Children and Young People: Local Authority Care

Baroness Twycross Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Laming, for securing such an important debate and for his insight based on a huge amount of experience and expertise in this subject. As the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, there is no person better placed to lead this debate. As my noble friend Lord Wood said, this debate is timely because, regrettably, it is always timely.

I recently had the privilege and pleasure of hosting an event with the charity Become, which has been mentioned by a number of noble Lords. They brought with them a group of young people who spoke clearly of their experience in the care system and the need for change. As has come through strongly in all the speeches, there is no greater responsibility of any government at whatever level than to ensure that looked-after children get what they need to be happy, feel loved and thrive; and that these most vulnerable young people—now numbering, shockingly, around 84,000—are actually looked after and cared for.

As the noble Lord, Lord Laming, said, it is the responsibility of a local authority to be a good parent. As the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, and the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, clearly children who are care-experienced can end up with a life-long adverse impact. They are disproportionately more likely to have special educational needs; they are disproportionately more likely to be represented in prison populations and disproportionately more likely to suffer from poor mental health and low employment rates. There is an intergenerational legacy of poor outcomes.

I want to make it clear that I recognise that Ministers have repeatedly made heartfelt commitments to dealing with the issues facing children in social care. I genuinely do not doubt the Minister’s concern to ensure that children and young people get the care and support that they need and have a right to. However, the fact remains that they are not currently getting this. As the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, said, we are facing a perfect storm. That is despite the Conservative Party’s clear manifesto commitment, the findings of the excellent independent review led by Josh MacAlister, which the Government commissioned, and the government strategy that is being rolled out.

There is still too little funding in the system to support the aspirations of the strategy. There are too few people—too few social workers, foster carers, and adoptive parents. That is not to say that we do not have phenomenal people working in this field or that every privately run care home is careless with those children in its care. However, the system is flawed. Children and young people are paying the price, with too many moved too far, in some cases up to 500 miles away; as my noble friend Lord Wood said, they are moved an average of 18 miles away from home. Too few children and young people are supported by foster parents or kinship carers, and too few are getting the consistency of care they need from social services or social workers. The model of provision is simply broken, and unless the Government provide the radical reset which the independent review they commissioned called for, the problems the review identified, both current and future, will not be addressed.

One of the key points made by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, and others, including the noble Lord, Lord Meston, was that leaving intervention to a crisis point is too late. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham, said, we should not allow children’s social care to become solely a blue-light emergency service.

Countless noble Lords raised the fact that rising costs of children’s social care placements and the pressures on local government funding mean that funding has been diverted away from early intervention and into services for children already in care.

A number of noble Lords gave some tragic examples of how a failure to intervene and support families can play out. With local government funding already at breaking point, how do the Government expect local authorities to deal with the crisis in children’s social care and invest in early interventions, and how soon will the DfE roll out the pilots intended to support early interventions, including family hubs?

The noble Lord, Lord Young, highlighted the continued significance of adoption in the context of falling adoption levels, and the government strategy has some welcome commitments on foster care, recruitment and retention, and support for kinship carers. The right reverend Prelate spoke passionately about foster care from his own experience, and the noble Lord, Lord Young, highlighted the fact that more foster carers are deregistering than registering, describing some of the reasons for this and the loss of experienced foster families that this causes.

My noble friend Lord Wood highlighted the benefits of kinship carers, in particular the cost savings to the state and the earnings benefit to children and young people later on in life. What is the Government’s assessment of efforts to provide greater support to kinship carers, and has their number increased in practice?

The Local Government Association highlighted in its briefing for this debate that the current vacancy rates of children and family social workers leaving during the year, and sickness absences, are the highest in the DfE’s data series. There are thousands of vacancies, and social care is reliant on agency workers. What impact has the Government’s strategy had so far on recruitment and retention of social workers? Does the DfE indeed have a children’s social care workforce strategy?

Children and young people who are care-experienced come disproportionately from the most disadvantaged and deprived backgrounds. As the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, said, black children are also disproportionately represented in the care system. Once in care, around three-quarters of all girls are fostered compared to just over half of boys. What is the Government’s assessment of the long-term impact of this inequality?

I commend the comments from a number of noble Lords who highlighted the broken nature of the market model. The Competition and Markets Authority social care market survey was raised by several speakers, including the fact that resources are therefore diverted away from prevention to cope with rising costs. As my noble friend Lord Wood said, 85% of children’s homes are currently in the private sector. The Competition and Markets Authority also raised concerns about the level of debt carried by some private providers—that point was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. What is the Government’s assessment of the viability of the sector, do they have contingency plans for market failure, and what conversations have the Minister or the department had with Ofsted about the failure to prosecute illegal and unregulated care homes in England, as highlighted by the recent Observer newspaper article?

This subject is worthy of a much longer debate. As I have been going through my speech, I have been crossing bits out because I do not have time to say everything I would like to. What is needed is not another debate but action. Good intentions and heartfelt words on a Thursday afternoon are not enough. Too many children and young people are being failed, and unless the radical reset called for in the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care and referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Cavendish, becomes a reality, the situation will not be resolved. I look forward to the Minister’s response.