Children and Social Work Bill [Lords]

Tim Loughton Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 5th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I would just like to explain some of the tenets of the Bill, and then I will take his intervention.

We are starting to see things change. This year, we have seen the first “outstanding” judgments under the most recent—and most challenging—Ofsted framework. Local authorities are testing innovative ways of supporting families through the children’s social care innovation programme. Examples of excellent leadership across the country are being celebrated by Ofsted and others.

However, we are under no illusion that there is still much more to be done. That is why, in July of this year, the Department for Education published a clear and ambitious vision and plan for the changes that need to be made to drive sustainable improvement across the whole country. This is our plan for putting children first. It sets out fundamental reforms across each of the three pillars on which the social care system stands: people and leadership, practice and systems, and governance and accountability. This Bill is a crucial part of delivering reforms across those three pillars.

Part 1 concerns children who are in care or supported by the state. Clause 1 sets out, for the first time, a set of corporate parenting principles designed to establish consistently high standards in the support of looked-after children and care leavers, and drive a culture of excellent corporate parenting. The principles are intended to help a local authority to think and act in the interests of the children in their care in the same way as any good parent would. This is not about putting a new set of duties on local authorities; it is about changing behaviour and practice. The aim is to ensure that all parts and every tier of local government have the needs and circumstances of looked-after children and care leavers in their minds in their planning and decisions. This responsibility goes beyond just children’s social care, reaching across the whole of the local authority.

Clause 2 will ensure that the corporate parenting ethos extends into adulthood and that all care leavers are clear about the support on offer to them and how to access it. Care leavers will have access to information about the services available to them through a local offer from their local authority, with each local offer based on consultation with care leavers themselves.

Clause 3 will give all care leavers access to support from a personal adviser at any point up to the age of 25. We amended the Bill in another place to make sure that the service is offered at least annually so that care leavers can take advantage of it whenever they need to.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Gibb]

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, may I make a little more progress, and then I will come back to him?

The next section of the Bill recognises that children who are adopted or who leave care under another permanence order often have ongoing difficulties resulting from their early life experiences. Clauses 4 to 7 will therefore give them access to the same support that looked-after children receive from virtual school heads at local authority level, and that designated teachers provide in schools to help with their education. Following an undertaking given in the other place, we are bringing forward amendments that will extend these provisions to children who have been adopted from overseas.

Clauses 8 and 9 expand the factors that courts and local authorities must take into account when deciding on the most appropriate place for a child. They do not give priority to one type of placement over another, but they do place more emphasis on stability and what would be in a child’s best long-term interests, taking account of the impact of any harm that the child may have suffered.

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[Mr Gibb]

The local safeguarding arrangements set out in the Bill will provide a strong statutory framework that puts responsibility on the police, the NHS—through the clinical commissioning group—and the local authority to ensure that a robust safeguarding system is in place, but with greater local flexibility than we have at the moment, so that the arrangements are as effective as possible in meeting local needs. I also believe that the combination of improved national arrangements for analysing serious cases, which I will come on to, including child sexual abuse and exploitation, and for learning from them in a more systematic way, including higher standards for social workers, as set out in the Bill, will enable Oxfordshire and other counties across the country to keep children safer than is currently the case.

Chapter 2 of part 1 of the Bill focuses largely on arrangements for the safeguarding and protection of children. Earlier this year, Alan Wood, the former director of children’s services in Hackney who is president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, carried out a review for the Government on the role and functions of local safeguarding children boards. His report, which was published in May, found that local arrangements were patchy. Less than half of LSCBs were judged by Ofsted to be good or better, and he reported that there was a clear consensus in favour of reform. Strong partnership is, as we know from serious case reviews, key to keeping children safe.

Clauses 12 to 15 will establish a new child safeguarding practice review panel to review serious child safeguarding cases that are complex or of national importance. The purpose of the panel will be to improve the way in which we learn from cases where a child has died or been seriously harmed and neglect or abuse of the child was known or suspected.

Clauses 16 to 30 will introduce a stronger statutory framework for child safeguarding and protection at local level. The focus will shift away from wide-ranging local partnerships and will place a duty on the three key agencies involved in safeguarding children—namely local authorities, the police and the health service—to work together, and with any relevant agencies, to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.

