Safeguarding Children

Debate between Ian Mearns and Stephen Twigg

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg]

I know that my hon. Friend raised those matters directly with the Minister when he gave evidence to the Select Committee yesterday. I wish to put on record our appreciation of the detailed work that she and other members of the Select Committee have done on this important subject. I am sure that all Members look forward to that report, including its recommendations.

Services such as ChildLine have done an immense job in identifying the problems facing children and young people, but the increasing work load for its staff—similar to the increasing work load for social workers and council staff—and the fact that the processes for dealing with referrals are often bureaucratic, is something that the Government should address.

On early intervention, Labour supports the Munro recommendation that a statutory duty should be introduced on local authorities and relevant agencies to secure the provision of early help. Early intervention is vital in the prevention and detection of abuse. These services need to be expanded, but are under a great deal of pressure, not least from spending cuts. I wish to put on the record my thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) for the excellent work they have done on this very important area of early intervention. They have outlined the importance of early work in identifying challenges and managing to tackle them at an appropriate stage.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

On that point about early intervention, the Government have marked out a route whereby they want to see special treatment for 120,000 families who meet five of their seven criteria, but the fact that they meet five of those negative criteria almost automatically suggests to me that they are past the point of early intervention.

[Stephen Twigg]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. He is taking us into an important territory that merits consideration in a further debate in the House, because those are big challenges we face.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Twigg]

My hon. Friend tempts me, as a long-standing supporter of votes at 16, down a different road. I am sure that it was not a consideration in his making the intervention, but it is a debate for another time and place.

We also need to safeguard the safeguarding system. Studies have shown that the vast majority of care proceedings are appropriate and taken in the best interests of the child, but we need to ensure that there is a suitable mechanism for the occasions when that does not happen. Yesterday the Minister said that he was considering a form of “appeals process” to enable that, and I am sure that the House would be grateful if he could elaborate on his thinking.

I said at the beginning of this speech that child protection and safeguarding covers a range of issues and Departments, and, in addition to my warnings about unintended consequences and the well-being of children, I am concerned by the Government’s somewhat incoherent approach: on the one hand, Ministers like to lambast local authorities, yet on the other they are removing regulation and placing more power in the hands of local authority social work staff; on the one hand, Ministers say they want to reduce bureaucracy and red tape, but on the other they are introducing adoption scorecards for every local authority; and, on the one hand, Ministers say that early intervention is important, yet on the other they have not taken forward Professor Munro’s recommended statutory duty to do “early work” on child protection.

The British Association of Social Workers has raised a series of concerns about the state of the profession, particularly case load and the pressures on administration. In a survey that we conducted, more than 80% of the directors of children’s services who responded said that cuts to other services would affect their ability to safeguard children, and in a survey by the BASW 90% of social workers expressed concern that lives “could be at risk” as a consequence of cuts to services. The Government need to explain how they will address those challenges.

[Ian Mearns]

At a previous session of the Education Committee, when the Secretary of State was in attendance, I asked him whether he thought that it was a good idea for his Department—he being the Secretary of State for Education and children—to undertake an impact assessment of the Government’s proposed benefit changes on the welfare of children and their educational prospects. He subsequently said that he did not think that it was his responsibility, and he was doubtful about the veracity of such assessments anyway. Is that a surprise to my hon. Friend?

[Stephen Twigg]

It is not, and in my concluding remarks I shall say something about the Department for Education’s broader responsibilities for the well-being of children.

The Government have to explain how they will address the challenges that I have set, and there needs to be a robust training and continuing professional development framework not only for social workers, but for other staff in the relevant agencies, especially those in the health sector. It is crucial that we have robust supervision of social work practice by experienced senior staff and consultants who are accountable for the exercise of professional judgment. We know that the lack of good supervision was a significant issue in the baby Peter case.