Children’s Social Care Implementation Strategy (Public Services Committee Report)

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Wednesday 20th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association, as noted in the register. I thank my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley and all members of the Public Services Committee for this excellent, direct and wide-ranging report on such a vital area of our social services provision. It is indeed always worth listening to our young people.

The Government’s strategy, published in February 2023, followed an independent review of children’s social care, which recommended wide-ranging reforms based on principles such as family help providing the right support at the right time; unlocking the potential of family networks; and creating a system that learns, improves and makes better use of evidence and data. To where we are currently, we have seen the erosion of children’s services for more than a decade, while poverty and inequality have increased—points strongly made by my noble friend Lady Armstrong of Hill Top. It is acute in the north-east and severe elsewhere. Preventive services have been stripped back, leaving the need for costly crisis interventions soaring. The independent review on social care described a system that is

“skewed to crisis intervention, with outcomes for children that continue to be unacceptably poor and costs that continue to rise”,

and called for a “radical reset”. So what will this Government do to address the huge deficit in children’s social care?

The strategy contains 12 local areas which will receive £45 million of additional investment for a new pathfinder role to test models of family help. The Government also committed to providing new multiagency child protection standards in 2023, amending guidance to local authorities, police and health partners to give greater clarity on their responsibilities. There will be trials of kinship care support packages. Other measures include £27 million in funding for foster carers. This is all just a sticking plaster.

According to the review, the strategy lacks “scale, ambition and pace” and will impact

“only a few areas, and then only as a pilot programme”.

There is no guarantee of long-term reform, which is badly needed. Some of the proposed pilot programmes already have strong evidence behind them, so they would be ready to be rolled out nationwide. The committee felt that, although the strategy had aspects to recommend it, it was being rolled out slowly and would therefore leave many children behind. Improvements for residential care were almost entirely absent from the strategy, and my noble friend Lord Bach has made the strongest of arguments for urgent review of this sector.

We in the Labour Party believe that the strategy represents a piecemeal approach to long-standing and entrenched issues in children’s social care. It does not provide the serious strategy needed to fix the crisis in the workforce, to help kinship carers and to deliver on the greater protections that vulnerable children and families desperately need. As my noble friend Lady Morris quoted, this is what Josh MacAlister called a “missed opportunity”.

The Local Government Association analysis of the strategy prior to high levels of inflation indicated an existing shortfall of £1.6 billion per year simply to maintain current service levels. The independent care review recommended an additional investment of at least £2.6 billion over four years, prior to the impact of inflation. The LGA further suggested that multiple factors would be key to the success of regional care co-operatives, including resourcing, IT systems, and clarity on structure and roles held between councils and providers. The LGA also argued that the strategy

“could have gone much further”

in relation to the provision of mental health services for children in care and care leavers.

Although the Government opened a consultation into the use of agency social workers, there is no plan to end the domination of for-profit children’s home places, which account for 78% of places in England. Some of these providers have been the subject of inquiries into abuse in children’s residential care. I remember well when leader of Newport City Council the eye-watering sums that private providers demanded for places in their establishments for our children and young people—goodness knows how much those sums have increased in the past few years. It is not about the money but about the quality of provision for children and young people, which always had to be the main criteria despite the cost.

The 20 largest independent sector children’s social care providers had an income of £1.7 billion in 2021, an 8.3% increase on the year before. In October last year, a report by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel identified a “culture of abuse”, including violence and sexual harm, in three residential schools run by one of the largest private providers. Given that the taxpayer is paying huge amounts for children to be given at times appalling care, why on earth is this strategy not tackling the role of private providers in children’s care?

We recently discussed the review of the Children and Families Act 2014. There are issues left unaddressed by that Act, such as kinship care, that have been given some consideration in this strategy. However, one aspect of the Children and Families Act that struck me was the lack of ongoing data collection and impact evaluation. As the implementation of this strategy progresses, what will the Government do to ensure that it is regularly analysed and evaluated? Do the Government really believe that the strategy will make the difference needed to improve the 43% of children’s services departments rated “inadequate” or “requiring improvement”?

According to the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, across regions in England there are varying degrees of interest in taking up a RCC pathfinder opportunity—but, at present, no region seems to be interested in adopting the approach outlined by the DfE. The ADCS recently published a position paper coming after the collapse of a joint procurement frame- work for children’s residential care involving seven local authorities across the north-east of England. It raised concerns over whether government plans to move to regional commissioning of children’s social care services should indeed be re-evaluated. While ADCS members acknowledge that regional collaboration could offer some opportunities, including regional sufficiency audits, workforce gap analysis, and the opportunity for joint commissioning in areas of greatest need, a number of concerns about the model described by the DfE remain for the association; thus, the position paper offers strong solutions for the Government.

In conclusion, as the final sentence in the report, which we all hope will be taken up by the Government and acted on, notes,

“we need to ensure that all children and families engaged in the care system see some immediate benefit and can be sure that significant change will follow”.