Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Bichard Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bichard (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the Social Care Institute for Excellence and as a vice-president of the LGA.

Inevitably, we have reached a stage of the debate when I shall be adding my voice to others already heard on some of these issues. Therefore, I will try to be brief. However, it is important that the Minister understands the weight of feeling that exists across the House.

I am slightly more positive than my noble friend Lord Warner about some aspects of the Bill and welcome much that is here. However, this Bill could easily become a missed opportunity unless our deliberations and many of the points that have already been made today are taken into account. Some of those points do not seem to me to be controversial; they are certainly not political. I hope that the Minister is prepared to listen, take those into account and make some early amendments.

I am afraid to say that I have considerable sympathy for the points that have already been made by my noble friend Lord Warner in relation to Part 2, but I will confine my comments to Part 1.

I rather welcome the articulation of the corporate parenting principles in Clause 1. Like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, I am especially pleased to see subsections (2) and (3), which require local authorities to have regard to the need to encourage children and young people to express their views, wishes and feelings, and for those to be taken into account. I welcome that commitment to giving young people a more central role and greater power to influence policy.

On a point of detail—although maybe it is not just a point of detail—I wonder why the duty is merely to “have regard to”. Why do we not just place a duty on local authorities to have regard to the voice of young people and to reflect that in their services and policies? It seems to me to be rather mealy-mouthed: let us make it a straightforward duty on local authorities. However, the important point is that we find better ways of ensuring that children’s voices are heard when they have not always been in the past, whatever the rhetoric.

As others have said, once again, Clause 1 is an example of central government being happy to place duties and responsibilities on local authorities but failing to put its own house in order. I was a chief executive of two local authorities and a Permanent Secretary of two government departments. I can tell the House where collaboration is more likely, and it is not in central government. Therefore, like others, I would like to see Clause 1 extended to central government and its associated agencies. The Minister may well tell us that the Government already publish a cross-departmental care leavers strategy which recognises that central and local government have a unique relationship with children in care and care leavers. But why do we not just place a duty on central government departments and their agencies to act in the best interests of care leavers so that DCLG, the Department of Health, the Department for Education, DCMS and the Home Office have a responsibility to resolve some of the current anomalies and work better together for care leavers in the future?

I am sure the Minister is aware that, at the moment, care leavers remain a priority housing need only until their 21st birthday, but their exemption from the shared accommodation rate expires on their 22nd birthday and they are subject to labour market conditionality when they turn 18, with a significant number then facing sanctions. These are just a few examples of how central government departments have so far failed to act coherently. We need to do better.

Clause 2 requires local authorities to publish information about the services offered to care leavers. I think that is a step forward. Again, I am especially pleased to see the duty for a local authority to consult care leavers and their representatives about the services offered. However, we need to go further. Speaking as an ex-bureaucrat, I know that consultation can often be a hollow process, the results of which are too easily ignored.

Let me make two very simple, practical suggestions. The first is that local authorities are placed under a duty to publish a formal response to that consultation so that care leavers and their representatives can see that their contributions have been properly considered. I have been campaigning for that for government departments for a long time, but let us just confine it to local authorities for the purpose of this debate. Secondly, a duty should be placed on local authorities—this is something that many already do—to establish a care leavers council to keep the local offer under review. Many authorities, such as Birmingham, already have this kind of forum in place, but why not give it some statutory weight to ensure that it is uniform practice across the country?

Clause 3 proposes that local authorities must provide care leavers with a personal adviser until the age of 25 “if” the care leaver requests it. As the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Massey, the noble Lord, Lord Wills, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, have already said, why only “if” it is requested? Why do we not switch it about and make it a responsibility on local authorities for all care leavers up to the age of 25 to have an adviser unless the care leaver informs the authority that they do not want one? My fear is that, otherwise, many care leavers will either not know that an adviser is available or not be confident enough to request one. Place the onus on the authority and not the care leaver.

The failure of children in care to achieve acceptable levels of educational achievement has been a national scandal for far too long. Indeed, I first spoke of it when I was Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education and Employment almost 20 years ago. Levels of attainment have improved but they are nowhere near good enough. Therefore, I welcome the provisions to make available advice and information to promote the educational achievement of care leavers, as well as the provision for maintained schools and academies to designate a member of staff to promote this.

However, if that makes sense for maintained schools and academies, should not something similar be in place in early years provision, FE colleges and universities? Already in this debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, has pointed to one excellent initiative in a university. Should we not place the same responsibility on those institutions? Call me a sceptic, but is it not because those institutions happen to be the responsibility of another government department and therefore it has just been a bit too difficult? Well, it should not be too difficult. We should place responsibility on those institutions too.

Clause 11 in Chapter 2 relates to the proposed Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. This panel will identify the most serious child safeguarding cases and arrange for those to be reviewed under its supervision. I do not in principle have a problem with that, but I need to point out that, since the 1973 Maria Colwell case, we have had literally hundreds of serious case reviews, many—the majority—of which reached very similar conclusions. We have not been short of reviews wherever they have been undertaken. We have not been short of lessons. The problem has been the failure to translate the lessons into action and change, which might involve redesigning systems, procedures or training. As far as I can see, there is nothing in Clauses 11 to 14 that gives me any more confidence that action is more likely as a result of the Bill.

When I chaired the Soham inquiry, I decided to publish six months after the report a follow-up report on how the Government had responded to my recommendations. I am absolutely convinced that, had I not done that, we probably would not have had, for example, the Police National Database that we now have, or a system of enhanced CRB checks, which I know has not been without problems. It is not for me today to suggest how the Government intend to ensure that necessary action is taken on the conclusion of the panel’s report, but unless that is addressed more convincingly, these provisions are frankly bureaucracy without a purpose. If the intention is to rely on the existing powers of the Secretary of State to implement the recommendations, the Secretary of State should be required to report to Parliament once a year on what action has followed the various reviews that the panel has undertaken.

As I said, when I read Part 1 of the Bill I was encouraged, but only to a point. It could, with a few changes, be so much more significant and I hope that the Minister will be prepared to take some of them on board. I also agreed very strongly with the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, when she expressed the hope that our considerations would demonstrate that we value and respect the extraordinary work that so many social workers carry out in the most difficult circumstances. Too often, the emphasis has been on blame and failure. That is damaging and unfair, and I hope in our deliberations that we will do something to redress that balance.