Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Earl of Effingham Excerpts

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

5: Clause 1, page 1, line 10, at end insert—
“(1A) The family group decision-making meeting, or meetings, must follow an evidence based approach including the appointment of an independent and suitably trained coordinator, including in relation to domestic abuse.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that family group decision-making meetings follow an evidence based approach.

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to speak to Amendment 5 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, who has considerable experience in this subject. It is similar in purpose to Amendments 7, 8, 9 and 11, and we need to follow key principles to make sure that the family group decision-making model is implemented effectively. The LGA said in its written evidence to the Bill Committee in the other place:

“It would be helpful to make clear in guidance the elements of the model that make it particularly effective so that these can be built on locally”.


As we have heard from other noble Lords, the Family Rights Group is very experienced in this area, and there is considerable evaluation and evidence which needs to be followed, so that the meetings are seen as safe and trusted by families and do not inadvertently become seen as heavy-handed state intervention. I would be grateful if the Minister reassured the Committee about how cases involving domestic abuse will be handled, since there is clearly the potential for coercion of the adult victim and other family members.

The other issues have been picked up by the noble Baronesses, Lady Armstrong and Lady Longfield, such as the importance of having an independent co-ordinator who receives proper training. We should not underestimate how skilful a job this is.

The Family Rights Group has been clear that there needs to be private family time, and the meetings must avoid introducing any ambiguity into the local authority role. They need clarity to help families make decisions to provide care and support.

We look forward to the contributions from all noble Lords. I beg to move.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I added my name to this amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran because I am also deeply concerned that children benefit from the right level of expertise in the family group decision-making process. I have already mentioned Eileen Munro’s commentary on the Government’s reforms in the Times yesterday, where she warns against the shifting

“of child protection responsibilities to less-qualified family help workers. Although they offer support, many are not trained to detect hidden abuse such as psychological harm or coercive control. Supervision by overstretched social workers is no substitute for expertise, especially with workforce shortages and rising caseloads”.

These comments, although focused on a different part of the child safeguarding system, also seem highly relevant here. Bringing together family members and others who are important in the life of a child means engaging with a family system that can be highly complex.

Many here will remember the case of Shannon Matthews from West Yorkshire, a few months after the huge publicity following the tragic disappearance of Madeleine McCann. In February 2008, nine year-old Shannon was reported missing. She was eventually found in a house belonging to an uncle of the boyfriend of the kidnapped girl’s mother. The kidnapping was planned by Shannon’s mother and her boyfriend to generate money from the publicity and the sizeable reward, which her mother planned to split with the uncle when he “found” Shannon and took her to a police station.

Perhaps noble Lords are already very confused about these family arrangements, and there is no doubt that the protagonists at the centre of this case were highly unusual. I am not sure whether Shannon’s mother would have been offered a family group conference, not least because of the involvement of other family members in the crime.

When the police initially investigated Shannon’s disappearance, they had to look first at the extended family. What they found was such a complex web of interrelationships, such as children of different fathers in the same family and the same fathers in different families, that they described Shannon’s extended family tree as a bramble genealogy.

To reiterate, this was a highly unusual case, but it illustrates that kin altruism cannot be assumed. Those with a biological relationship to a child may not be committed to a child or be best placed to discuss the sensitive issues inherent in family group decision-making. The Bill already and quite rightly gives the local authority discretion not to offer family group decision-making in extreme cases, but even in dark family situations, very often there will be responsible, kind, dedicated family members who want to act in the child’s best interests. However, there will also surely be many times when it is not clear where family dysfunction begins and ends.

Those involved as family group decision-making co-ordinators must, as my noble friend’s amendment says, be independent, trained and experienced. They need to be able to spot signs of potential psychological harm or coercive control. They are a key last line of defence against future harm coming to vulnerable and traumatised children.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The fifth group we are debating comprises only one amendment, but we have had some useful contributions. However, quite a few of the arguments that I would make in response to this group were those that I made earlier in response to the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Armstrong on the need for evidence-based practice and on the use of proven approaches such as that of family group conferencing. I will repeat some of the points I made and respond to some of the particular issues that have arisen.

On the last point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, I do not know the extent to which we have reviewed the experience in Scotland, but as we discussed earlier, we have looked extremely carefully at the research carried out by Foundations that we talked about earlier and the recommendations and approach that it brought forward.

I agree with the intention behind this amendment that we should ensure that family group decision-making follows an evidence-based approach and is co-ordinated by trained facilitators. That is very important, and I liked the intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on this point about qualifications, and in this particular context he has identified a little discrepancy in the position of some noble Lords opposite.