[Tim Loughton]

rose—

[Mr Gibb]

I will give way to my hon. Friend and am sorry that I did not do so earlier.

[Tim Loughton]

The Minister will be aware that this is not the original Bill, thanks to the good work of the House of Lords in removing clauses 29 to 33 on the duty to innovate. At the recent national children and adult services conference in Manchester, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said of that duty:

“It’s about how we can put you in the best position to protect those children properly.”

The trouble is that the “you”—meaning 150 organisations, including Coram, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the British Association of Social Workers and 90% of all social workers—said that they did not want it and that they were opposed to it. Will the Minister confirm that he will not try to reintroduce those clauses in this House?

[Mr Gibb]

I listened carefully to my hon. Friend, who will be aware, of course, that Eileen Munro, whom he appointed to look into this whole area when he was the Minister, supported the power to innovate. The Local Government Association, ADCS and Catch22 also support it. The power is not to do with taking rights away from children or with saving money; it is about giving councils the opportunity to develop new ways of working that they believe will improve outcomes for children.

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend says that it is not about taking rights away from children, but one of the scenarios is the abolition of independent reviewing officers, who absolutely can be the only voice independently standing up for vulnerable looked-after children in local authorities. If they go under the proposals, how is that not taking away the rights of children, particularly vulnerable children?

[Mr Gibb]

This is not about abolishing any statutory responsibilities. My hon. Friend should wait to see the amendments tabled in Committee. I am sure that he will want to talk about his concerns in more detail with the Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families, who will take them very seriously indeed, particularly given my hon. Friend’s background and experience.

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[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I welcome most parts of the Bill, and I particularly welcome the fact that it is now without certain parts, as I said earlier. It is good to have this opportunity to discuss child protection and social workers. We spend far too little time in the House highlighting the excellent practices that we expect our social workers to achieve in highly adverse conditions. I have always referred to social workers as our fourth emergency service, and I am proud to be a patron of the Social Worker of the Year awards, along with the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck). I attended the awards dinner just over a week ago, at which fantastic examples of dedication, hard work, skill and expertise were on display. Alas, none of that made it into the mainstream media, as is so often the case.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the challenges facing social workers are particularly intense as a result not only of immense reductions in funding, but of the fast-changing climate and the Government’s occasional initiative-itis that seems to attach itself to the social work sector?

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[Tim Loughton]

Social workers are certainly under a huge amount of pressure, but that initiative-itis has, to an extent, gone into reverse, not least through the shrinking in the past six years of the “working together” rule book—the bible of social workers and social work practice—which amounted to more than 750 pages when this Government came into office. Social workers were spending all their time checking what the rulebook said, looking over their shoulders and ticking boxes, rather than being allowed to get on with the business of being social workers, and eyeballing families and the vulnerable children whom they are there to protect and work with. With the support of Professor Munro, that work was an important initiative that tried to take away many of the administrative burdens on social workers, notwithstanding their other pressures and challenges.

I am proud of the work that the Conservative party has done in this area, starting with the commission on social work that I chaired back in 2007. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond) is in the Chamber because she played an important role in the commission. We produced the document “No More Blame Game—The Future for Children’s Social Workers”, which is as relevant today as it was then. The trouble is that social workers are still too often subject to the blame game, especially in the tabloid press, from which it would appear that it is social workers who abuse and murder vulnerable young children. Of course they do not; they are there to try to protect such children. Parents, carers and others commit those foul acts, but people would not believe that based on the reports. Too many people view our social workers with disdain.

From that piece of work, of which I am proud, came the suggestions for consultant social workers and a chief social worker. In 2010, our manifesto commitment was to take child protection back to the frontline. I am also pleased and proud that the first review initiated by the Department for Education after the 2010 election was not about schools or education matters; it was the excellent Munro review into child protection. I was slightly surprised that the Minister prayed in aid Professor Munro so explicitly. I appointed Professor Munro and worked closely with her, but the problem is that many of her 15 pertinent recommendations are still to be implemented, and they do not involve the removal of a local authority’s basic duty to protect vulnerable young children.

