A Failure of Implementation (Children and Families Act 2014 Committee Report)

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the LGA, as noted in the register. We are here today as a result of the House of Lords Children and Families Act 2014 Committee, as has been mentioned throughout the debate, and the launching of its post-legislative scrutiny inquiry on 9 March 2022. The introduction of the Act in 2014 was to make those substantial and wide-ranging changes that all Peers have noted in the debate today. It was about reforming services for vulnerable children, by giving them greater protection, paying special attention to those with additional needs, and also helping children, parents and the family as a whole.

Many of the recommendations of the 2010 family justice review were implemented by the CFA and were designed to improve child welfare and make court processes more effective and, crucially, quicker than they were before. The importance of the legal framework was cogently outlined by my noble friend Lord Bach. It further extended the rights to a personal budget for the support of children, young people and families. Local authorities—I have been a corporate parent and I know how important that is—have to involve families and children in discussions and decisions relating to their care and education. It was about providing impartial advice, support and mediation.

In the Act, the Children’s Commissioner’s role was increased from simply representing the views and interests of children to focusing on,

“promoting and protecting the rights of children”.

It was so reassuring to see Dame Rachel de Souza, the current commissioner for England, speak out so persuasively and compellingly in the media in recent days when she commented on the current crisis affecting our children and young people at the start of the new academic year and the discovery about school buildings. She said,

“After years of disruption for children and young people, what they need most is stability and getting back to normal … Everything must now be done to ensure the impact on children’s learning is minimised. And it is particularly important that everyone working with children prioritises those who are vulnerable and those with additional needs”.


Those are very clear words.

The report under discussion today, published on 6 December 2022, contained recommendations across several policy areas. Strikingly, the committee said that the CFA

“has ultimately failed in meaningfully improving the lives of children and young people”.

It attributed this failure to several things, including insufficient data collection, implementation and, as many noble Lords mentioned, scrutiny of the Act. For example, on adoption, there was a lack of support and inconsistent approaches for the early permanence placements created by the Act, and a lack of action on issues with ethnic minority adoptions. The committee recommended expanding the current narrow scope and complex application process.

The CFA does not contain any provisions on kinship care, despite it being the most stable option for children in care. I do not know what we would have done without grandparents, aunties and uncles when we looked to place children in Newport. The lack of provision for kinship care has been raised again in recent debates on the Government’s new children’s social care strategy.

There is a lack of data on the success of the introduction of parental involvement presumption in the CFA. In 2020, the Government promised a review on its success, but the findings are yet to be published.

On the introduction of rights to shared parental leave and pay, in 2018 the House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee proposed that shared parental leave should be replaced with a right to 12 weeks’ parental leave. The CFA committee said that the Government should publish an assessment of implementing such a policy. Labour has committed to urgently review the shared parental leave system and extend statutory maternity and paternity leave as part of its new deal for working people. The committee further recommended that self-employed partners should be given the right to statutory shared parental pay like directly employed partners, something I believe the Government do not currently support.

The committee further noted that kinship carers have no legal right to paid time off. However, the Government have acknowledged the need to explore ways of better supporting kinship carers. This is to be welcomed.

Many Peers have mentioned that children’s mental health was not directly covered in the Act, but the committee rightly described it as a crisis and a threat to the Act’s overall success. Labour has committed to ensuring that there are mental health professionals in every school and mental health hubs in every community, and will guarantee mental health treatment within a month for all who need it. The committee further recommended that the Government continue to heed the advice of the Children’s Commissioner and consider how they can better represent the voice of children at senior levels of Government—a most wise recommendation.

Last year, the Government set out plans to reform children’s social care. Earlier this year, they undertook a consultation on reforms to children’s social care, which closed in May but has yet to be published. The strategy has been broadly welcomed, but has been accused of taking a piecemeal approach rather than a wholesale reform of what is a broken system.

I have outlined what was hoped for in 2014 when the Act came into force, and I note the wholesale criticisms by the committee of the Act’s implementation. I shall conclude, as some of my points have already been covered and I am a firm believer in not repeating what has already been said, but I have a number of questions to put to the Minister. I do not expect a full reply to every question, but I would be most grateful if she would address the clear challenges that I pose and reply in writing.

The Government have said they will respond to the consultation on the children’s social care strategy this month. Can the Minister confirm whether this is still the plan? Do the Government believe that the announcements made so far on the new strategy will lead to the current dire situation improving? Some 43% of children’s service departments are rated as inadequate.

As almost all Peers have already mentioned, many of the issues with the Act outlined in the report come from a lack of post-legislative scrutiny, impact assessments or data collection, leaving the Government flying blind. How will they ensure that the same mistakes are not made when implementing the new strategy?

It is clear from the report and the reception surrounding the announcement of the new government strategy that kinship care has been greatly neglected. Do the Government believe that providing £50 for training and support for every child in kinship care will make a difference? The Government have said that a kinship care strategy will be published by the end of 2023. Is this still the case? Finally, are the children’s social care national frameworks still on course to be published by the end of this year?

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, for calling this debate, and all members of the committee who have spoken today. We now need urgent action from the Government to ensure that what was a positive piece of legislation is no longer allowed to drift from pillar to post, trying to do what it set out to do: to improve the lives of our children and young people. There can be no more important challenge.