Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 3 in my name, which is cosigned by my noble friend Lord Effingham. The Bill states that

“the authority must offer a family group decision-making meeting to the child’s parents or any other person with parental responsibility for the child”.

In moving this amendment, I seek to extend the right to family group conferences to children, young people and young adults so that, most importantly, they can contribute to and ultimately agree their own care plan. The purpose is as simple as that. Why should they not be able to do this?

I thank all the organisations that work tirelessly to support families, children and young people every day, including for their briefings on this important subject. I am only sorry that I cannot refer to them all. Research commissioned by County Councils stated that there would be nearly 100,000 children in care, representing a 36% rise in a decade. By including 16 and 17 year-olds in the family group conferencing, we may be able to reduce the number going into care —where it is safe to do so—and staying, with the support of their family or those with parental responsibility, reducing the trauma they may face and ensuring that their futures are not impaired. That is a laudable aim that I hope all noble Lords will support.

I am grateful to the Family Rights Group for its briefing on the Bill, in particular on this issue. It said:

“The Bill gives the local authority the discretion to decide if the child is invited to be involved in the FGDM process or not. This is unsatisfactory and does not make for a child-centred process. This approach differs to elsewhere in the child welfare system, for example looked-after children reviews, where there is a presumption in favour of the child taking part. The Bill should ensure children are invited to take part in their family-group decision-making meeting, if safe and consistent with their welfare to do so”.


The British Association of Social Workers welcomes and supports the proposal to extend family group conferencing to include the voices of 16 and 17 year-olds. It says:

“This approach is rooted in social work values of participation, empowerment, and ensuring that young people are not passive subjects of decisions, but active partners in shaping their own futures. It also aligns with our support for the Keep Caring until 18 campaign, recognising that young people need to be heard, supported and cared for consistently as they transition into adulthood”.


I could not have put it better myself.

I received this from Action for Children:

“The Children’s Charities Coalition believe that real, positive changes to the lives of young people cannot be achieved without listening to their wishes and feelings when making decisions that affect them … We urge Parliamentarians to ensure the Bill strengthens requirements on local authorities to ascertain the wishes and feelings of children and give their views due weight in decisions that affect them”.


This amendment seeks to strengthen this request by extending the right to family group conferencing to children aged 16 and 17, so that they can agree their own care plan. I cannot help but reflect on my noble friend Lord Balfe’s contribution and how he wished that somebody had listened to him. For 32 years, I have been involved with young people. They are an admirable bunch. They have different characteristics and get into different kinds of trouble, but they succeed on many occasions.

Let me tell the Committee about one young lad. All he wanted to do was work in a television shop. He wanted to repair them, and we found him a job. He was excellent at the work and the employer loved him, but one day the employer called me and said: “You’ve got to get him out. You’ve got to come and withdraw him”. I went along ready to do the deed. I said to the employer, “What’s wrong with him?”, and he said, “His personal hygiene is disastrous”. I sat the lad down with the employer and asked him, “How’s things at home? How’s it all going? What challenges have you got?” He said, “My mum’s died and my dad does the washing by chucking it in the bath. I don’t even think the hot tap comes on”. While the employer heard that, it obviously touched his heart, and the long and the short of it was that the boy moved in with him and his wife, had his washing done and had a terrific career.

This is all we want for young people. My amendment simply says that we must listen and take their views into account. I beg to move.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I have five amendments in this group, all of which come from my knowledge and understanding of evidence-based work. I declare my interest as a trustee of the Foundations What Works Centre for Children and Families.

I have been involved in this even longer than the noble Baroness opposite. My first job in this country was in 1970 in Newcastle, at what was then the first of the children’s departments after the Seebohm report. I had just qualified as a social worker specialising in family casework. You do not get anything like that these days.

I was keenly aware that this country, in its legislation on children, responds to tragedies, and I have seen this all my working life. We do not start by asking what we need to give children the very best. We start from: “This child died in dire circumstances and we must make sure that it never happens again”. Of course, we have to do that, but we need legislation that starts by asking: what are the best ways to support families to enable their children to have the very best in life? We get things the wrong way round, so I am pleased that the Government are trying to start by asking what we mean by the well-being and best interests of children, and how we can start there, rather than just asking how we protect children. Protection is very important, but if we think about well-being first, many of them will not need a level of protection.

My amendments all come from the work that Foundations has done on family group conferencing. I am delighted that the Government talk about family group decision-making in the Bill, but I want them to be brave and go to the next stage: the family group conference, which is now a well-established and researched evidence-based model. In 2023, Foundations completed a randomised control trial of family group conferences—the first in the UK and the largest in the world—which involved over 2,500 children and their families across 21 local authorities in England. The evaluation found that the children whose families were referred for an FGC at pre-proceeding stage were less likely to go into care. It also found that 12 months after the pre-proceedings letter was issued, 36% of children whose families were referred were taken into care, compared with nearly half, or 45%, of children who were not. Children who had been part of this process were less likely to go to court for the decisions about their care: only three in five—59% of children—who were referred to FGCs had care proceedings issued, compared with 72% of children who were not referred. They also spent less time in care: six months after the pre-proceeding letter, children whose families had been referred to FGCs spent an average of 87 days in care, compared with 115 days for those who had not been through the process.

Foundations estimated that 2,293 fewer children would go into care within a 12-month period if FGCs were rolled out nationally. This in turn could save taxpayers over £150 million within two years, from a reduction in both court proceedings and the number of children entering the care system. From my perspective, when I was dealing with this in government and was responsible for social exclusion, it was so clear that when you used evidence-based programmes, although you did stop a bit of, “Let every flower bloom”, which we love in this country, you got much better outcomes for children; for example, by introducing parenting classes in Sure Start—I could say a lot more about that now, but I am not going to. We need to look at evidence-based programmes and use them. We do not have time to let these kids suffer while we think, “Oh, that might be a good idea. Why don’t we try that instead?” Until we have based something on evidence, we should be giving them the strength of what we know works.