Reform of Children’s Social Care

Robin Walker Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

I think I made it clear that this is the start of the journey, to lay the foundations for wider whole-system reform. Many people have had good intentions in this area. Many initiatives have been started after a review. Many things have been tried, and many things have not worked. We need this to be evidence-led. These are very complex cases and situations, and we need evidence to see what really works, not just good intentions, which everybody has in this area. This is the start of that, through the implementation plan. We must put families at the heart of that and change the whole purpose of the system, which is not really focused on trying to get people the help they need, as opposed to just intervening and telling them what they ought to be doing. We need to help people in the first instance to stay with families.

The hon. Lady mentioned the work that had been done on local authority intervention and improvement. Every local authority has specific needs and circumstances, but we have done a lot of work in this area, including a programme to improve the performance of local authorities, which are key to delivering these services on the ground. Since 2017, the programme has provided immediate support to local authorities. The number of inadequate local authorities has gone from 30 down to 14, and the number of local authorities that are good or outstanding in this area has gone from 54 to 85.

For the first time, there is an investment in kinship carers, specifically in training and help to support them, and of course local authorities currently provide a wide range of support to kinship carers. The hon. Lady mentioned excessive profiteering by some children’s homes. We will be introducing a new financial oversight regime, because we are determined to make sure we cut that out. It is unacceptable.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I welcome some aspects of this, particularly the extension of the ECF to the children’s social care workforce and the trebling of bursaries for apprenticeships, which I know will be welcomed by the John Lewis Partnership; it has been making great efforts in this space and said to me only the other day that the bursary was welcome but did not go nearly far enough. I also welcome the support for kinship carers, but I urge the Secretary of State to go further on this and to use the kinship care strategy to ensure that they have greater legal status.

My Select Committee will want to look into the detail of the financial arrangements announced today, so will the Secretary of State or a Minister attend the Committee in fairly short order to go into more detail on that? In particular, our Select Committee has called previously for greater scrutiny of the finances of some children’s care homes, and after the scandal we have seen at the Hesley Group homes, it is not before time.