Independent Review of Children’s Social Care

Kelly Tolhurst Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kelly Tolhurst (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

I declare an interest, as my sister is a social worker. I have, over many years, seen poor outcomes for young people who have travelled through our care system, so I welcome the review and some of what was in it, but this is a complex area. As my hon. Friend the Minister mentioned, we have seen a number of reviews, and the many barriers in children’s social care that we all know about have come up again in the review. On his implementation board and the plan that will be brought forward before the end of year, will he take social workers with him, so that they feed into discussions on what that the measures look like on the ground? Also, can we truly tackle, once and for all, these two basic issues: the case load that social workers face in our local authorities; and the need to enable local authorities to support foster carers, so that the private sector no longer needs to fill that gap?

[Will Quince]

I very much welcome my hon. Friend’s contribution, and I thank her sister for what she does as a social worker, as well as all social workers up and down our country. We are absolutely serious about reform and delivering the change that we all want. My hon. Friend mentioned two specific points. The first was about the case load, which is at the moment around 16 cases; that is down from about 20 in 2017, but the case load number is hugely misleading. I have rightly spent plenty of time with social workers up and down our country, and shadowed social workers in Cumbria, so I know that one case can take as long as 20. This is therefore not just about numbers. We have to look at the case load and social worker recruitment. On foster carers, it is absolutely right that we support them from the point at which they make an application or expression of interest to the point at which they become foster carers. Support should be ongoing, too, so that placements do not fail.