Education and Adoption Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Louise Haigh and Edward Timpson

Tuesday 30th June 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

Q 14 Annie, you mentioned the inter-agency barriers that still exist. Could you confirm that the Bill actually does nothing to address any of those barriers other than creating bigger agencies? Secondly, to the whole panel, do you think that this will actually restrict choice for adopters in terms of agencies at a local level?

Annie Crombie: On the inter-agency point, the policy around regional adoption agencies would bring together a number of local authorities. At the moment, if a local authority purchases an adopter from another local authority or from a voluntary adoption agency, it pays for that adoptive placement. It pays the same amount whether it is to a local authority or a voluntary adoption agency. That levelling of the amount paid is an achievement of fairly recent years, and it has meant a great deal in terms of sustaining the participation of the voluntary sector. It cannot afford to do the work it does unless it gets paid a fair price. That has also been an achievement because it has ensured that local authorities would not look more favourably on another local authority placement just because it was cheaper, and genuinely think about which is best for the children.

A regional adoption agency—while it has reasonably not yet been worked out what that would look like—will probably change the way in which money changes hands when a child is placed from one local authority with an adopter. It might mean being placed elsewhere with an adoptive parent approved by a different part of the region. It might mean there is a single adopter, approver and recruitment arm in a regional adoption agency and so all of those adopters feel free to you. That could be a really good thing because there will be a much bigger pool and there will not be any financial barriers stopping the placement of a child with a particular adopter. The risk for the voluntary sector is that if it is not part of that, suddenly the cost drivers change and the placement feels very expensive again. That is why it is so important that we think about how the voluntary agencies can continue to be part of the landscape and part of the regional agencies.

Carol Homden: On your point about choice, there are some areas, with reference to the previous question, where in practice there is no choice. There is a local authority agency and I’m sure it works in the full best interests to meet the needs of those adopters, but generally, choice is a positive thing in any system. It tends to drive quality and, in a digital era where, for example, people can search for information on adoption first, they are better able to make a judgment and to find an agency with which they feel comfortable. An adopter is making a life-changing, lifelong decision. They need to have full confidence and trust in the particular social worker or group of social workers that they are working with. It is a risk to us if this reform process leads to a reduction in choice across boundaries, particularly given that there is generally a much higher level of engagement from and satisfaction of adopters from the first call to voluntary adoption agencies, which deepens through the process, including with post-adoption support. The point needs to be about protecting equality and choice in whatever arrangements we make.

Sir Martin Narey: The only thing that I would like to add is that the really important choice element in adoption is the choice of child. These arrangements will significantly increase the choice of children for adopters. At the moment, if a prospective adopter is unlucky enough to be living in one of the 20 local authorities that dealt with fewer than 20 adoptions last year or in a local authority where there are already many more adopters than children, it will be very difficult to get a child. The future is finding the best parents for adopted children, wherever they are. You are taking evidence later from Adoption Link. I think that is an incredibly good initiative, which is opening up the prospect of searching beyond regions to find the very best possible adopters. I am sure this will improve adopter choice significantly.

[The Minister for Children and Families (Edward Timpson)]

Q 15 Carol very helpfully set out some guiding principles on what should underpin the development of regional adoption agencies to make sure that they are driving the excellence that we want to see, as we have set out in our “Regionalising adoption” paper. Could you also say what the risks are of the Secretary of State being overly prescriptive through a direction about what that regional adoption agency should look like, given that we are hoping and expecting this to come from the bottom up on a local level rather than be dictated from the centre?

Sir Martin Narey: The reason that I counselled you and your predecessor Tim Loughton against making structural arrangements to further recruitment is that I thought it would result in you, your officials and me being absorbed in nothing else for two or three years. We would just be managing the incredibly complex business of using new structures. That is why I hope that you do not have to use this direction very much at all. If you do, there will be a very great risk that it diverts us from the more important task of making sure that we are getting children from neglect and into adoptive homes as fast as possible. I am confident that you will not have to use this power very much, but if you do, it will be a significant risk. If we have to design top-down structures for regions across England, it will divert us from the more important task.

