Children’s Social Care: Enduring Relationships Strategy

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

That is a very important point. One of the important things we legislated for in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act is the requirement for the use of family group decision-making in precisely that way, when thinking about children coming into the care system, by engaging their families and those who might have the capacity to support them at that point. That is a really important statement at the very beginning of the process about the need to think about kinship care and the support that families can provide.

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, I had the pleasure of working with the Minister in Committee on the Bill on the regional care co-operatives, and I am very grateful to her for agreeing to many of the things the Opposition were keen to have in the Bill. The successful expansion of the RCCs will depend to a large extent on good will and co-operation with local authorities in its implementation. Can she say something about how this will be achieved in the context of local government reform, which will mean many existing local authorities will be turned into unitaries and there will be a lot of changes across a number of counties and other areas?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right that this is a period of local government reorganisation. It is also a time when local government finances are under considerable pressure, not least from having to find placements in an unplanned way, which is likely to lead to unexpected and very high costs. The very fact that local authorities can group together to use the planning and spending power of a regional care co-operative is beneficial to them at a point at which local government reorganisation is going on. Even more importantly, it is beneficial for the children who are more likely to have a placement that works for them, rather than simply one scrambled together on a Friday afternoon.