Reform of Children’s Social Care

Debate between Andrew Western and Gillian Keegan

Thursday 2nd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

My hon. Friend always champions the cause of improvements in his local area and to his local council. We will work with poorly performing councils through our regions group. We have done a lot of that work, which since 2017 has more than halved the number of inadequate children’s services from 30 to 14. Where services are poor, we will continue to act until we get them up to the standards required.

[Andrew Western (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

The proposals include a significantly increased focus on early intervention and prevention so that young people can stay in their family home for as long as possible. That may well be a noble endeavour, but it raises questions about the pressure that it will put on frontline social workers to leave potentially vulnerable children in their home for longer. What additional training will there be for frontline social workers to ensure that robust and appropriate decision making is in place around intervention thresholds, so that any child who is too vulnerable in their family home will be placed into safety?

[Gillian Keegan]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. We need to focus on families and ensure that we give them every opportunity to stay together, so we will have family hubs, the Supporting Families programme and a real focus on early help, but he is absolutely right that the decisions that social workers have to make are immense. We want to give them more support, so we will bring forward an early career framework. We will also work in a multi-agency way so that police, education professionals and many others are always there to help with the difficult decisions and make sure that the data is shared more effectively.