The noble Earl, Lord Effingham, refers to the LGA saying that it thought that we should make it clear in guidance what that evidenced-based approach is. I wholly agree with him and the LGA, and that is why we will use statutory guidance to set out clear principles of practice, building on the evidence from successful models, such as the family group conference approach, to ensure that all families are offered quality family group decision-making. That includes people being trained to do it.

On the point about independent co-ordination, I made the point earlier that while I think that in the vast majority of cases it is right that there is independent facilitation, there might be circumstances where the family want the process to be run by a social worker who is somebody they have a very strong ongoing relationship with.

On the point about private family time, it is obviously an important potential part of the process that the family have the opportunity together, with appropriate preparation, to consider what would be appropriate for them, but here as well there could be circumstances—the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, referred to the issue of domestic abuse, for example—in which it would not be appropriate to leave only the family to lead that decision-making if there were fears that there was a dynamic within the family that perhaps made it important for there to be somebody else as part of that process. I think people could envisage a situation in which that happened.

This is not to say—I think this charge was made earlier —that the Government take a laissez-faire approach to the way in which family group decision-making is developed. We do not want to see a thousand flowers bloom, as was suggested by my noble friend Lady Armstrong earlier on; we want to see the right evidenced-based flowers blooming. In order to make sure that is the case, we will be very clear in the statutory guidance about the approach that needs to be taken when organising family group decision-making. I hope I was clear about that earlier on.

There is also a need to ensure that suitable people and resources are there, and that is why the Government have committed to an uplift of £13 million for the children’s social care prevention grant for 2025-26, which will be used to support the rollout of family group decision-making across the country for all families on the edge of care, including for recruiting or training extra staff to facilitate that process. On the basis of those assurances, I hope the noble Earl will feel able to withdraw the amendment.

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. It is important for all these children that we do everything we can to make sure that these processes can be implemented successfully, and ensuring that an evidence-based approach is followed is a key part of this. I briefly flag in particular the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, who said that this is a key last line of defence. It is extremely regrettable that we cannot fix all the problems—there will be issues that get through the net—and that is exactly why we need a key last line of defence to help with those problems.

I will also briefly flag the contributions from the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, and the noble Lord, Lord Agnew. They absolutely correctly pointed out that the evidence from Scotland is that the execution of the plan is critical, and an evidence-based approach is crucial. We would be well advised to learn from the experience of what has been taking place over the past 10 years and, I hope, take all the positives and learn from the negatives. On that basis, for the time being, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran.

Amendment 5 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments proposed by my noble friend Lady Barran. These proposals are clearly well intentioned but there are reasons why this has not been done before, and her desire to explore how these amendments are intended to work is absolutely right.

Just to put it in context, in a typical local authority, there are 400 or 500 schools and nurseries. This goes beyond anything that can reasonably be characterised as a “partnership”. So, how will it work? How much capacity will it absorb in each of those? What will it add?

The core documents that all these providers must work with in keeping children safe in education and working together, get bigger and bigger each year. Many schools and childcare providers are close to the limit of complexity that they can manage.

I should have declared an interest at the outset, as a former chief inspector of Ofsted.

Most schools that fall down on safeguarding at inspection are small—typically primaries, often standalone primaries, and special schools. The vast majority take safeguarding seriously but some are struggling with the complexity. We need to be very sure about layering on safeguarding partnership responsibilities and, later in the Bill, corporate parenting duties, on top of all the existing duties. It may not add anything to safeguarding and, in some cases, could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and drives good staff out, or forces early years providers to close.

Generally, layers of duties that make everyone responsible tend to blur who has the primary responsibility in any given situation. There will be the greatest value in these provisions if they work to achieve maximum simplicity and clarity, so that they are workable in the hands of normal, well-intentioned people.

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak after such knowledgeable contributions from all noble Lords. It is fair to say that all the amendments in this group are wrestling with the same issues, which have been raised by the Children’s Commissioner and by the independent review into child social care, led by the honourable member for Whitehaven and Workington.

We want to include education and childcare agencies in safeguarding arrangements. Indeed, schools already play a huge part in this area and make a significant percentage of safeguarding referrals where they have concerns about a child. But in practice it is hard, because of the number of organisations and their differing size and capacity.

We have heard from all sides on this, with many calling for full statutory partner status for education and childcare—such as in Amendment 24 from the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield—while others are worried about workability. We fear that we may err on the side of caution regarding how full statutory partner status could work in practice, although we will of course reflect on the points made by all noble Lords.

