Children’s Social Care: Enduring Relationships Strategy

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

First of all, there is the structure being put in place through the implementation plans that the Government are producing, through the national framework, which has been relatively recently reviewed, and through the structures being proposed as part of the strategy. The best way to think about this is that what brings all these things together is the child or young person. If we change practice so that, at every point in thinking about decisions that are being made about children who have come into the care system, we ask ourselves, “What is the best way to enable relationships for this young person to be enduring or developed?”, that is the way in which we bring together the range of policy and investment that the Government are putting into this.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I am sure that we will not hear any objection from your Lordships’ House to the strategy’s aim of putting enduring relationships at the heart of the children’s care system, but there is no mention in the Statement or strategy of the substantial barriers to that. They do not talk about the impact of for-profit companies, particularly those owned by hedge funds and other financial companies, on the provision of extremely expensive, often poor-quality care provided by lowly paid, frequently changing staff. We discussed this in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and heard very little defence from any corner about this kind of provision. What are the Government’s plans to end this exploitation of some of our most vulnerable children? Have the Government set targets to reduce the provision of care by these deeply disturbing companies?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The reason why we discussed that in the proceedings on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill was precisely because we were taking action in that legislation to tackle this problem. We are empowering local authorities to secure the best placements for looked-after children at a price that is fair to the taxpayer. We know that local authorities cannot do this alone, so we are also taking action at national level to reshape the market through our package of measures, including those set out in the Act. We are rebalancing the market and improving competition, regulation and the commissioning of placements through the regional care co-operatives I have already talked about, and we will shine a light on the level of profit being made and bring greater visibility to the prices that local authorities are paying. In that legislation, we also took provision to introduce a profit cap if necessary.

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[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes an important point. To come back to the point I made earlier, we have changed things in the law such as the requirement for family group decision-making at an earlier stage. In this strategy we spell out clearly the need to change practice to focus on relationships at all stages of a child’s experience of coming into and being in care. I agree with the noble Lord that there needs to be a change in culture, and we are providing support for kinship care pilots and other initiatives such as the recruitment of 10,000 more foster carers. The central message here, as I suggested earlier, is that at every stage in a child’s journey social workers will be asking themselves: what do we need to do at this point to enable this young person to maintain or re-find the enduring relationships that will set them up for and support them for the rest of their lives?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, since there is time, my question relates to the ongoing monitoring of progress underneath this strategy, particularly whether the Government will be setting up a regular programme of listening to children in the care system and those emerging from it to see how fast progress is being made, what is being done better and what could still be strengthened. Will they be really listening to the children regularly as this strategy goes forward?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes an important point, and we talked about this at various points during the passage of the Bill. I assure her that in all the action that we take, particularly in children’s social care, we will want to centre children’s voices in the action being taken at a local level and listen to them in the development of policy.