Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Josh MacAlister and Perran Moon

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Josh MacAlister (Whitehaven and Workington) (Lab)]

I welcome this Bill because it is a chance to make progress on resetting the children’s social care system in England, and that is where I will focus my remarks. Children’s social care is a special endeavour. It is a collection of kin, professionals and volunteers who seek to provide safe, stable and loving homes for children right across our country. They are the most important foundations for any child growing up—the foundations of family, of a tribe and of a sense of identity.

Having chaired the independent review of children’s social care commissioned by the last Government, I have had the opportunity to spend time listening to thousands of people with direct experience of the system, and to make a number of recommendations on which I believe the legislation put forward today will deliver. One is about shifting away from late-stage crisis intervention, and another is about creating a sharper focus on a more expert-led child protection system. My other recommendations include unlocking the potential of family networks as an alternative to the care system, and moving away from a care system that breaks, rather than builds lifelong, loving relationships.

As somebody who has led an independent review for the Government that looked at a serious matter, which included engaging with and speaking to victims of sexual abuse and criminal abuse, I find it extraordinary that people who are sent to Parliament to be problem solvers are using this debate to be problem exploiters instead. We have stacks of evidence. We have had thousands of victims of sexual abuse provide heartbreaking and very painful evidence and testimony over many years, and it is our job to listen and to act, not to exploit at moments when the politics may be in our favour.

[Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)]

In my constituency of Camborne, Redruth and Hayle, 32% of secondary school children are persistently absent from school. Some are home-schooled, but some are lost to the system without support. These are vulnerable children. This Bill is about protecting vulnerable children. Does my hon. Friend agree that voting against this Bill is playing politics with the protection of vulnerable children?

[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.