Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Baroness O'Neill of Bexley and Baroness Berridge

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O’Neill of Bexley (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 33 aims to leave discretion about the qualifications of those involved in the multi-agency child protection team to the relevant agency responsible. It also aims for clarity about where the Secretary of State might lift the requirement for qualifications in this work. My previous contributions have sought flexibility for those statutorily responsible for the safety of our young people, and this amendment follows that theme. The Minister, thankfully, gave us some reassurances earlier, and I hope this will continue.

Life changes, and the areas will not all be the same. It will need some local discretion, so one would hope that it would not be too prescriptive. In addition to considering the local needs of those responsible, we need to consider what already exists and, if change needs to happen, from what base will it happen? There needs to be flexibility for those who are part of the processes. It is also possible that this being one size fits all risks undermining local innovation, which we all know is important, as well as stunting workforce development.

Consideration will also need to be given to the relative qualifications of all members of the teams and those in other agencies. If it is to be the responsibility of a local area to arrange its child protection services, it will need to consider who is part of the multi-agency child protection team and their qualifications. I beg to move.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments, particularly the clause stand part notice. I have known the Minister to be a listener and Committee is entirely the time to listen. The noble Baroness mentioned that we need to solve the lack of joint working. I think nobody would disagree, and no one would dare to say that multidisciplinary team working for child protection is not the way to do it. But there are, I believe, genuine concerns about whether the functions outlined in Clause 3 are the way to achieve that.

When I first read the review recommendation and the description of multi-agency child protection teams—I have not yet come up with an acronym that I can pronounce quickly enough—I thought that would be an oversight mechanism akin to the independent chair of child protection cases. But the understanding out there among certain practitioners seems to be that it could be an investigative/operational mechanism. I thought it was a mechanism about oversight where you pull together everybody involved in that particular case, to make sure that everyone in the room knows everything that they need to know and there are no gaps in the information.

However, the understanding that is out there and that has been communicated is that, in fact, what could be happening here is a duplication of the investigative function. With this new system, what is understood out there is that, when a social worker has maybe had a very sensitive disclosure made to them—usually after many months of knowing the child and gaining their confidence—there can be a transfer at that moment to a different social worker to take over the investigative role. Obviously, that would be a duplication of resource and it would potentially sever the relationship that the child has.

Currently, as I understand it, the multidisciplinary team investigation is basically built around a lead expert social worker, who then draws in—at casework level—health, benefits, housing and the police interview. There is oversight of that by the independent chair. Of course, if there is any kind of change of that function, a child who has already disclosed may decide, “No, I can’t disclose to somebody else”. There may be that loss of trust, adding to their trauma. So the arrangements that we put in place in Clause 3—which everyone is intending to aid the joint working of all the different agencies—could inadvertently open up new cracks in the system.

While we have seen and are aware of the tragic failings that have led to the MacAlister review, it is important to remember how foundational the Children Act is—that it has stood the test of time, is understood by practitioners and has been built on, particularly in 2004. Many of our outstanding local authorities are not just chosen to be pathfinder places; they are visited by people from many European countries to see how they have embedded over many decades child protection systems that are—I know we find it hard to believe—the envy of some other countries.

Where is the adequate evidence to support this change? Yes, there was a recommendation in the MacAlister review, but where is the adequate evidence that we have used previously to make changes to our child protection system? I know that the pathfinders will be publishing soon, but are these actually what we would usually understand to be operational pilots? Where is the rigorous academic research that has so often been the evidential basis for previous changes to our child protection system over many decades?

While Clause 3 may seem logical and that in principle it will work, could it actually open up different problems? Will the Minister agree—if she has not already done so, because she said that there is evidence out there to support these changes—to meet the director of children’s services who advised the MacAlister review, Eileen Munro and other concerned academics, and the DCSs from outstanding local authorities who are concerned? Those are the practitioners who will have to implement this. The Minister may need to talk to her colleague in the Department of Health, the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, as this was precisely the issue with the Mental Health Bill—whether approved mental professionals were behind that change. Are the directors of children’s services behind this change? Although the honourable Member, Josh MacAlister, whom I have met, is passionate about looked-after children and adoption and fostering, the review was not chaired by somebody who was an expert in deciding child protection cases or operationally dealing with child protection cases. That is why I wish that the Minister could meet that type of expert and reassure your Lordships’ House that these practitioners support this.

Although everyone here intends Clause 3 to help, I have thought, as we are required to do, about what the situation would be if the experts who have concerns—it might not be every single expert—about unintended consequences are proved to be right. If a child discloses sexual harm then loses confidence, with a switch of social worker or the multi-agency team that comes in, and then will not talk, and the mum’s partner, as it often is, senses that something has changed with the child, as disclosure psychologically affects individuals, and that person then harms the child to shut them up, what kind of report will come back from the local authority’s child safeguarding panel to the Department for Education? It will not be the responsibility of the DCS that the systems were not working. If the concerns are valid, the report that comes back could very well be, “We advised you not to make this kind of statutory change and you did, and this is what has happened”. I would not want anybody to be in that situation—that inadvertently, while trying to improve the system, with experts advising that there could be unintended consequences, we do not take time to pause and make sure that this recommendation is supported by adequate evidence before it is implemented.