Children’s Social Care

Debate between Baroness Smith of Malvern and Baroness Tyler of Enfield

Tuesday 19th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I also welcome the Government’s Statement on the reform of children’s social care. Such reform is long overdue. For far too long, children’s social care has been the Cinderella of the Cinderella that is social care, so let us hope that this bodes well for a long overdue reform of adult social care.

With almost half of children in care now living out of area, and children still being placed in unregistered accommodation—even caravans and tents sometimes, I am told—coupled with the egregious levels of profiteering by some children’s residential home providers, this clearly demonstrates a system in crisis, if not broken. I am glad the Government are taking steps to address this, particularly requiring placement providers to share their finances transparently with the Government. The whole system needs fundamental overhaul.

First, could the Minister tell me what level of profit the department will deem appropriate? If profit levels do not reduce, how quickly would the Secretary of State introduce a profit cap? For Ofsted to effectively exercise its new powers, the regulator must have the necessary capacity and expertise. Addressing profiteering and ensuring financial transparency requires a sophisticated understanding of the sometimes opaque ownership structures used by the big corporate groups behind care provision. What assurances can the Minister give me that Ofsted will have both the staff numbers, and critically, the expertise to do this work effectively?

On the sufficiency of placements, national data published last week shows that 45% of all children in care in England are now living out of area, and 22% are living far from home. What steps is the department taking to ensure accurate data about the sufficiency of places, at both a national and a local level, and what assessment has it made of the impact of its proposed measures in preventing children in care being moved out of area?

I strongly welcome the renewed focus on early intervention and family care, keeping children out of care in the first place, and I look forward to hearing more about this in the coming period.

As we have already heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, kinship carers are unsung heroes who often step up at a moment’s notice to look after family members. So, can the Minister say whether the Government will now commit to moving beyond the limited pilots that have been proposed to a universal allowance for kinship carers, on a par with those received by foster carers?

No young person should leave care having had support just stripped away when they turn 18, so I welcome the steps announced to end that care cliff edge so that young people are better supported into adulthood. The Government’s plans to legislate for Staying Close to support all care leavers up to 25 is a good first step. However, do the Government plan to extend the Staying Put scheme to the age of 25, as well as Staying Close, to provide more continuity of care for children whose final placement is in foster care?

Care-experienced children and young people have a much harder start in life and experience much worse outcomes. Liberal Democrats have called for care experience to be made a protected characteristic under the Equality Act to strengthen the rights of people who have been or are in care. Can the Minister say whether the Government are considering this proposal?

I welcome the commitment in the paper to a single unique identifier, which I have long advocated for, along with others in this Chamber. I look forward to seeing the details, and I very much hope that the NHS number will be used, as suggested in the policy paper.

Finally, it is crucial that the detail behind these reforms and the funding underpinning them backs up the ambition that has been set out. Can the Minister say when the overall package of funding will be announced, and can she clarify how the £400 million funding for local government referred to in the Statement relates to the £600 million for social care that was announced in the Budget, which was not broken down between adult and social care?

I finish with a couple of wider questions. Can the Minister say when the Government plan to publish the children’s well-being Bill? What is the overall timescale for introducing the measures that have just been announced? Given the scale of recruitment and retention problems in social care, with many jobs vacant, what will the Minister do to tackle the workforce crisis in the sector to reduce the dependency on agency staff?

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank both noble Baronesses for their positive response to yesterday’s Statement and their positive response to dealing with an area that I think all those who have chosen to attend for this Statement today understand is absolutely crucial for the most vulnerable children and families in our country. I will do my very best to respond to all the questions, and where I fail, I will certainly follow that up in writing.

As the noble Baronesses recognised, this Statement sets out how to rebalance the children’s social care system to improve outcomes for children in care, care leavers and families. It is guided by four key principles: that children should remain with their families and be safely diverted from entering the care system; that where children cannot remain at home and it is in their best interests, we should support most children to live with kinship carers or in fostering families rather than in residential care; that we take action to fix the broken care market and tackle profiteering in the placement market; and that we invest in the key enablers which underpin the children’s social care system, including the workforce, better data and information sharing, and to scale and spread evidence-based and proven approaches.

