Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Baroness Sanderson of Welton and Baroness Barran

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 32 and 35, which relate to children with disabilities, because these children are, sadly, more at risk and so need our protection. Also, before I begin, could I just say that my noble friend Lady Fraser of Craigmaddie is sorry that she cannot be here today—frankly, as am I, as she is exceptionally knowledgeable in this area and so I hope she will approve of the following arguments, particularly in relation to children with cerebral palsy, who I will talk about today?

While there are many different forms of ability and disability in children, if policy, systems and practice can get things right for children with cerebral palsy—the most common cause of physical disability in childhood—then the benefits will be felt by children with other conditions too.

Evidence gathered by the APPG for its report Best Practice in Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs), Teaching, and Learning for Children with Cerebral Palsy found that many parents of children with cerebral palsy lack confidence in their local authority’s ability to make suitable arrangements for their child. Some even view their local authorities as being obstructive, inconsistent and unaccountable. Provision inevitably tends to reflect what local authorities are able to provide, rather than what the child concerned requires to have the best chances in life.

Much of this stems from the reality that when it comes to issues relating to children with profound disabilities, local authorities are not always the people who have the relevant condition-specific knowledge, nor the experience of the lifelong trajectory of a condition, to be able to make the right assessments of potential and be suitably ambitious for the child.

Section 17 of the Children Act, as referred to in Amendment 35, outlines the local authority’s duty to assess children who are “in need”, and this definition includes children with disabilities, who may require a paediatric developmental assessment to fully understand their needs.

Amendments 32 and 35, when taken together, would provide an acknowledgement of the necessity for a member of the specialist health team involved in the provision of care for the child—someone who understands the condition and has the sector experience to understand what is possible—to be involved in the multi-disciplinary child protection teams, to ensure that these teams are assessing all the possible options.

The persons referred to in new subsection (3) relating to the provision of health who are to be involved in the multi-disciplinary child protection teams are only defined in new subsection (4)(c) as

“a registered health professional, nominated by an integrated care board for an area any part of which falls within the area of the local authority, with experience in the provision of healthcare in relation to children”.

Therefore, the health professional, nominated by the board, could be the same person who represents the health board for all the MDCPT assessments. The text does not specify that they have to know anything about the child, the health prognosis of the condition, the services and interventions that might be best for the child or whether they are—or are not—available in any one particular local authority area, nor be able to form a qualified view of the potential of the child, based on specialist experience of children with disabilities.

In Scotland, children with profound disabilities have a nominated “lead health professional” who is responsible for co-ordinating relevant, cross-sector, multi-disciplinary services and liaising with parents to take responsibility for ensuring that the needs of the child are met. Sometimes these needs, as the Committee might imagine, can be quite specific and technical; for example, when dealing with specialist resources for communication, assistive technology and mobility needs, particularly for children with complex disabilities. This lead health professional, who has practical knowledge of the individual child’s circumstances and health condition, would therefore always be included in a multi-disciplinary team discussion. It would not be left just to a representative of the health board, or a generic paediatric clinician.

Only recently, in her letter to the Times, Professor Eileen Munro warned against shifting child protection responsibilities to less-qualified staff. I therefore urge the Minister to accept—or at least to think about—these amendments, which outline the importance of including a member of the children’s disability team, someone who knows the condition or conditions, and not just a generic professional who ticks the boxes specified in the current text referring to the persons referred to in new subsection (3)(a).

Guaranteeing the right representation on these teams will go a long way to ensuring that assessments are likely to be safer, that children at risk have swift access to the resources they require and, where local areas lack appropriate provision and/or expertise, that there is a voice of knowledge to ensure there is no fear of commissioning, a voice that can work with other specialist providers in the best interests of the child.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 36. I am also delighted to support my noble friend Lady O’Neill on her amendments, as well as those of my noble friend Lady Fraser of Craigmaddie, who was so ably represented by my noble friend Lady Sanderson of Welton today. All these amendments seek to clarify some of the operational issues with the proposed multi-agency child protection teams.

I do not want to steal from the Minister’s remarks, but she might remind the Committee that the context for introducing these teams came from the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, which the previous Government commissioned and was led by the honourable Member for Whitehaven and Workington. Following a key recommendation from his review, we established 10 pathfinder sites to pilot and test out these teams, alongside a number of wider reforms to early help, targeted family help and support for children in need, as defined under the Children Act. We support the spirit and direction in which this draft legislation is going, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, pointed out, we have concerns about how it will be operationalised in practice.

Noble Lords may be aware that, in a former life before joining your Lordships’ House, I was involved in the establishment of multi-agency teams all around the country to address high-risk cases of domestic abuse, which were known as multi-agency risk assessment conferences—MARACs. We did that in every local authority in the country. At the end, those teams were managing about 60,000 adult cases a year and over 100,000 children. They involved statutory and non-statutory agencies. For better or worse, I am very familiar with the issues that are important when operationalising this kind of work.

The detail is important. Who attends these teams? Is it the same person? How senior are they? Is it the caseworker or a representative covering all cases? As my noble friend Lady O’Neill and the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, asked, who is accountable for the work? How can we share information legally? How does information sharing translate into action planning? How do you involve the family? These and many other issues are so important to get right, and we will explore them in more detail in the debates on the other amendments to Clause 3.

My Amendment 36 simply seeks to understand how the Government expect the new statutory multi-agency child protection teams will interact with existing multi-agency work, particularly the multi-agency safeguarding hubs—the MASH teams. There are so many acronyms in this world; I saw that the department has even snuck in a new one: MASA. Who knew what MASA was? Nevertheless, it is in the documentation. The MASH teams, which are now pretty much universal around the country, are not statutory. Some are great, but some are less so. How does this team interact with the multi-agency risk assessment conferences for high-risk domestic abuse or the multi-agency public protection arrangements for high-risk perpetrators? In a world where resources are tight, we need to avoid duplication.

