Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Pinnock Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the register of interests as a local councillor and vice-president of the Local Government Association. I welcome the fundamental purpose of this Bill, which is to focus the attention of practitioners, policymakers and politicians on care leavers and looked-after children. However, the question that needs to be answered is whether the proposals in the Bill meet the wholly admirable statement of principles set out in Clause 1.

It is unfortunate that Clause 1 fails to include reference to what is generally described as “the voice of the child”. This means not only listening to the individual child, as already set out in the statement of principles, but also for these most vulnerable of children to have a strong, independent advocate of their needs at both national and local level. A strong role for the Children’s Commissioner nationally, and a named corporate parent locally, could fulfil this.

The other glaring omission in the Bill is any reference to the vital importance of early intervention and prevention strategies. The clear purpose of these is to prevent children from suffering the traumas that lead them to become looked after. Sadly, ensuring that the links are made with this essential element of the continuum of support for vulnerable children is lacking in the Bill. Worse still, funding for prevention, which was largely delivered through Sure Start centres, has been massively reduced, resulting in statistics that indicate that more than 800 centres have been closed. I urge the Minister to consider amendments to the Bill to address these two substantial omissions.

There is much to be supported in the Bill. However, it is much to be regretted that its content is so ill defined. Those who are more experienced in these matters than I claim that the Bill is so lacking in detail that the work of this House in scrutinising and challenging it is well-nigh impossible. I agree with the regret Motion from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, which draws the attention of the House to these significant deficiencies.

The first part of the Bill, relating to care leavers, is a positive statement of the continuing responsibilities of local authorities for children who have been looked after. The aim of the Liberal Democrats in this House is to offer constructive comments to assist in making improvements to the Bill. As a councillor as well as a Member of this House, I am a corporate parent—as indeed are all councillors—for the children and care leavers within their local authority. It is a role which I take very seriously. The Bill, however, seems to conflate the role of local authorities and that of corporate parents. My concern and that of the Liberal Democrats here is that there needs to be clarity about who takes responsibility. It is not clear, for example, how corporate parents will be able through their local authorities to support care leavers who move outside the district, or to know those who move into the area.

Clause 2 sets out the services that a local authority may offer care leavers. This section makes reference not only to support for housing, which many local authorities already provide, but to employment. I wonder whether the Minister would consider enabling local authorities to have the powers to allocate some of their apprenticeships to care leavers. Many parents already help their children into employment and maybe this should also be the role that corporate parents undertake.

Clauses 5 to 7, relating to educational achievement, are important as all the information available shows that the cohort of children who are looked after, and hence also care leavers, have much lower levels of attainment than their peers. Addressing this would do much to ensure that these vulnerable young people are able to overcome the disadvantages with which they started life. Is this a missed opportunity in the Bill to encourage innovation in addressing these gaps in knowledge and skills?

The proposal in Clause 11 to establish a Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel has much to recommend it. It is right that there is a consistent approach to facing up to the cases where there is a serious failure by the adults charged with the care and safety of a child. What would be unfortunate would be if local ownership of the failures were lost and this were to become an unforeseen consequence of it being a national review, and therefore inevitably more remote.

Clause 15 focuses on “different ways of working”. Some local authorities are already testing new approaches. Leeds City Council is winning many plaudits for its innovative approach to children and has badged the city as “Child Friendly Leeds”. This is a consequence of innovative thinking and leadership by local politicians and officers. It has been achieved without direction from government and without any new powers being required. Innovation is vital but there is surely a need to tread with some caution where changes to working practice with vulnerable children are involved.

The proposal in Clause 15 is to enable local authorities to opt out of meeting some of their responsibilities under previous legislation. The regulations proposed in this clause are vagueness itself, which raises many questions as to the intent, save that of enabling,

“better outcomes … or … the same outcomes more efficiently”.

That statement, in our opinion, has all the hallmarks of a Government bent on permitting the outsourcing of children’s services. If that is the case, the Government should have the courage of their convictions and say so. Then we can debate the pros and cons of enabling more private sector involvement.

There is much private sector involvement already, with private residential care homes, where children are housed well outside their own background, and private foster carers, without whom there would be an even greater crisis in fostering than there is now, but whose charges are considerably higher than those paid by the local authority.

It is already more difficult for corporate parents to hold these disparate providers to account. How will the most vulnerable children in our society have a strong advocate if there is further outsourcing of services? How can there be democratic accountability for the many millions of pounds of public funding? Finally, it is to be hoped that lessons have been learned from the tragic consequences that can result from outsourcing. The Winterbourne View disgrace is not one which we would want repeated in children’s services.

The key to improvements in children’s social care is raising the quality of children’s social workers, so the clauses in Part 2 of the Bill to set professional standards, and standards for education and training, are welcome. However, these clauses beg the question of the definition of these standards and who is required to set them. The proposal to give power to the Secretary of State or an undefined regulator is contrary to accepted best practice, which is that those who may have to challenge the state are not controlled by the state. This proposal must be significantly amended.

The notion that social workers will be subject to criminal law rather than the fitness to practice procedures smacks of an insidious blame culture which, in the end, achieves no positive improvements for children and may result in a more cautious approach by professionals.

Many other aspects of the Bill will be addressed by my noble friends. There is much that is positive and constructive about the aims of the Bill—but, equally, the Government’s solutions to the challenges of supporting the most vulnerable children and young people are not at all transparent. What is needed is clarity of accountability and responsibility for these children and young people; positive support for the professionals tasked with this most challenging of roles; and adequate funding for local authorities whose budgets for children’s services have suffered large reductions at the same time as the Government set even higher demands. I look forward to constructive discussions with the Minister in the coming weeks. If Leeds can aspire to be a child-friendly city, surely the Government should aspire to create a child-friendly country.