Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Judd. He leaves us with some very deep thoughts.

I open by welcoming the Bill as an indication of the Government’s desired direction of travel as set out in the Minister’s opening remarks. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, the noble Lord, Lord Wills, and a number of others, I also welcome the Bill starting in the Lords. The speakers list today is a virtual Who’s Who of experience and expertise on the care of children. I hope that Ministers are in listening mode as the Lords carries out its business. To pick up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, I, like most noble Lords have been overwhelmed by the briefings from the various interest groups. I am sure some may feel disappointed that their carefully crafted briefs may get two lines in a speech. I reassure them, however, that these are all carefully stored away and used to great effect in Committee and at later stages.

My reason for speaking today relates to my declaration of interests. I am the current chairman of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales, which has direct responsibility for many of the children who we have been discussing today. Between 2010 and 2013 I was the Minister at the Ministry of Justice with responsibility for family courts, during which time I nudged down the time taken for adoption. During the past year, I have had the honour and privilege of sitting on the inquiry into the life chances of children in care sponsored by the Prison Reform Trust. A number of noble Lords have referred to its recently published report, In Care, Out of Trouble. Our chairman was the noble Lord, Lord Laming, and I pay tribute to him, not only for his skill in chairing the committee but for a lifetime of commitment to the welfare and safety of children.

I recently went to a lecture by a former social worker, now an academic, who said that when he was training in the 1980s the children we are talking about today were categorised as bad, mad or sad. Such pigeonholing would be seen as politically incorrect and unacceptable today. Yet it is still true that the kind of support and treatment a child receives often depends on whether they find themselves in the criminal justice system; are receiving treatment for a definable mental health problem; or have simply drawn the short straw in life in terms of poor housing, intergenerational unemployment, domestic violence, drug or alcohol abuse, undiagnosed learning difficulties or exclusion from mainstream education. There has been much progress in our approach to childcare since the crude categorisations of the 1980s. However, it is also a clear indication that there is still much to do.

As we have heard from a number of noble Lords, we have to do more and become more sophisticated in listening to the voice of the child. As the noble Lord, Lord Nash, himself indicated, we also have to do more to ensure that the various agencies responsible for a child’s welfare become more willing and more efficient in sharing information so that, at any point in the child’s journey through the system, those making decisions about safety and welfare have the fullest possible picture of their needs and vulnerabilities. I echo the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard: some of the greatest silos that still exist are in Whitehall. One suggestion of the Laming committee was a ministerial committee to help break those silos down.

The Youth Justice Board has been the pioneer and pathfinder in this respect. Our youth offending teams bring a cross-disciplinary, holistic approach to their work. Today we oversee record lows both in the number of young people under 18 in our secure estate and in first-time entrants to the criminal justice system. That has not been the success of the YJB alone. It has been because of the buy-in to such a holistic approach by the police, the courts, social workers, children’s services, probation, youth workers and educational and health professionals. That approach is underpinned by the statutory duties written into the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. That is why the Government’s desire to see, in this Bill, new ideas and providers to encourage innovation among the new regional authorities is entirely commendable but also a cause for concern. We will have to examine Clause 15 very closely in Committee. Clause 15(2), which reads very much as a deregulation clause, may indeed allow a thousand flowers to bloom, but it may also enable authorities to ignore responsibilities which hitherto have been underpinned by statute.

A number of noble Lords have referred to the work of the Laming committee, on which I served. The inquiry gave us some important benchmarks. It is worth remembering that 94% of children in care do not get into trouble with the law. However, children in care are six times more likely to be cautioned or convicted of an offence than other children. The Laming committee was careful not to draw a straight-line cause and effect from those numbers. They enter the criminal justice system not because they have been in care. They are in care because they suffer many of the same influences and disadvantages faced by other young entrants to the criminal justice system. What Laming found, and I hope the Bill will address, is that looked-after children all too often have disadvantage heaped on disadvantage. In evidence to Laming, too many children spoke of a pass-the-parcel existence, with no constant adult role model or mentor. The Home Office continues its inexplicable dog-in-a-manger attitude to establishing a national police protocol to prevent the overcriminalisation of children by police being called to children’s homes for matters which in a domestic setting would be settled by mediation, restorative justice or just plain common sense.

The overrepresentation of black and ethnic minority children in our care and criminal justice systems requires focused action at all levels of government. The YJB has worked closely with the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, on these matters. We are also engaging with David Lammy—to whom she referred—whose report was commissioned by the Prime Minister.

There is no time today to go into more detail about the recommendations of the Laming report, but it should be required reading as the Bill moves forward. I will highlight one other recommendation, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, which is to provide early support for children and families at risk. That is surely the main learning from the last 30 years. The sooner and earlier we get upstream in dealing with these issues, the better the chance we have of solving them. It is important to recognise the strong influence that the family context can have on a young person, their offending behaviour and the risk of their becoming a perpetrator or victim of crime. In the context of the Bill, I welcome the expanded troubled families programme, which incentivises services to come together and consider the overlapping nature of the problems being faced, such as mental health, domestic abuse and youth offending, rather than consider each problem in isolation.

Noble Lords have heard a lot of references to mental health and there is a clear body of evidence demonstrating that good emotional well-being is central to a supportive experience in the care system. Yet there is also a clear need for a more dedicated form of support to improve the emotional well-being of looked-after children. I have been amazed by how far children can get into the criminal justice system before mental health needs are identified and addressed. As it stands, the Bill represents a missed opportunity to legislate for emotional well-being and mental health assessment for children entering care. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, who is not in his place today. His work and reports on mental health, particularly the liaison and diversion services which the Government are taking forward, are having a beneficial impact in this area.

Finally, I refer briefly to the proposals in Part 2 of the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, in characteristic form, clearly encapsulated the concerns about the weakness and vagueness of the Bill as it stands. In Committee, we will want to examine closely the proposals concerning the education and training of social workers and related matters around Clause 25, as well as the general professional status of social workers. The idea of a child safeguarding practice review panel has its attractions, as a response to major public concern when a death or major abuse occurs. It should look for lessons to be learned and best practices to be promoted, not be a witchfinder general, with all the dangers set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher.

We have already registered our displeasure at the framework nature of the Bill. In passing, I have one idea: the convention on Third Reading amendments could be abandoned on framework Bills. That would concentrate the Government’s mind. I do not doubt the sincerity of Ministers’ intentions to provide better life chances for children who come into the care of the state. There is much to commend in the Bill’s intentions and direction of travel, but if Ministers have any sense they will draw on the collective wisdom of this House to ensure that it is a better Bill when we send it to the other place.