Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I, instead, speak in support of Amendment 6. As we have heard, reunification is the most common way for children to leave care but, sadly, the number of children who re-enter the system remains far too high, as many reunifications break down due to lack of support. There is currently no strategy by which to support reunifying families, and 78% of local authorities admit that the support that they provide is inadequate.

A breakdown in reunification not only is tragic for the children and families involved but costs the Government around £320 million annually. Action for Children estimates that the cost of providing family decision-making support to meet the costs of all reunifying families across England would result in significant cost savings of a potential £250 million.

On the basis that this is accepted and viewed as a positive step among professionals, should be in the best interests of care for children leaving school and, finally, has the potential to provide cost savings to the Government, which could be recycled into the system, I hope that the Minister will look favourably on including in the Bill a duty to offer family group decision-making during reunification.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, this was a very reasonable sounding amendment, then the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, took a sledgehammer to it. Will the Minister give us a little guidance on the Government’s thinking on this? When people with experience on both sides are talking it is best that we hear the whole thing, but I will be very interested in what the Government say because if the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss—probably our biggest expert in the Chamber—says there is something wrong, I would be very inclined to listen to her. But, as I said, it was a reasonable sounding discussion that brought it forward.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I have already expressed my views on Amendment 4, but I think I need to emphasise, particularly as my noble and learned friend has just made the same point, that I think it is unrealistic and unnecessary for private law cases. Many disputes resolved in private law cases are minor and concern perfectly manageable—I will not say “trivial”—problems over contact arrangements and so forth. That cannot justify a family group meeting.

In any event, as my noble and learned friend has said, the existing mechanisms are already well tuned to dealing with disputes. Cafcass gets involved at an early stage; there is what is called a safeguarding report; and if the dispute does not go away, Cafcass produces a Section 7 report. Along the way, there is a dispute resolution hearing in front of the judge, and noble Lords can take it from me that the judge applies a fair amount of pressure to resolve the matter and to explore the realities of settling the case, which quite often involves exploring what can be done with the wider family. Of course, the wider family may have the time and the resources that the parents lack and help sort it out, but it does not really need a meeting; it just needs someone getting the parties in a room in the court with the Cafcass officer to sort out the practical realities of where things are going. I wish to emphasise that I do not think that Amendment 4 will assist.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, before addressing the amendments in my name in this group, I echo the appreciation expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Meston, for my noble friend Lord Farmer’s tireless work on family hubs. It is fantastic to hear that they are making a real difference on the ground.

My Amendment 26 seeks to find a way through the difficulty in the degree of statutory involvement—the noble Lord, Lord Meston, is not going to like my language—of education and childcare agencies in safeguarding. It requires the Secretary of State to produce a report to Parliament two years after the implementation of the clause which sets out the impact on the resources and costs for education and childcare agencies from their new duties. It could look more widely at the impact on safeguarding and whether there is a need to follow the recommendations of many of the children’s charities and the Children’s Commissioner in making it a full statutory safeguarding partner.

Page 34 of the Government’s impact assessment is studiously vague. It talks about

“possible costs and time implications on LAs to set up new infrastructure”

and

“time implications on some education leaders to engage with systems that they may not have previously been involved in”.

I am not sure how these impact assessments get written, but this feels like it is bordering on the naive. Of course, there will be direct costs for schools and childcare agencies, in both time and money, and we need to understand the extent of them. My amendment seeks to achieve this.

We need to know what this approach will mean in practice for education and childcare agencies, which already have considerable safeguarding duties. Presumably, they will need to put in additional processes and checks; if this is just making the status quo statutory, I do not really understand why it is necessary. Perhaps the Minister could explain in her closing remarks.

My Amendments 27 and 28 are probing amendments, again trying to find out the Government’s thinking on how this will work in practice. The hesitation on the part of the Government in this area, which I think is reasonable, reflects the difficulty in implementation, given the number of organisations involved in education and childcare. My amendment suggests that it would help to have a single point of contact both within the local authority and within the education and childcare sector. Can the Minister confirm whether the assumption is that education and childcare providers can all contact the LADO in their local authority with any safeguarding concerns, and is she confident that the LADOs around the country will have capacity for this? Similarly, is the local authority expected to contact every organisation directly, or is there a role for a single point of contact who could perhaps advise on general queries?

Finally, I have given notice that I intend to oppose the proposition that Clause 2 stand part of the Bill. To be clear, unlike some of my other clause stand part notices, this is purely probing. The policy summary produced by the DfE states:

“These arrangements enable education and childcare agencies to have representation”—


this is my emphasis, not that of the policy summary—

“at both the operational and strategic decision-making levels of these safeguarding arrangements”.

The summary continues:

“Practically, this may look like including the breadth of education settings: from early years and childcare to schools including academies, independent schools, alternative provision and further education in operational safeguarding boards, and”—


again, this is my emphasis—

“having representation for their views at executive boards so that they can influence decisions being made about safeguarding in their local area”.

Interestingly, there is no mention of special schools in that list. I am not clear why, because I would have thought that safeguarding would be a particular priority. I think we all have a sense of what this looks like at an operational level, but the policy summary talks about involvement at a strategic level. Will the Minister explain who is going to be able to represent all agencies in an area, what representation of their views at executive boards will look like in real life, and how this will be resourced? Clause 2 is an area where there is broad support for the Government’s approach, but we need more clarity on how they intend to implement these duties and how they will be funded.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, has done us a favour by bringing the education organisation into this. It has the most contact, and it is a logical point. I cannot fault him on that. I also had a great deal of fellow feeling when he described his experience of watching the appropriate amendment being concocted. The idea of sitting there looking puppy-like and saying, “Please, this is what I’m trying to say. Will you help?” is something I think we can all empathise with at some point in the Bill.

It sounds eminently sensible that, where you are seeing a young person outside the family and very regularly, that fits the logic and the approach here. As for family hubs, yes, they are good things—they remind me a bit of Sure Start but, hey, that is history. If we are going through the other technical amendments brought forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran—who, let us face it, we all know knows her way around the system and the department—it would be interesting to see the technical answers to those, because it will definitely colour the way this discussion takes place in later stages.