in place arrangements that provide comprehensive understanding of the causes of child deaths, and we need to build on the knowledge that we have gained so far. Collating and analysing information locally and sharing between areas are vital steps to help us to understand why children die.

In May this year the Government published the Wood review into the role and functions of local safeguarding children boards and child death overview panels. The review found that over 80% of child deaths have medical or public health causations, but the gathering of data on child deaths and the analysis of them is incomplete and inconsistent. As a result there is a gap in our knowledge, and professions are not sufficiently extracting learning from the data that are available in order to reduce the number of child deaths each year.

These new clauses bring the two key child death review partners together and place upon them equal responsibility to work together. They will enable health partners to continue to support the analysis of information on health-related child deaths at local and national level. Hospitals of course routinely analyse the data on child deaths. Local authorities need to be partners to ensure that factors relating to public health and safeguarding are similarly identified. This will also allow local authorities to promote learning and dissemination within their local area. For these reasons, the Government believe it is imperative that child death reviews remain on a statutory footing to secure the best outcomes for all children. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a question about these clauses, which are generally welcome. The more information we have about child death comprehensively, the easier it will be to take any necessary action. As I read the clauses, however, although I may have missed something, I cannot see what the review partners will be required to publish. Subsection (4) in new Clause 16M of the Children Act 2004 in Amendment 121 says they must,

“prepare and publish a report on … what”,

the partners,

“have done as a result of the arrangements … and how effective the arrangements”—

which I take to be partnership—“have been”. However, I can see nothing in here about the kind of analysis that the Minister was just referring to—the kinds of deaths that have occurred, for what purposes, the demographic and other characteristics of the children and so on. Could she enlighten us about what will be required in terms of general access to the information that has been collected here?

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Hughes of Stretford and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

My Lords, I will respond to Amendments 91 and to Amendments 92, 94 and 96 to 98, which are grouped with it. These clauses address a number of topics, relating to maintaining a child’s relationship with the birth family or keeping them within that family, promoting the educational achievement of children living away from their birth parents, providing support to family and friends carers, reporting on the outcomes for vulnerable children and applying Clause 9 to cover Wales. I thank all noble Lords for raising several important points and for the moving and high-quality contributions that have been made.

Amendments 91, 92 and 94 all seek to maintain a child’s links with their birth family where they are unable to live with their birth parents. The Government absolutely agree that a child maintaining contact with their birth family wherever possible can provide continuity and stability at a time when other aspects of their life can be subject to uncertainty. Guidance under the Children Act 1989 and the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010 is clear that,

“wherever it is in the best interests of the child, siblings should be placed together”,

and that if siblings have not been placed together, arrangements must be made to promote contact between them if that is consistent with welfare considerations. On top of that, it is also set out in the regulations that arrangements must be made to promote contact with siblings unless it is not in the child’s best interests to do so.

No one could help but be moved by the contributions, particularly of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. However, we believe that the issue is not about what the law says. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, said, it is about poor practice on the ground. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Watson, highlighted the findings of the Family Rights Group which further emphasise the issue. We have asked officials to meet representatives of the Family Rights Group to discuss its findings, and if necessary we will look to strengthen the statutory guidance in this area.

As for ensuring that grandparents are considered as possible carers at the point when adoption decisions are made, the law already provides for this in the Children Act 1989. Where courts and adoption agencies feel that there is a significant relationship between a child and their grandparents, they have the authority to consider a grandparent to be a “relevant person” and take that relationship into account. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, rightly raised the deeply tragic case of Ellie Butler. We welcome the fact that a serious case review has been carried out. It is absolutely vital that lessons are learned. That is why we are establishing the new Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel, which we will be discussing later, to identify and undertake reviews of the most serious incidents that raise issues of national importance, so that learning from them can be properly understood and shared.

However, noble Lords will of course recognise that, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said, unfortunately not every child will have an existing, positive relationship with their grandparents. That is why we do not believe that it would be the most effective use of courts’ and adoption agencies’ time to legislate that grandparents must be considered in every case. Rather, we believe that courts and agencies should retain the freedom to decide on a case-by-case basis whether a child’s relationship with their grandparents may be relevant, depending on the facts of the case.

