Children’s Services

Kirstene Hair Excerpts

Tuesday 12th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Goodwill]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have authorities that have dramatically reduced the number of children being taken into care by making early interventions. That saves money, makes the local authority more cost-effective and is the sort of innovation that we want to spread around the country, from the good or outstanding authorities to the other authorities that are, unfortunately, letting down too many children and not spending the hard-earned taxpayers’ money deployed for their use as effectively as they might. We need to improve the standard of children’s social care in so many authorities where they are not delivering as well as elsewhere.

We have strengthened our approach to intervention in cases where councils are failing to provide adequate services for children in need of help and protection, looked-after children or care leavers. That programme of intervention is yielding real results. Some 36 local authorities have been lifted out of failure since 2010 and we are seeing a positive impact from the independent children’s social care trusts that we have set up in Doncaster and Slough. We also have great examples of local authorities, such as Leicester City and West Berkshire, that have turned their services around at an impressive pace, underlining what can be achieved with a relentless focus on improvement along with the right help and support. I am of course pleased with such results, but I am not complacent—we will continue to act swiftly in cases of failure and to act decisively to ensure improvement is happening everywhere in the system.

We have identified £20 million to be invested in improvement support to help create a system of sector-led improvement, founded on systematic and effective self-assessment and peer challenge. We have enjoyed real success in working with sector partners on that. Together, we are testing a system of regional improvement alliances that will, in time, spread to the whole country and enable a robust system of support and challenge between local authorities, supported by key partners such as Ofsted and my Department.

We are expanding our partners in practice programme. Our PiPs, as they are familiarly referred to, are excellent local authorities whose children’s services are secure and whose leadership is strong. For a few years now, the partners have been pioneering excellent practice and working systematically to spread it across the system. They are a model of good practice, not seen from a distance but working hand in hand alongside teams in other authorities that want to learn and improve their own practice. For example, North Yorkshire, my own excellent Conservative-controlled local authority, is working with other councils to diagnose problems and agree on what support is needed, extending practical help to nine areas across the country. We aim at least to double the number of partners in practice in the current expansion application process. That will ensure we have dedicated teams of excellent practitioners, with additional capacity built into their council, which enables them to get into struggling authorities and offer practical, on-the-ground support to help them to improve their service provision.

It is clear that much has already been done to ensure that every penny spent on children’s services is being spent effectively on delivering good outcomes for vulnerable children.

[Kirstene Hair (Angus) (Con)]

The spend on agency staff has nearly doubled across the UK, not just in Scotland or England and Wales. Does the Minister agree that spending huge sums of money on agencies drains funding, which leads to a poorer quality of services across the board, so something needs to be done to attract more people to that career path?

[Mr Goodwill]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the typical problems that I come across when I visit failing authorities is that they have trouble retaining and recruiting staff, and therefore tend to rely on agency staff to do that work. I do not want to detract from the work done by agency staff, but the cost of using them can sometimes be twice as much as the cost of employing people in-house. It is a frustrating side effect of failure, and it means that other factors come into play that make it even more difficult to get those authorities back where they need to be. That is why partners in practice and other innovations are working so well to improve the quality of children’s social care. Getting decisions right first time is the best way of ensuring that children who may be in danger and are certainly in need get what they need.

Local authorities increased spending on children and young people’s services to more than £9 billion last year. In some areas, demand for services is rising and local budgets are under pressure. We recognise that councils are delivering children’s services in a challenging environment, and they need to make tough choices about their priorities to achieve efficiencies. The Government have already done much to support local government spend. We are in the second year of an unprecedented four-year finance settlement for local government, which was accepted by 97% of councils. It gives authorities greater funding certainty over the medium term and enables them to be more proactive in planning for the long term. It also better equips them to prepare for the upcoming reforms under which local government will be funded through local taxes.

It is indeed critical to get funding right, and we do not rest on our laurels. We recognise that funding pressures on local authorities may be greater in some parts of the country than in others, and we are aware of concerns about the fairness of the current funding distributions. The Government have therefore reaffirmed our commitment to the DCLG-led fair funding review, which aims to address concerns about the fairness of the current funding distributions. We will carry out an evidence-based review of the funding formulae to ensure they reflect the shifting factors that impact on the cost of providing services, such as changing populations and demographic pressures. Department for Education officials are working closely with colleagues at DCLG and with the sector, and are determined to get this right for children’s social care services.

The hon. Member for Peterborough briefly mentioned Sure Start centres. There are 3,130 children’s centres still open, and they deliver excellent care in many cases. That is a fall of only 14%. I think the mistake is often made of not including children’s centres that have additional sites that have been amalgamated from a management point of view. There are still a lot of children’s centres opening.

It is also interesting that more family hubs are opening. Many local authorities see a family hub as a better way of delivering services to local people. I visited the children’s centre in my constituency—I mentioned this last week in the House—where some excellent work was being done on engaging with families, who were being shown how to produce cheap, nutritious meals with simple ingredients. The lady in charge looked out the window and said, “The children we really need in this centre aren’t here in the children’s centre. They are at home looking for a dry crust of bread in the kitchen because their mother hasn’t recovered from the hangover she inflicted upon herself the night before, or maybe the family is so dysfunctional that they are not able to get them here.” The workers at family hubs have been effective in getting into homes. It frustrates me that more than a quarter of parents do not take up the 15-hour free childcare availability for the most disadvantaged two-year-olds, but I have heard that in Warrington the take-up is approaching 100% because of the way Warrington Borough Council has engaged with families and got them into the provision. There is a lot that can be done to improve the way the service works.

There are 30,000 children and families social workers employed in England, which is an increase of 4.7% on last year. Although there are 5,540 vacancies on the books, 71% of them are taken up by agency staff. Local authorities can be successful in getting their workers back on to the payroll, rather than employing them through agencies.

The hon. Member for Peterborough said that too many children are going into care. In some cases, local authorities can safely bring down rates of looked-after children. The innovation programme is part of the answer to that problem, and it enables good practice to be shared. In other cases, it is a sad but necessary intervention. It may be down to better identification of issues relating to child sexual exploitation and gang risk. Overall, the decision is for the local authority. The best interests of the child and the protection of the child have to be paramount.

Providing support for preventive services and preventing cases from escalating must be at the centre of the work of every single director of children’s services and social worker around the country. The DCLG provides funding through the troubled families grant, which supports struggling children and families. We have funded a number of programmes that focus on getting help right early in the innovation programme.

I am enormously grateful for the attention that the hon. Lady has given to this issue. It fills me with confidence to know that there are people on both sides of the House advocating for the most vulnerable in our society. As I hope she can see from the reforms I outlined, we are committed to making a real change to the system that is as deep and long-lasting as it is wide-ranging. I also hope that she acknowledges the work we have already begun, which will ensure that this crucial service has the right amount of money and that it is being spent on the right things and in the right places. Collaboration across Whitehall and across the sector will ensure that my Department builds a system that weathers challenges both now and in the future and ensures that this country continues to lead the way in its provision for the most vulnerable children.

Question put and agreed to.