We support the aims of Amendments 21 to 23 from the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, who has such a depth of experience and understanding of these areas in general and of family hubs in particular. Amendments 20 and 25, from the noble Lords, Lord Hampton and Lord Bichard, aspire to have an inclusive and non-bureaucratic approach to these arrangements. Naturally, we fully support Amendments 26 to 28, from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My Lords, everybody who has contributed to this group has recognised that education and childcare are fundamental at all levels of safeguarding arrangements. The noble Earl, Lord Effingham, was right that there is a range of approaches to this, from those who argue that education needs to be a statutory safeguarding partner to those who, understandably, question how the Government’s proposals in this clause will work in practice, and I hope to bring a bit of clarity to that in my response.

We can all agree that education and childcare settings should be consistently involved in multiagency safe- guarding arrangements across England, and that is what this clause sets out to do. On the Clause 2 stand part notice, by strengthening the role of education in multiagency safeguarding arrangements, Clause 2 recognises that crucial role that education and childcare settings play in keeping children safe. The evidence of the way in which education has tended to be involved in safeguarding is that while in many schools there are reasonably well developed processes for safeguarding, including designated safeguarding leads and, of course, the focus that they are able to put on it, and while there are lots of places in the country where schools are being well engaged in safeguarding arrangements, it is not true, generally, that the whole breadth of education and childcare settings is engaged in that. My noble friend Lady Longfield made an important point about early years settings and their ability to contribute here, and of course FE colleges are far less frequently engaged in safeguarding arrangements.

The intention behind this clause is to ensure that education and childcare settings are consistently involved in multiagency safeguarding arrangements across England so that opportunities to keep children safe are not missed and we reduce the risk of children falling through the cracks between services. It places duties on those existing safeguarding partners—the local authority, police and integrated care boards—automatically to include all education and childcare settings in their arrangements. This will help to ensure that they work together to identify and respond to the needs of children in their area and that they consider in the fora in which safeguarding is pursued in these areas the relationships and processes that are necessary to ensure that the voice and knowledge of education and childcare settings are included in safeguarding arrangements. Where this is happening, we see improved communication between the safeguarding partnership and education, better information sharing and more opportunities to influence key strategic safeguarding decisions. This will also mean that all education and childcare settings must co-operate with safeguarding partners, ensuring that those arrangements are fully understood and rigorously applied in their organisations.

Turning to Amendments 26, 27 and 28 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, I appreciate the point made that we need to understand how this will operate in practice and to understand the burdens and costs for education and childcare settings. On how it will operate in practice, the point I was making previously is that we are beginning to see how, where education and childcare are properly included, local authorities are resolving some of the practical issues that the noble Baroness raised and are finding the relationships, the forms of communication and the fora necessary to enable education and childcare to be properly represented in safeguarding arrangements, but she makes a fair challenge to me to explain a little bit more about how that is working. Perhaps I can write to noble Lords with some examples of how we would expect to see this operating in practice.

There are a couple of specific points that I can respond to today. First, on the point about identifying a single point of contact to be involved in safeguarding, if we are not careful, mandating that that happens would incur duplication, and new burdens and resourcing pressures, as there is no single point of accountability for the sector at the moment. I do not think the noble Baroness was suggesting that new posts should be created for this role.

She specifically asked about the role of the LADO. Can I be clear that the LADO role would not be appropriate to support education and childcare settings with their safeguarding responsibilities with respect to this clause unless it was in relation to allegations against people who work with children? That is the specific responsibility of the LADO and where this is the case of course the LADO can be contacted. But that would not be appropriate to be a single point of contact for safeguarding arrangements in this context. Through this legislation, as I think I have suggested, safeguarding partners should be continuing to strengthen existing relationships with education and childcare settings to ensure that there is join-up and an enhanced role in safeguarding arrangements.

On the point about accountability, we need to understand and have sight of how this is working. The Secretary of State has oversight of yearly reports by local children’s safeguarding partnerships which must include scrutiny by an independent person of the effectiveness of the arrangements. We will support safeguarding partners to ensure that this includes the representation of education. Through those yearly reports we will be able to see how education and childcare settings are being included in the safeguarding partnerships.

I turn to Amendments 20 and 25, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Hampton and Lord Bichard—introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton—and Amendment 24 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hampton. They relate to the suggestion that education should become the fourth statutory safeguarding partner, and I think this was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Meston. There are considerable difficulties in terms of structure and accountability with making education and childcare a statutory partner in the way in which he suggests. There is no organisation or individual who can take on the equivalent duties as a safeguarding partner for education.

I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, to the House. I am sure that her expertise in all areas of education and children’s social care will be important and helpful for us in our deliberations. She identified that a wide range of education and childcare settings would not be able to take on the equivalent duties as a safeguarding partner for education, because the expectation for those three statutory safeguarding partners is, first, that they have the authority to make decisions for all settings; secondly, that they are able to commit funding on behalf of all settings; and, thirdly, that they are able to represent the views of all settings.