Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I will focus my comments on Part 1, particularly on areas recommended or inspired by Josh MacAlister MP’s independent review of children’s social care. I was on his design group, and Josh’s emphasis throughout was on relationships and prevention: preventing children going into local authority care in the first place or being further damaged in the care process. Enabling them to maintain or develop good relationships while in care is a key protective factor to that end.

I welcome Clause 1 on family group decision-making, but will the Government strengthen it? The Family Rights Group points to the impact of the 2016 Scottish legislation mandating every local authority to offer family group decision-making. Its lack of clarity and precision meant that a third of local authorities in Scotland still do not offer FGDM.

The requirement to offer this is based on evidence from family group conferencing, so reproducing its benefits requires implementation fidelity to this model. For example, older children and their families must be in the driving seat when determining who is involved. Neighbours and family friends can be fictive kin, referred to as aunties and uncles. Others in the support web around them are vital for children’s welfare. Their voices should be heard when the family says so.

Also, legislation needs to ensure that FGDM represents a process, rather than a one-off meeting, to avoid this becoming a mere formality that local authorities go through. This process does not always mean that a child goes into kinship care, but it does increase the likelihood of it. Where they end up in local authority care, FGDM should lead on to and facilitate another highly beneficial process referred to as Lifelong Links. Lifelong Links builds rather than breaks relationships and enables children in the care system to have a lasting support network of relatives and others who care about them.

All those involved in the FGDM and others important to a child should not simply disappear from their life when they go into care. Capturing contact details of former foster carers, youth leaders, teachers and others in the community who have been kind or caring towards them means that they have a wealth of family and other connections when they leave care. Knowing that they matter to people, being invited to Sunday lunch, and having a family to spend Christmas Day with and a source of advice throughout the year all makes a massive difference to their sense of identity and stability. Lifelong Links runs in more than 40 local authorities, in 22 of which it is currently funded by the DfE. Will the Government consider referring to it in the Bill and including it in regulation or guidance?

Next, Clause 11 ensures that children deprived of their liberty are housed in “relevant accommodation”. Even in good surroundings, they are often far from their families and communities, which can further dent already fragile mental health. Will the Minister ensure that improving the experience of children deprived of their liberty will include concrete steps currently missing from the Bill to help them maintain key relationships?

Finally, I have concerns about a single unique identifier. The Bill is concerningly vague about how it would operate and whether it would need a new computer system at major public expense. Using the NHS number would overlook those children, often at higher risk, who were born outside the country and have no NHS or state education involvement. They would escape the system. More generally, can the Minister assure us that the SUI will not reinvent the failed contact point database abolished in 2010?