Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 133A and 133B. The first of these would ensure transparency and adequate information about any innovation. The second is about open and transparent consultation. I hope that they both meet the requirement of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, for much more reassurance before we move forward with this clause.

The heading of the new clause proposed in Amendment 132A is: “Annual report on the impact of exemption on children and families”. Therefore, the amendment seeks to ensure that there is an annual report and that we know the impact of the exemptions.

Earlier in Grand Committee there was a short discussion about social work practices. We heard evidence of how they are working, which was helpful for us in thinking about these matters. Several years ago, Hackney had a programme called Reclaiming Social Work. It reduced the number of children coming into care by more than a third in three years and was a model for setting up social work teams with a consultant social worker. Isabelle Trowler, the current chief social worker, and Steve Goodman, a senior social worker in Hackney, led in this model. It was well evidenced and there was plenty of information about how it worked. Professor Eileen Munro highlighted this experience in her report, many local authorities have copied the model and it is becoming more widespread.

If we really want to make a difference for children, when we innovate we need to be sure that we have evidence and measure what is happening so that we can be confident of what works and what does not. We can then expand that to other areas. Amendment 132A would ensure that there was a gathering of evidence, and it is a probing amendment to achieve that.

Through Amendments 133A and 133B in my name, I seek to ensure open and transparent consultation in this process. I welcome the Government’s proposal in the Bill to commit to consult the Children’s Commissioner, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills and any other person who the Secretary of State considers appropriate.

I am worried, however, that such an important decision to exempt a local authority from children’s social care legislation should be left to a consultation process defined by the Secretary of State. Instead, I share the view of the Children’s Society and other major children’s charities that the consultation process should be open to all, with a particular focus on residents of the local area, and that it should run for the same length of time as a standard government consultation. I agree with Members who have tabled amendments explicitly to include the voices of children and their families in the consultation, and I believe that the wording of an open consultation would include young people. The consultation should be open to all.

We want, as I am sure the Government do, to encourage the many interest groups such as children’s charities that, although perhaps not directly affected by innovation, have valuable expertise on safeguarding children to voice their support or concerns through a formal process. I support the importance of making sure, as part of the consultation, that children’s and families’ voices are taken into account, and that the consultation process is carried out in an active and accessible way so that they can respond on these important issues.

Equally, it is important that the consultation process does not take place behind closed doors, and that the Secretary of State should place her response to the consultation on the record. This important accountability measure will allow interested Members of Parliament to see what evidence swayed the Secretary of State’s decision and to hold her to account on it. That is vital following the initial three-year period, when the impact of the changes on children will be assessed and the expertise in the initial consultation responses will be drawn on to assess the longer-lasting impact of statutory exemptions.

I believe that the safeguards in my three amendments will make sure that innovation can happen in a controlled way to protect children while recognising the desire to test different approaches. At the heart of the amendments is the desire to support innovation, while also showing an important level of parliamentary scrutiny and public consultation before making decisions to exempt any local authority from its statutory responsibility to children in their local area. I beg to move.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Listowel’s Amendment 132A and his other amendments in this group. One does not need to look very far to understand why the Government are so keen to promote innovation, about which we have already heard a lot this afternoon. At present, 43 of the 87 local authority children’s services have been judged by Ofsted to be failing or inadequate. Clearly, this is highly undesirable, and we can and must do much more to ensure that the services we offer for vulnerable children are the best they can possibly be. I none the less support my noble friend’s Amendment 132A and his other amendments because I am concerned that the Bill fails to put in place rigorous and robust mechanisms to ensure that the well-being of children is not inadvertently affected by the exemption of local authorities from crucial clauses in children’s social care legislation.

In recent years, local authorities have developed some highly innovative approaches to children’s social services in areas such as Trafford. Trafford has maintained a good and an outstanding rating for the past five years, and its approach, particularly towards care leavers, has been commended by the Government. This in many ways represents the best practice that could be encouraged by the comprehensive and strengthened set of corporate parenting principles we have the opportunity to create in this very Bill. Trafford is widely considered a success story for innovation in local authorities, but this has all been achieved without the need to repeal the safeguards afforded to children through the Children Acts 1989 and 2004. I am still struggling to see where these key pieces of legislation are hampering innovation, and I would welcome it if the Minister gave examples of the benefit that the Government believe will derive from such a provision.