I will address some of the specific points that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, raised. On this point about keeping people as close as possible to their families, she asked about family hubs. I can say that family hubs were not specifically mentioned in the Statement because it covered the legislative proposals that the Government are bringing forward. However, we are absolutely clear that they do very good work in helping families to access vital services to improve the health, education and well-being of children, young people and their families. The 75 most deprived local authorities will in fact receive around £300 million from both the DfE and the Department of Health and Social Care up to 2025, to set up family hubs with integrated Start for Life services. Knowing that they improve families’ lives and children’s outcomes, and reduce costly crisis intervention later, we will continue to support that type of initiative. This exactly plays to the point about supporting children and their families at the earliest possible stage before those relationships break down.

On the point about payment by results for the Supporting Families funding, Supporting Families has achieved some very important results for children and their families. However, as is often the case with funding streams such as this, it has also become very bureaucratic. In keeping with the Government’s commitment to resetting its relationship with local government and working in partnership with them to deliver reform for vulnerable children and families, we will be simplifying the funding mechanisms for local authorities as much as possible, reducing the requirement for the payment by results recording and returns. That does not mean, however, that we will not be maintaining the focus on the outcomes for families, as the noble Baroness rightly said. We will continue to expect quarterly returns on the number of successful family outcomes that areas are achieving, so that we can continue to assess the overall impact of the programme. Because we have simplified the processes, we can also say that all local authorities will receive all their remaining available funding for 2024-25 as a one-off payment on 12 December, to enable them to continue making progress.

Both noble Baronesses asked about the £400 million funding. This is £400 million that will go into the overall local government grant, in keeping with the arguments that I made about reducing ring-fencing where possible. The £600 million is additional from this Budget for social care. It will be allocated, and more detail will be provided, at the time of the local government settlement for that.

On the point about agency staff, the noble Baroness is right. We do not believe that it would be possible to have a system with no agency social workers. Lots of agency social workers do very important work. However, when 17.8 % of all local authority child and family social workers are agency workers, that feels like too few permanent staff and too many agency workers. Yes, that does mean that we must work harder to train and retain our children’s social care workforce. That is why we will also be working to ensure that the workforce has the right environment to thrive in, personally and professionally. Legislative measures alone are not the answer, although we will introduce in the Bill a regulation-making power to govern the use of agency workers in local authorities’ child social care. In October, we published a set of online resources, developed by Research in Practice, to support local authorities to improve working conditions, workload, health and well-being and organisational culture. We are also working, through the national workload action group, to identify the unnecessary drivers of workload and to help to provide solutions, so that social workers can spend more time working with children and families rather than carrying out paperwork.

I am glad to hear the welcome of both noble Baronesses for the progress that we are making on kinship care. The £40 million that was announced just in advance of the Budget, and which it was part of, is to enable us to trial the use of the allowance for kinship carers in 10 areas. It would be appropriate to learn from that as quickly as possible, yes, but to learn from that trialling in order to work out how effectively to develop that and other forms of support for kinship care.

On the issue of the placement market, both noble Baronesses argued that a range of methods need to be used to increase the number of placements, in order to get away from the current situation. We do not have sufficient high-quality placements for children, particularly those with the most extreme needs, and we are seeing enormous increases in funding to pay for that. The £90 million we have announced will go alongside encouraging local authorities, charities and ethical investors to enter the market. We will work with the MHCLG on planning and ensure that Ofsted can fast-track the right sort of provision. I am sure I will get to some of the other questions the noble Baronesses asked when I respond to other noble Lords, and if I do not, I will write to them.

