Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 121 to 125, regarding child death reviews in the multiagency local safeguarding arrangements. These proposed new clauses require the child death review partners—the local authority and clinical commissioning groups in a local authority area—to carry out a review of each death of a child normally resident in the area. They will be required to analyse the information obtained from child death reviews to identify issues that are relevant to the welfare of children in the area or to public health and safety and, in doing so, to consider whether it would be appropriate for anyone to take action in relation to any matters identified.

Amendment 122 will enable the child death review partners to request information and enforce compliance from any person or body in pursuance of their functions. Amendment 123 will allow child death review partners to agree to make payments to support the joint working arrangements which they are establishing for the reviews. Amendment 124 will allow the child death review partner areas to be made up of more than one local authority area, where there is more than one local authority or clinical commissioning group. This proposed new clause will allow the relevant child death review partner to delegate the review functions to one local authority or one clinical commissioning group. This is a practical provision, which enables the child death review partners to utilise more streamlined arrangements in a manner which they consider would work best for their area. These proposed new clauses do not change the individual existing responsibilities of each partner to exercise their functions with regard to child death reviews.

Amendment 125 will require child death review partners to have regard to any statutory guidance issued by the Secretary of State in regard to their functions. I believe that the partners will find guidance of this sort helpful in aiding their decision-making.

The death of any child is a tragedy, whether it is as a result of a health condition, an accident or abuse and neglect. Parents and the professionals who support them through this extremely difficult time will want full details of what happened in their case and to know whether anything could have been done to prevent this death happening. England was the first country in the world to put in place arrangements that provide comprehensive understanding of the causes of child deaths, and we need to build on the knowledge that we have gained so far. Collating and analysing information locally and sharing between areas are vital steps to help us to understand why children die.

In May this year the Government published the Wood review into the role and functions of local safeguarding children boards and child death overview panels. The review found that over 80% of child deaths have medical or public health causations, but the gathering of data on child deaths and the analysis of them is incomplete and inconsistent. As a result there is a gap in our knowledge, and professions are not sufficiently extracting learning from the data that are available in order to reduce the number of child deaths each year.

These new clauses bring the two key child death review partners together and place upon them equal responsibility to work together. They will enable health partners to continue to support the analysis of information on health-related child deaths at local and national level. Hospitals of course routinely analyse the data on child deaths. Local authorities need to be partners to ensure that factors relating to public health and safeguarding are similarly identified. This will also allow local authorities to promote learning and dissemination within their local area. For these reasons, the Government believe it is imperative that child death reviews remain on a statutory footing to secure the best outcomes for all children. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a question about these clauses, which are generally welcome. The more information we have about child death comprehensively, the easier it will be to take any necessary action. As I read the clauses, however, although I may have missed something, I cannot see what the review partners will be required to publish. Subsection (4) in new Clause 16M of the Children Act 2004 in Amendment 121 says they must,

“prepare and publish a report on … what”,

the partners,

“have done as a result of the arrangements … and how effective the arrangements”—

which I take to be partnership—“have been”. However, I can see nothing in here about the kind of analysis that the Minister was just referring to—the kinds of deaths that have occurred, for what purposes, the demographic and other characteristics of the children and so on. Could she enlighten us about what will be required in terms of general access to the information that has been collected here?

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I would like to add another point. Here we are talking about child death review partners, and in the previous debate we were talking about safeguarding partners. I wonder if this is a concept that might be used with regard to the earlier part of the Bill relating to corporate parenting. The Minister will know that we had amendments to Clauses 1 and 2 around corporate parenting, the argument being that in order to discharge corporate parenting roles properly the local authority needs the support of core partners in the local area, including the health service and other agencies. I think we have all agreed that nothing should be done to dissipate the role of the corporate parent by, if you like, detracting from the local authority’s responsibility. However, I wonder if the concept of safeguarding partners and death review partners is an approach that we might consider. I realise that this is not the point to discuss corporate parenting, but it is an interesting concept that we might think about when we return to the subject.