Carol Homden: I would agree with that. This is a direction of travel where all agencies are motivated by one key thing, which is trying to improve the outcomes for children, but we also need to recognise that it can be challenging to apply that best practice. If the risk is that, due to the direction from above, you have the unwilling working with the unwilling, it will not necessarily lead to a positive outcome. We need to design these approaches based on a clear diagnosis of the problem to be solved locally. We need to enable organisations to come together in ways that address those problems, as opposed to having one size fits all or an obvious type of solution. That is why I drew attention to a hub-and-spoke model, as opposed to, for example, an area that is contiguous, because of the issues that were raised earlier around children needing to be placed in circumstances where they are and can be safe. We also need to draw upon specific, specialist expertise, as Annie said. The risk would be that it might be gotten wrong unless the diagnostic approach is taken to identify how local problems will be particularly addressed.

Annie Crombie: All I would like to add is that, where we see arrangements working well now—there are some excellent examples of partnership working in adoption—they are based on trust and strong relationships. If we impose such arrangements, we will not be able to take account of those sorts of things that can develop so well at local level organically. It is important that we allow people in organisations to build on those partnerships and have that dialogue at this point, leading into the development of regional agencies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Louise Haigh]

Q 44 The British Association of Social Workers has said that the Bill will contribute to demoralising social workers. Do you agree?

Alison O'Sullivan: I cannot see how.

Anna Sharkey: I think retaining staff is very important. We have quite a secure staff group, but we have also done quite a lot of growth, which has been to do with the DFE expansion grant. That is significant, but we have a very definite system through which adopters are seen right the way through by the same social worker. That is because it is about building trust and rapport with the person whom you are going to trust with very personal information and about making you into the family you want to be. There has got to be that professional relationship, but that relationship also has to be with the child’s social worker, and that is often where there can be change and flux, because there is such turmoil in local authorities.

Andy Elvin: We have no problem in recruiting and retaining experienced social workers, although I must say that we recruit a lot from local authorities. I think there is a wider issue—probably not for here—about how many social workers there are in the system when permanence is achieved for a looked-after child. Do we really need a supervising social worker overseeing a fostering placement that is permanent and a looked-after children’s social worker also overseeing the said placement and an independent reviewing officer? Are there too many social workers looking at social workers doing their jobs and not enough actually doing the job?

[Edward Timpson]

Q 45 Can I take us back to the clause in the Bill looking specifically at the point at which the permanence decision has been made and what flows thereafter for those for whom that decision is adoption? I have two points to underpin that. First, we are not proposing something new here. A lot of this already exists. Could you tell me where you have come across a consortium of either local authorities or voluntary adoption agencies and local authorities working together that has impressed you most and that does not happen to be your own?

Secondly, in relation to the specialist support services that we know many children who are adopted need, how is the regional agency adoption approach having a positive effect, where we are already starting to see it happen?

Andy Elvin: We are currently working with the north London adoption consortium and the east London adoption consortium—south London is a regular choice—on introducing something called VIPP-SD, a post-adoption therapeutic intervention that comes from the University of Leiden in Holland. It is used with all adopters in Holland. It is evidence based and tested at country level. We are introducing it with six authorities in London and with one just outside London. We found co-operation patchy, I would say.

We have got six authorities across two consortia; other authorities in the consortia have not signed up to it. That was disappointing, given that the DFE for the CVAA are essentially paying for all this. It is a free and evidence-based service. It is interesting how decisions are made in local authorities, but those that have engaged have engaged magnificently and really well, and got involved very much in the spirit of the intervention. It is going very successfully so far. Local authorities can work together; I do have examples of the contrary, but that is the same in all areas. I do not think children’s services are peculiar in local authorities not working particularly well together.

Anna Sharkey: From my point of view, working in ABC has been really good, a very positive development. I know my local authority colleagues will say that one of the strengths has been that it came from the bottom up. It was local authority social work working together and deciding that was a more efficient way of working, so pooling resources in respect of recruitment and training activity, how we do information events and so on. The next stage, which is really exciting in terms of the pilots and so on, is about how we are making the linking activity work much more effectively, and also looking at post-adoption support provision.

I know one of the previous speakers talked about the importance of accessibility and the transport networks. People need to be able to access their social worker and support that is readily available for them and their children. There are all sorts of things that can happen as a consequence of this, but definitely the bottom-up bit has certainly helped.

Alison O'Sullivan: I will very briefly point to Warrington, Wirral and St Helens, established I think in 2011, because it is the sort of thing the Bill envisages and has been working well. It has improved the numbers and the speed of recruitment and matching. For many years, Yorkshire and Humber have also been running post-adoption support on a collaborative basis across the region.

Andy Elvin: Can I just add that I am on the board of Frontline social work? We hope to be moving into a new region in the north-east, and the attitude of the consortia of local authorities up there has been exemplary in the way that they are working together. It really is very impressive.