Independent Review of Children’s Social Care

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, this has been an excellent debate and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Watson, on securing it. I declare an interest as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children, and as chair of the Lords Select Committee conducting post-legislative scrutiny of the Children and Families Act 2014, which has already been referenced by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake. The committee published its final report this Tuesday, with important findings on the state of children’s social care in relation to adoption, kinship care and families going through the family courts. I will return to that in a minute.

Back in 2017, the APPG for children published a report on the state of children’s social care in England and concluded that there was a significant lack of resource for and focus on preventive and early intervention services. It would seem that nothing has changed. In 2018, we published a follow-up report which shone a light on the extent to which children, young people and families were subjected to a postcode lottery of services, and to which rising thresholds for support were simply storing up trouble for later on.

Sadly, these predictions have now all come to pass, and we have seen a huge shift towards late and crisis intervention and record numbers of looked-after children, up from around 65,000 a decade ago to over 80,000 now. The average age of children in care has risen, with children entering care with more complex needs. The care system in places is in a parlous state; that is why reform is so badly needed.

I will give a few specifics which we have heard about this afternoon. First, in the last decade, the number and proportion of children in care who are placed miles from home or in unregulated accommodation has risen steadily, which is a huge cause for concern. The CMA report that we have heard about stated that this year, there were significant problems with the functioning of the care market, with some private providers making disproportionate profits from the care of children and young people.

A significant workforce shortage in children’s social care and high levels of churn mean that children and young people face a revolving door of professionals entering and leaving their lives. The number of social workers leaving children’s posts in English councils is at its highest point since comparable data collection began, resulting in unsustainably high caseloads for those remaining.

As we have heard today, the care system is currently costing £10 billion per year. Josh MacAlister’s very welcome review estimates that this will rise to more than £15 billion in the next 10 years without reform. The review’s final report argues that the current children’s social care system is,

“increasingly skewed to crisis intervention, with outcomes for children that continue to be unacceptably poor and costs that continue to rise.”

It concludes:

“For these reasons, a radical reset is now unavoidable.”

I totally agree.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group that I mentioned recently held an excellent event at which Josh MacAlister spoke, as well as the new Children’s Minister, the Children’s Commissioner and others. What was notable to me at that event was that the children’s sector, statutory services and parliamentarians were all calling for the same things: for progress on social care reform that prioritises early intervention and co-production with children and families and sufficient investment to restore the long-term erosion of support.

With the independent review of children’s social care and the other key reviews on child protection that we have heard about, we have momentum behind us, and I like to think that vulnerable children—at very long last—have a political profile that has not been the case for many years. It is vital that the Government’s response to the review, which we have heard this afternoon is now being pushed back until next year, maintains that momentum and that we all continue to press for action and hold the Government to account, a point made so compellingly by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris.

However, before we get there, the overriding concern for families right now is the ability to put food on the table for their children and to heat their homes. The highest rates of inflation for 40 years will undoubtedly push more families into precarious situations and put more children at risk. Soaring inflation and energy prices are also putting huge pressure on local authority children’s services, and we face the very real prospect of further cuts to essential services.

We must act now to protect children and stabilise services. We need urgent government action to shield children from the brunt of the cost of living crisis and to shore up public sector finances after the impact of inflation and rising need. What assurances can the Minister give us on these points?

While we must not ignore the here and now, we must also hold on to the hope of a brighter future where children and families get the help they need. I welcome many of the proposals in the review, particularly those that seek fundamentally to rebalance children’s social care towards helping families earlier and the significant investment that is needed in the system.

There are three things I would like to see feature prominently in the Government’s implementation strategy. The first is working with families rather than doing things to them. Many of the parents who spoke to the independent review expressed distrust of children’s social care and felt they were blamed for circumstances beyond their control. Children’s social care will be sought out by families who need it only when they have been fully involved in the design of the approach and the offers the services can make.

The second is a focus on improving data and information sharing. In response to amendments in this Chamber during the passage of the Health and Care Act 2022, the Government acknowledged the serious challenges with sharing relevant information about children, particularly around safeguarding, and committed to a review of how to improve it. They also recognised the potential benefits of a single consistent identifier to bring together disparate records about an individual child. I expect to see significant reference to this review in the Government’s social care implementation strategy.

Finally, there is workforce, on which all else hangs. We know there are huge challenges in recruiting and retaining children’s social workers, along with other parts of the children’s workforce. We need to kick-start a longer-term project to rebuild the workforce.

I return to the Select Committee report on the Children and Families Act 2014, given its relevance to today’s debate. As well as containing a raft of important recommendations to improve support for adoption, kinship care and the family justice system and to help parents to balance work and family life, it identified some critical cross-cutting themes. One of those was the, frankly, dire state of children’s mental health services, with unacceptably long waits for referrals and treatments, including post-adoption trauma support. Our report highlighted the fact that children in care are four times more likely to experience mental health issues than their peers. Surely there should be some form of priority access for these exceptionally vulnerable children.

A second key theme was the importance of early intervention, which has been so well covered in today’s debate.

The third theme was the lack of coherence, both within government and between services. Indeed, throughout our inquiry we met children and families who said they felt let down by the systems that they had encountered, suffering long delays and needless bureaucracy. Calls for coherence of care extended to social care. Our witnesses raised concern that children and their families often do not receive continuity of care, undergoing numerous changes in their social workers.

Lastly, in the area of kinship care, which has been key to this debate and spoken to compellingly by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, we recommend greater support for kinship carers, including financial support, and that kinship carers with a special guardianship order be given the same right to paid leave as adopters.

All eyes are now on the Government’s implementation strategy. It was initially expected before Christmas, but we are now told that publication will be in the new year. In line with many other speakers today, I ask the Minister what assurance she can give us that the Government will not let this drift and will publish the strategy as early as possible in the new year.

I ask the Minister to respond on three specific points. First, what assessment has been made of the impact of the cost of living crisis on already stretched children’s social care budgets? Secondly, what plans do the Government have for stabilising the current children’s social care system, as local authorities and other public services grapple with rising inflation and increasing demand? Thirdly, will the Government commit to additional funding for the measures outlined in the forthcoming implementation plan in order to make these reforms a reality?