Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Josh Fenton-Glynn Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Josh MacAlister]

I completely agree. I have a huge amount of respect for the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), who shared his comments a while ago, but if he and other Members were serious about this matter, they would table amendments to deliver on IICSA’s recommendation not to go through the process again.

I will speak briefly about three particular measures in the Bill. First, it is welcome that we have proposals for family group decision making to be made compulsory at pre-proceedings stage, because there is very sound evidence that it works. A randomised control trial undertaken a few years ago shows that if family group decision making, in the form of a family group conference, was provided at pre-proceedings stage across England, 2,000 fewer children would enter care each year, and it would free up £150 million for earlier support for families. As local authorities start to deliver on the new requirement, it is extremely important that we do not just make it a tick-box exercise, and that we ensure that the evidence and practice guidance is there to support local authorities to deliver in a way that will be most effective.



Secondly, the Bill will create multi-agency child protection teams. These teams will fuse together—at an operational level, rather than just a strategic level—the relevant agencies needed to share information and then act on it to protect children from significant harm. It is important that, as well as getting the structure right, we focus on the professional expertise required to do the task of child protection, which is often so challenging.

We too often leave newbie social workers with the most challenging task of assessing significant harm by themselves. We do not ask the police to do that—we often send police officers out in pairs—and it is important that we support social workers on their route to expertise through the early-career framework, so that the most expert are making these challenging judgments on significant harm. I know Ministers are looking at that.

A unique child identifier is long overdue. I called for this in my review, as have a number of other reviewers. Again, I welcome the leadership that this Government have shown in acting on this in their first six months. It may sound like a modest technical change, but if it is delivered well, it will blow away the fog of confused and partial information sharing. I encourage Ministers to look at the Think family database in Bristol, which is a great example of what can be done when child-level data is shared by the police, education, children’s services and health.

Finally, the introduction of regional co-operative arrangements will allow for bolder action to ensure that we have the foster carers we need in this country. Last year, 132,000 households expressed an interest in becoming foster carers, but we have approved only 1,800 of them.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)]

Calderdale council took the innovative step of giving foster carers a council tax break, which has been incredibly effective in recruiting foster carers. Would this and other such ideas be a good way to get more people into the system?

[Josh MacAlister]

I completely agree that we need to do an awful lot more to support the recruitment and retention of foster carers. Ministers have shown reforming zeal with this measure to provide the Secretary of State with powers to create regional care co-operatives across the country. If the Bill is passed, I urge Ministers to use this new power at pace and with boldness so that we can create the extra foster homes we need. If we follow the example of really effective fostering agencies in the voluntary sector, we could approve 15,000 new foster carers each year, rather than the 1,800 we approve at the moment.

I welcome these transformational changes and commend the Government for introducing the Bill so early. I look forward to supporting its passage.