Equally, however, we know that non-statutory agencies—the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, who is in her place, knows this extremely well from her work outside the House—at the very least bring different information to multi-agency work. Frequently, they are really trusted and can build relationships with families that can be harder for statutory agencies, with the powers that they hold. I would be grateful if the Minister could set out how she expects the multi-agency child protection teams to work in practice with the MASHs, the MARACs, the MAPPAs and any other organisation that has an acronym beginning with an “M”.

I will pick up on the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady O’Neill. My key question about Amendments 29 and 31 is: can the Minister say how she expects that the involvement of partners, both statutory and non-statutory, will be funded? What we hear from the pathfinders is that it is very difficult to get other agencies outside the local authorities to participate in the teams, and that some of the extra funding the pathfinders have been given has gone to funding police officers to attend a multi-agency child protection team, which in my world feels like a very odd thing for the local authority to do. I assume that the Minister does not believe that that is a sustainable model, let alone for non-statutory agencies, where, all too often, we rely on their good will and do not acknowledge the pressures on their budgets.

I am also very interested to hear the Minister’s reply in relation to Amendments 39 and 40, which deal with cases across local authority borders. She will know that, for vulnerable families, that happens all too often—one parent lives in one local authority and the other parent lives in another; the family are moved from temporary housing in one local authority to temporary housing in another; or a child lives in one local authority but is being groomed by a gang in another. I think I am right in saying that a contributing factor in the tragic case of Sara Sharif was that she moved local authorities but the understanding of the degree of harm she faced did not move with her.

Independent Review of Children’s Social Care

Debate between Baroness Sanderson of Welton and Baroness Barran

Tuesday 24th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate’s final point is right; Josh MacAlister’s review has set out very clearly the scale of the challenge we face and has worked through the financial impact of getting this right. However, none of us is in any doubt that our primary focus is getting it right for children.

[Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)]

My Lords, I also welcome this review and its focus on supporting families earlier in the process. To echo an observation made by the author and journalist Polly Curtis, the word “love” was used 42 times in this review and “loving” 50 times. As she says, this is pretty radical for a set of formal proposals. It is most welcome, because is that not what the system is for—making sure that children are loved and cared for when their parents cannot take on that role? As has been mentioned, kinship carers play a fundamental part in this, so will my noble friend reassure us that, as the review proposes, there will be increased legal, practical and financial support for kinship carers to match the scale of what is offered to foster carers and adoptive parents?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend is right to pick up on all the “love” and “loving” in the report. Kinship carers are an incredibly important part of providing that to children, and I send them my thanks for everything they do. The department already works with the charity Kinship and supports it in creating more support groups for kinship carers. There are some very important recommendations in the report and I can absolutely say to my noble friend that we will consider each of them and they will be part of our report at the end of the year.

Schools: Extremism and Intolerance

Debate between Baroness Sanderson of Welton and Baroness Barran

Monday 28th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank the right revered Prelate for his question and for pointing out the success of integration in primary schools; I am happy to share in his welcome of that.

[Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)]

As the right reverend Prelate said, it is a complicated situation, but the podcast itself—the reporting as per the original Question—was at times quite worryingly skewed. Does my noble friend think that schools are doing enough to challenge extremism, or, as a result of this podcast, are they afraid of being labelled racist?

Child Safeguarding

Debate between Baroness Sanderson of Welton and Baroness Barran

Monday 6th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The issue of children being out of school is an important one. The noble Baroness is absolutely right that schools are an incredibly important protective factor for many children. That is why we are so keen as a Government, public health permitting, to keep our schools open with a real focus on attendance and working very closely with schools and children’s social care so that where children are not in school that is followed up and properly understood. In terms of the details of the review in relation to Arthur’s own attendance, as I said, the terms of reference are being set at the moment and I am not aware of the details.

[Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)]

My Lords, there are so many distressing factors involved in Arthur’s death, but perhaps one of the most upsetting is that he had family who loved him and who raised their concerns. Can my noble friend the Minister say whether the Government will consider giving more focus to raising the awareness and status of kinship care, as recommended in The Case for Change?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I hope my noble friend will be pleased to know that in the Government’s independent review of social care we will be looking at how we can further support kinship families for all the reasons that my noble friend touched on. There are about 150,000 children in this country living in kinship care arrangements, so it is a really important element. In recent years, we have provided extra support to kinship carers who are looking after a child who was previously in care under a special guardianship order. Those carers can now access therapeutic services funded by the adoption support fund to help those children deal with the trauma that they have experienced. We have also recently changed the school admissions fair access protocol so that more children in kinship care will have access to schools that will support them with their kinship placement.

Online Harms Consultation

Debate between Baroness Sanderson of Welton and Baroness Barran

Wednesday 16th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)]

My Lords, in clamping down on anonymous abuse online, what can be done to ensure those who need anonymity, such as victims of domestic or sexual abuse, can still have the protection of seeking help anonymously?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her question. We do not intend to ban anonymity online for the very group who she talks about, or for whistleblowers and others, as this would interfere with their safety, privacy and freedom of expression. Our approach is to make sure that platforms tackle abuse online, including anonymous abuse. This is a very challenging area and we are aware that many people in public life, for example, suffer extensive anonymous abuse. It is an area that we will keep under review, but without sacrificing in any way the safety of those who need anonymity to be present online.