Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

Critically, as the noble Baroness talked about, recent evidence of the success of this approach appeared in the ground-breaking 2023 evaluation by Foundations. The key findings were that children were less likely to go into care and spent less time in care and that families were less likely to go to court for care proceedings. While I entirely understand that the Minister might be reluctant to be overly prescriptive in the Bill about one specific model being followed, I hope she might look favourably on this amendment. She talked about statutory guidance, but this amendment would put in the Bill that local authorities must use evidence-based approaches, rather than just having principles in guidance. That would give us all the confidence that approaches taken at a local level are based on clear evidence and best practice, to ensure that all the families we have been talking about this evening, requiring family group decision-making, are properly supported and have the best chance for a good outcome for the situation they are in.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, on these Benches we very much believe that there should be an independent and suitably trained person; that is really important to us. We also appreciate that if this amendment were agreed—I do not know the timescale of training people up—there might have to be some transitional arrangements. It slightly jars with me that the party adjacent to me does not necessarily believe that teachers should be fully qualified—you can have unqualified teachers—but on this issue it wants a suitably trained person. In any situation where young people are involved, it is important that the person who is training or teaching is qualified and has the right skills.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. Clearly, the family decision-making groups are extremely important, and we are discovering them rather late in the day. I could have said this on any of the other amendments involving family groups, but this one particularly caught my eye because of the emphasis on an evidence-based approach. The Scottish Government have had this for nearly 10 years, which gives us a tremendous opportunity to learn from the successes and failures they have experienced over that time. How much contact has the Minister had with her Scottish colleagues to learn from the best and the worst, and what has she taken from that to put into this Bill?