Unregistered Children’s Homes: Fees

Debate between Baroness Smith of Malvern and Baroness Tyler of Enfield

Monday 28th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps, if any, they are taking to lower fees being charged by unregistered children’s homes.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, profiteering from vulnerable children in care is unacceptable. Children must live in safe, high-quality homes, which is why it is a legal requirement for children’s homes to register with Ofsted. This means that they can be inspected and children are safe, and that where there are failings, they are addressed. We will strengthen regulation through the children’s well-being Bill so that children’s social care delivers high-quality outcomes for looked-after children at a sustainable cost to the taxpayer.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

I thank the Minister for her Answer, but there remains a real concern about the number of children still living in unregistered children’s homes. Is the Minister aware of the recent BBC investigation, which highlighted that some unregistered children’s homes are charging up to a staggering £20,000 a week and still failing to keep very vulnerable children safe, which a senior family court judge has described as breathtaking? What immediate steps are the Government taking to address this issue? Does the Minister also agree that the key aim of addressing excessive costs, which I fully support, should not lead to the eradication of children’s homes, and that we need a mix of high-quality, registered provision to meet all children’s needs?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is right that some extraordinary amounts of money are being charged by placement providers. The Local Government Association found, for example, that in 2022-23, 91% of respondent councils paid at least £10,000 per week or more for one placement, compared to 23% in 2018-19. That is why, as the noble Baroness says, we need to ensure that a range of safe, regulated, high-quality placements are available for children, and to ensure that where there is excessive profit, we take action against that as well.

Independent Review of Children’s Social Care

Debate between Baroness Smith of Malvern and Baroness Tyler of Enfield

Monday 9th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Given the noble Lord’s enormously distinguished career in this area and his contribution to ensuring that children are kept safe, I think the whole House will listen to what he has to say. He is right that the objective of the MacAlister review and this Government is to bring timely support to children and families that need help; evidence shows that preventing problems from escalating leads to better outcomes. We will build on the work of the Families First for Children pathfinders, which, unfortunately, are only in 10 places at the moment, to think about how we can develop that early help. The noble Lord also makes the very important point about all our responsibility, as corporate parents, to ensure that children who have to come into the care system get the same very best care from us that we would expect for our own children. That is certainly something that this Government will pursue and think about how we can embed that even more broadly in the public sector and in our communities.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I will pursue the point made so eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Laming. Last week, the children’s care coalition of charities highlighted that, for the first time, more is being spent on residential care placements than on early intervention. Can the Minister say how the Government plan to rebalance that spending, given the current tight fiscal climate, including in the upcoming Budget and spending review, to ensure that families, children and young people get the support they need before reaching crisis point?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes a very important point. The Local Government Association also found that, whereas in 2022-23 91% of councils that responded spent at least £10,000 per week or more for one placement, in 2018-19 that had only been 23%. Not only does the position in the placement market disadvantage children in not being able to find those loving and stable placements that they need, but it is also an enormous burden to local government. That is why, as she said, we have to build on, for example, the £45 million invested in the Families First for Children pathfinders this year to help families get support earlier. Where there is clear profiteering from some providers in the placement market—evidence of this has been discovered—we need to take action and we will do so.

Schools: Mental Health and Poor Attendance

Debate between Baroness Smith of Malvern and Baroness Tyler of Enfield

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the links between rising levels of mental health issues among school age children and poor school attendance; and what steps they are planning to take to address the situation.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, mental ill-health and inadequate access to support are real challenges facing children today and have a detrimental impact on their school attendance. This is despite the excellent work done by education and health staff across the country. Poor mental health and low attendance are mutually reinforcing barriers to opportunity and learning. That is why we are committed to providing access to a specialist mental health professional in every school and developing new young futures hubs.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her Answer. As she has acknowledged, the evidence increasingly shows a clear link between school absences and poor mental health. There is also a growing recognition of the gap in mental health support available to children who need a greater level of support than is currently available in school mental health teams but do not require specialist treatment from CAMHS, and that this gap is best filled, as happens in Scotland and Wales, by school counsellors and suitably qualified practitioners. She talked about providing specialist mental health support for every school, mirroring my recent Private Member’s Bill, and I very much welcome that. Could she confirm when these proposals will be brought forward and whether they will include primary as well as secondary schools?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My Lords, I know that the noble Baroness has done much work in this area and, obviously, has had a Private Member’s Bill on it. Access to mental health professionals will be for all schools, secondary and primary. We are working with the Department of Health and Social Care to ensure that we get that model right and that we can, as she emphasises, provide that early support to alleviate the need for more acute mental health provision for young people, I hope.