Amendment 94 seeks to place a duty on local authorities, at the point when they feel that a child needs to enter care, to consider family and friends as potential carers for that child. Again, I wish to reassure noble Lords that the requirement for authorities to demonstrate that they have considered family members and friends as potential carers at each stage of the decision-making process already exists in the legislation framework. Section 22C of the Children Act 1989 makes clear that local authorities must give priority to parents, persons with parental responsibility and placements with local authority foster carers who are relatives or friends of persons otherwise connected with the child. We feel that this amendment would largely, if not completely, replicate the existing duty and practice that local authorities should already follow.

While on the topic of family and friends carers, I will address Amendment 97, which seeks to place a duty on local authorities to provide support services for family and friends carers of children who are not looked after. I reassure the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, that the Government fully recognise the invaluable contribution made by many family members and friends up and down the country who are caring for children. The Children Act 1989 sets out the duties and responsibilities of local authorities to support the needs of all children living with family and friends carers. Statutory guidance published during the previous Parliament strengthens these requirements on local authorities.

As noble Lords will be aware, because we have discussed this previously, family and friends care, or kinship care, covers a wide range of arrangements, both formal and informal. How kinship carers are able to access financial support depends on the individual circumstances of the carer and the child. Local authorities have the power to provide financial and other support to those looking after children in informal relationships following an assessment of needs. Statutory guidance on family and friends makes clear that children and young people who are living with relatives or friends should receive the support they and their carers need.

We do not believe that adding to the legislative framework will be effective in driving improved practice in this area. Rather, it is through ensuring that we have a highly skilled and expert children’s social care workforce that we can ensure that those in kinship care arrangements have access to the support they need. That is what we are trying to achieve through our social work reform programme. My noble friend the Minister has agreed to meet with the Kinship Care Alliance to discuss how we can support kinship carers and to discuss the range of issues that noble Lords have brought up during our discussions so far. That meeting will happen next week, and I am sure that this issue will be one of those that we discuss.

Amendments 96 and 98 seek to protect the educational and wider outcomes of vulnerable children. Amendment 96 seeks to place a duty on local authorities and schools to provide a virtual school head and designated teacher to all children living permanently away from their parents who are cared for by a family under a special guardianship order, a child arrangement order or an adoption order, where the child has not been in care.

Our intention with Clauses 4, 5 and 6 is to place a duty on local authorities to extend the duties of virtual school heads and designated teachers to support looked-after children who have left the care system under a permanent order. The aim is to ensure that children do not lose the support they received while in care when they move to their permanent family. This amendment would extend that support to a new group of children who have not previously been in care.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

I was rather concerned about the wording of Clause 4 in extending the virtual head teacher role as it refers only to “advice and information”, so we made inquiries of the Bill team, who said that they envisage that the role of the virtual head teacher as applied by the Bill in relation to these new groups of children will be very light touch. In other words, it will be limited to advice and information on request. It will not consist of monitoring and targeting the progress of those children. Will the Minister confirm that that is the case? I do not think that that is clear, either in the Explanatory Notes or in the wording of the Bill. If that is the case, it does envisage a rather different—and, as I say, much lighter-touch—role for these groups of children. I am not sure that would be effective.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

For children who have left care and are now with a family, the noble Baroness is right, because obviously those children will have that family playing a role in a way that children in care would not. The virtual head and the designated teacher will be liaising with the family, but the family will obviously be playing a role, and a child in care will not have that family. This was covered in a group of amendments that we discussed in the previous session in Committee, so perhaps the noble Baroness would like to have a look at what I said then. If she has any further questions, I would be very happy to answer them.

Amendment 98 seeks to introduce a new clause that would place a requirement on local authorities to report on various outcomes for vulnerable children, such as those in need, looked-after children and others. It also asks the Secretary of State to publish an annual report on these outcomes. I hope noble Lords will be reassured to hear that the importance of reporting on outcomes is recognised by the Government. We have already placed a duty on local authorities to report information about children in need and looked-after children and their outcomes. Annual reports and statistical tables are produced and published by the Department for Education. These show a range of information about the outcomes of looked-after children and care leavers. Last year, for the first time, the national children in need census data also published factors identified by social workers in assessments of children. These included parental and child risk factors such as drug and alcohol misuse, mental health and domestic violence, among others. However, I am happy to inform the Committee that we will be reviewing our national data collections across government to make sure they are joined up and consistent and to make use of technological advances to ensure that we collect more timely data. I hope that these explanations and reassurances will allow the noble Lord to feel able to withdraw the amendment.