Independent Review of Children’s Social Care

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on securing this important debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it.

Set against the enormity of the challenges facing the children’s social care sector, the vital importance of the sector in seeking to support families and keep the most vulnerable children safe, and the urgency of the need for reform, far too little attention has been paid in this Chamber to children’s social care in recent months. In particular, it has been six months since the independent review of children’s social care was published. Aside from a short oral statement during publication, there has been no opportunity for detailed consideration and discussion of its contents. This debate is long overdue.

I would like to thank all hon. Members who contributed today. We have heard—at great length, if I may say—from Members with very significant experience of children’s social care. My hon. Friend the Member for York Central made a powerful opening speech, setting out clearly the pressures crowding in on families and the urgency of the need for change. She also highlighted the costs of doing nothing.

The hon. and learned Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson), a former Minister well-respected for his time in Government, evidenced by the fact that he managed to remain in post for five years—that makes him a real veteran by contemporary standards, since the Minister’s post has been something of a revolving chair in recent months—spoke of some of the innovations that can help to drive improvement in children’s social care and the importance of improving support for care leavers. I certainly agree on both points. The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) spoke of the need for support for kinship carers and the importance of work to address childhood trauma.

The hon. Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) mentioned some of the charities in her constituency that do important work with vulnerable children and young people. She spoke of the lack of progress in response to previous reviews. She also mentioned the death of Damilola Taylor. Madam Deputy Speaker, I feel I must correct the record on that point. She mentioned Damilola Taylor in a list of children who died due to safeguarding failings at the hands of parents and carers. Damilola Taylor was murdered by strangers on his way home from school. It happened very close to my constituency and I just feel I must, for his family, set the record straight on that point.

[Mrs Drummond]

indicated assent.

[Helen Hayes]

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) referenced the importance of training and support for professionals working with vulnerable children and young people, and the importance of independent advocacy. The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan), who is not in his place, mentioned the importance of recruiting foster carers and highlighted the very poor conversion rate from people who express an interest in foster care to those who eventually become foster carers.

The hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) spoke from his experience as a local authority lead member for children’s social care over many years and was right to highlight the transformative impact of high-quality youth work, as well as early help. Finally, another former Minister, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, made many points in his speech, but again highlighted the catalogue of reports and reviews produced over 10 years and the lack of progress in taking up the challenge of really delivering for children.

There is, as we have seen in the debate, a high level of consensus on children’s social care and the need for change is indeed urgent. The independent review’s “Case for Change” document, published in 2021, is unequivocal. The number of children, particularly the number of older children, in the care system is increasing and the outcomes for people with care experience are getting worse. Care-experienced people are 70% more likely to die prematurely than those who have not been in the care system. Care-experienced people are overrepresented in the prison system. Their educational attainment and levels of employment are lower, and they are far more likely to be homeless.

The appalling tragedies that have made the headlines in recent months, of children murdered by people who should have loved and nurtured them, remind us of the grave responsibilities that children’s social workers carry. Their decisions about the welfare of the most vulnerable children can literally be a matter of life or death. I pay tribute to social workers across the country who are working every day to support families, to keep children safe, and to provide stability and security for looked-after children, but they are all too often working in incredibly difficult circumstances. The most recent survey of social workers by the British Association of Social Workers revealed that more than a third reported that their caseload had increased since the start of the covid-19 pandemic. The Department for Education’s own analysis shows that the number of children’s social workers quitting children’s services altogether rose more than a fifth during 2021.

As many hon. Members have highlighted, the situation is very challenging for kinship carers—people who step in to care for a child who is a family member or close friend when their birth parents cannot do so. Kinship carers do an incredible job, maintaining family links that might be lost if the child was taken into the care of the local authority, providing love and stability. However, according to the most recently published survey by the charity Kinship, more than two thirds of kinship carers feel that they are not getting the support they need. That is surely not acceptable.

The past 12 years of Conservative Government have seen early help and support services for families decimated across much of the country. As many councils have lost more than 50% of the funding they receive from central Government, they have been forced to focus increasingly stretched resources on statutory services, including child protection. Over the 10 years from 2010-11 to 2020-21, investment in early intervention support fell by a staggering 50%, while spending on crisis and late intervention services has increased by more than a third. That loss of capacity is a disaster for child protection services. Without early help and support, more and more families struggle to provide appropriate care for their children. By failing to invest in early support, the Government are allowing families to fall into crisis, picking up the pieces only when it is often too late.

