Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Evans of Bowes Park Excerpts

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Lords Chamber

The language in the Bill, which includes discussion about child protection teams working only in their local authority area, really worries me. I absolutely support my noble friend’s Amendment 40, which replaces it with a clear statement about the cross-border responsibilities of local authorities in this area.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to build on the point just made by my noble friend Lady Barran and add my support for Amendments 39 and 40. I wonder whether, in her response, the Minister could explain how this approach in the current Bill aligns with the move to combine mayoral authorities. It seems as if the devolution agenda is actually encouraging regions and areas to work more closely together, which seems to slightly jar with the approach currently set out in the Bill. I would appreciate the Minister putting it in that broader context when she responds.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 40 and flag—similarly to my noble friend Lady Evans—a pragmatic timing issue, which I have previously mentioned in your Lordships’ House.

Clause 3 is not a political matter. It is a well-intentioned response, as the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, outlined, to the tragic cases of Arthur and Star that led to the MacAlister review. I would be grateful, as would the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, to know whether these changes will in fact solve the problem highlighted in those two cases that led to the review.

Of course, any new Government will bring in operational and structural changes, and I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, that local authorities are dealing with the integrated care board situations at the moment and of course are preparing for perhaps the biggest local government reorganisation since that of Ted Heath.

In terms of timing, I ask the Minister why it is necessary at the moment to do the structural changes to child protection arrangements when the local authorities are dealing with other changes at the time. Many local authorities, even in times of very restricted finance, have shown that they have prioritised children’s social care, and overall, England’s local authorities are on an improvement journey, in that the “good” and “outstanding” Ofsted inspections are increasing.

Why not wait to do any further structural changes until the new devolution arrangements and local authority boundaries are in place and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, stated, when there is more evidence that such organisational changes in Clause 3 will improve matters, rather than inadvertently potentially making matters worse?

I also agree with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, in relation to the culture that might be changed here. If the family help teams do not see that child protection is part of their role, it risks the cultural embedding that has been happening over decades that is similar to a school, where what you need to embed is that safeguarding is everybody’s responsibility. You might then end up with them thinking, “It’s not my responsibility”: it is kind of like the blue light service over there, which is the child protection team. We could lose inadvertently. No one is deliberately trying to make our child protection arrangements less effective, but I do worry about the cultural loss of everybody seeing it as their responsibility, in the family help team and through into the social workers. So I ask the Minister: why not wait until you have done your local government reorganisation and do this afterwards, or maybe do it at the same time, because for the staff this is an awful lot of change in various departments of our local authorities?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

In previous groups, I have spoken at some length about the purpose and functions of these new multi-agency child protection teams and how they will be delivered as part of the existing joint and equal duty on safeguarding partners to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children in their area.

On Amendment 34, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, for his contribution on ensuring that teachers and teaching assistants have the right training to work effectively in child protection. Statutory guidance is clear that teaching staff should receive safeguarding training at induction and at least annually thereafter. My noble friend Lady Bousted was very clear about that position. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, was also very passionate about the need for schools to be involved in this issue, which is precisely why on Tuesday we debated the clause about education and childcare settings being key safeguarding partners, and the improved emphasis on that in this legislation.

However, despite having this assurance, I decided in the spirit of the previous discussion that we were having that I would consult an expert about whether this is in fact the case. I consulted a teacher very close to me about the sort of training that he is receiving. He told me, “Every year, we receive statutory update training at the beginning of the year. This can take most of one of our inset days and requires us to read the updates for KCSIE”—Keeping Children Safe in Education—“guidance. Then we get update training through the year, every couple of weeks in briefing, and then about once a half-term in an after-school CPD”. He is an excellent teacher, although as his mother I am completely biased, and he is in a very good school. I think this makes the point about the current position in terms of training for teachers and teaching assistants.

There is a reasonable point to be made about the education partners. Although they already have a responsibility for safeguarding, they will now also have a more explicit role in the multi-agency child protection teams. I hope I can reassure noble Lords by saying that the statutory guidance is also clear that the statutory safeguarding partners, which include the other partners that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, referred to, should support practitioners that work with children, including through creating a learning culture where practitioners stay up to date on best practice. We are clear and confident that the education practitioner in the multi-agency child protection teams will be able to operate as a crucial link to and from education and childcare settings, ensuring that school staff are supported to work effectively with vulnerable children and the child protection teams.

The pathfinder areas have developed multi-agency workforce development plans and delivered comprehensive multi-agency training that has provided opportunities not just to ensure that practitioners have the knowledge and skills they need to deliver effective child protection but to align on shared values and build these vital cross-agency relationships. Training typically covers the reforms, safeguarding responsibilities, local practice frameworks and how different roles fit together across the system. There is both an opportunity within schools and an improved opportunity, from the role of the education practitioner in the multi-agency child protection teams, to ensure that that expertise is there.

I turn now to Amendment 38, which relates to sufficient resource and delegated functions. I spoke on this in the previous group. In fact, we have, understandably, talked about it in several groups so far in Committee. I will briefly revisit the key points. The new teams will be delivered as part of the existing joint and equal duty on safeguarding partners. I have previously mentioned the flexibility in the new measures, which enables teams to operate along police and health footprints, balanced with a sharp focus on multi-agency child protection delivery, where agencies are clear about their responsibilities and accountabilities. The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, answered her own question. Of course it would not be the case that you would have the same number of multi-agency child protection teams in an authority such as Birmingham as you would have in Rutland; that would not be logical.

I am not sure that I would characterise this system as simply adding another child protection team alongside the current ones, as I think the noble Baroness said. As I said in my explanations on the previous group in particular, the intention is very much that these teams will be the place where agencies will be able to work together in the consideration of child protection cases and issues. They are quite distinct from the child protection teams that might currently exist.

In terms of resources, safeguarding partners already agree and dedicate resources as part of their local multi-agency safeguarding arrangements, and the Government have provided £500 million to support the rollout of the Families First Partnership Programme, of which multi-agency child protection teams are a part, as I said previously.

I do not want to be churlish about this, but I am not sure I would have rolled up to this Committee at this point to focus particularly on how difficult school and local government funding is if I had spent the last 14 years supporting the last Government. Nevertheless, it is an important point that we ensure that there is sufficient funding, which is why this Government have already increased, in real terms, funding going to both schools and local government.

On the group before last, we responded to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Bellingham, about the consequences and the process of local government reorganisation. I think I gave some reassurance on that, provided to me by my noble friend Lady Taylor.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

It was great to hear about the training that the Minister’s son gets—that is fantastic. Can we therefore take it that these new duties in the Bill will involve no additional training, and that everything is covered by the training that she eloquently set out? Alternatively, will there be additional costs or training implications? It would be interesting to know that. Obviously, there is an array, as she rightly pointed out, but does she foresee that there will be any additional requirements?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Good training is already provided for teachers and teaching assistants, but my point was that the role of the education lead practitioner would both enable and need more training to be provided. I used the example of one of the pathfinders where that training had taken place. I suspect that, with those pathfinders, it would be appropriate if some of the additional money that had been made available contributed to that. I also made the point that it is already the case that statutory partners in safeguarding are providing resources for their safeguarding responsibilities. The point about multi-agency child protection teams is that they will enable that resource to be spent more effectively at the point when it will impact on children’s lives.