The independent review of children’s social care cites parenting in a context of adversity as the reason that the majority of families become involved with children’s social care. Many of the issues that cause families, and particularly children, to fall into a situation of vulnerability or danger have their roots in the poverty and inequality in our country that have deepened and widened on the Government’s watch. As we debate children’s social care and the interventions that exist to provide the safety net for children, we must not lose sight of the wider context, which has such a significant impact on the lives of children across our country.

While the policies of the Conservatives have fuelled the growing crisis in children’s social care, they have been complacent in responding to it. Across England, 50% of local authority children’s services departments are rated “inadequate” or “requires improvement” by Ofsted. That will be for a variety of reasons, including a lack of resources, but resources are clearly not the whole picture.

I want to take this opportunity to congratulate Southwark Council, one of my local authorities, on its “good” Ofsted rating for children’s services, which was published last week. The political and officer leadership team in Southwark have managed to continue to deliver good, child-centred services, despite the council as a whole experiencing among the highest level of cuts in the country.

The reasons for poor performance in some local authorities will vary, and I do not seek to lay the blame at the feet of hard-working frontline social workers. However, the lack of grip on the situation from the Government is inexcusable. The Government have been content to preside over a shocking level of failure in children’s services departments and that is simply not good enough.

[Edward Timpson]

I was hoping not to have to intervene on the hon. Member. She started off by talking about how much consensus there was on children’s social care, but I think she has to be a bit careful about suggesting that we somehow sat back and let this all happen with no care in the world. We have been one of the Governments who have intervened most in failing children’s services. I gave examples of when we had to take control of services off authorities and put them in a trust to try to bring about an improvement in performance. Labour-run Birmingham City Council is probably the best example.

[Helen Hayes]

I thank the hon. and learned Member for his intervention. If he thinks that 50% of children’s services departments across the country being rated as “inadequate” or “requires improvement” is an acceptable situation, I fear that he somewhat misses the point. The Government have, of course, intervened in some local authorities, and local authorities of all political hues experience challenges and are not performing as well as they should be. However, I see no evidence of a real grip from the Government. Where is the support and challenge programme? Where is the sharing of good practice? Where is the drive, every single day, to make sure that no local authorities children services departments are failing children?

[David Simmonds]

The children’s improvement board, which was set up as a partnership between the Department for Education, the Local Government Association and Ofsted, was the main vehicle that provided the drive. It is important to recognise, in respect of local authority judgments, that Ofsted has been clear that “requires improvement to be good” is an above-the-line judgment—that is, an authority that is performing “adequately”, in the old parlance, but which needs to be on the journey to be “good” to make improvements. We need to be clear that it is only authorities that are “inadequate” that can be considered to be performing less well than they need to be to serve the interests of children in that area.

[Helen Hayes]

We need to have a higher aspiration for children across the country to be supported by the best possible services. I welcome the Minister’s comments on the ongoing work to achieve that, but I believe much more can be done. That requires political will, and greater attention in this place, to drive improvements in performance.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Councils are struggling financially, although good and outstanding services are not all about finances. Does the hon. Lady agree that councils with the flexibility to spend a bit more money, such as Bath and North East Somerset Council, are in a much better position than those that are already in a difficult financial situation, usually in deprived areas?

[Helen Hayes]

It is indeed the case that local authorities with the flexibility to divert more resources into this area have that benefit, which can be significant.

The independent review of children’s social care was published six months ago. It called for a “total reset” of children’s social care and made a wide range of recommendations for reform. There is a high degree of consensus on many of those recommendations, such as the need to restore early help services, to provide better support for kinship carers, to end private profiteering in residential care and private foster care services, and to end the placement of children in unregulated settings. These things should be happening right now.

It is also essential that, as the reform of children’s social care is taken forward, the professionals working with children and families, care-experienced people, and the children and families themselves are placed at the heart of the process. None of this will happen unless and until the Government prioritise children and move this agenda forward. The previous Prime Minister, during her first Prime Minister’s questions, made a commitment in response to my question that the Government’s response to the independent review and an implementation plan will be published by the end of the year. There are just three full sitting weeks left before Christmas. I therefore ask the Minister to confirm the publication date of the Government’s response to the independent review, and to confirm that it will be before Christmas, as promised.

While Conservative Members have been arguing among themselves in recent months, taking an ideological sledgehammer to our economy and scrambling to reinvent themselves as a completely new Government with no connection to the last one, of which they were all a part, it is the most vulnerable children and young people, and those who care for them, who are being let down. Childhood is short, but its experiences last a lifetime. When will this Government stop letting children down?