I support the Bill as it stands, but it could certainly be improved by a number of enhancing amendments, although I would not include among those any that would rehash clauses 29 to 33. I was alarmed by the Minister’s comments that strongly suggested that those clauses will be revisited. That would be a shame because, after the good work done in the Lords, we were promised a period of reflection —perhaps it could be referred to as a pause, as we have had for other legislation—but that reflection will not have lasted long if the Government return with amendments. I caution them to extend the period of reflection before they hurry into repeating what was clearly a mistake. A clear majority in the House of Lords and a great majority of important organisations involved in child protection were not in favour of the proposed changes and made their feelings clear.

Let us be clear, many good things have happened around child protection under this Government. The reform of fostering and adoption regulations has helped not only fosterers and adopters, but, most importantly, children who are being fostered. It has also helped more children to get adopted. There is more to be done, but a lot of progress has been made over the past six years. Ofsted’s inspection system is now much more appropriate and rigorous.

The Munro review gave rise to a lot of innovation in child protection. The child sexual exploitation action plan was published back in November 2011—well before the Savile scandal became so public and made CSE a headline issue of which we have never seen the like. We have the Staying Put policy which, although perhaps underfunded and less effective in certain local authorities, includes the right to a personal adviser until the age of 25 and places a duty on local authorities to stay in touch.

These are all good things being innovated through the Bill that, along with staying close until the age of 21, offer support to vulnerable children in the care system at what is often a most fragile time in their lives. Previously, at the age of 18 or even 16 they faced a cliff edge, coming out of care into the big wide world without the help and support—the safety net—that so many of these children and young people need.

[Catherine West]

The hon. Gentleman is being extremely generous in giving way a second time. Does he agree that much of this could be quite academic if funding does not accompany these exciting developments?

[Tim Loughton]

Funding is, of course, part of this, but we can do a lot better with existing funds, although the National Audit Office report showed that funding on vulnerable children had gone up as well. But what was not working properly is when social workers were spending, through the integrated children’s system and other very bureaucratic systems, up to 80% of their time in front of a computer filling in forms to do with child protection, rather than getting out there and dealing with children face to face. That was a huge waste of resources, but more importantly a huge waste of opportunities to deal more effectively and early on with children, who really did need to have the support, and often intervention, of professional services and social workers in particular.

Despite all these innovations, we still need to do an awful lot better for vulnerable children, children in the care system and our care leavers. It is a fact that 40%—almost half—of our care leavers aged 19 to 21 are classed as not in education, employment or training, and 4% of them are in custody. Two thirds of children in the care system have special educational needs, almost half of them with a diagnosable mental disorder. The percentage for the educational achievement of children achieving A* to C GCSEs is still in its teens, compared with its peer population now with over 60% achieving those grades.

I particularly welcome some of the Bill’s corporate parenting principles— although it will be interesting to see how they work in practice—that apply to physical and mental health, which is so important. Although this Government have again done a lot to raise the profile of mental health, particularly among children and young people, and have injected a further £1.4 billion into that area, the problem is that not nearly enough of it—and that is not enough in itself—is getting through to the frontline, to help the children and young people who so desperately need it, when they need it and where they need it.

These are challenging times. The NAO report on children in need of protection, to which various hon. Members have already referred, flagged up some worrying observations. Too often the way we look after vulnerable children is a postcode lottery. We are still very poor at sharing best practice in this country, yet a child in need, a child in care and a child in desperate need of protection should be dealt with no differently whether they are in Durham, Worthing, Exeter or anywhere else throughout the United Kingdom.

There was a surge following the horrific case of Baby Peter, but the number of children coming into the care system continues to rise: there are now in excess of 70,000 children in the care system in England—the highest since 1985, when the environment in respect of why children tended to come into the care system was very different. I do not know whether we need to take more children into care, or fewer, but I do know that we need to take the right children into care at the right time, and give them the right support and services if they cannot be supported living with their families or other kinship carers.

Another thing I am very proud of is the Government’s initiative on promoting adoption, which had fallen into neglect, frankly, after the good work done in the Adoption and Children Act 2002. The adoption figures have started to fall back considerably and there is still a very big grey space following the Munby judgment. But that should not have happened, because those adoption reforms were about bringing forward an easier system for adopters to offer their services and for children to go through all the hoops. There were too many hoops and it took too long for children to get adopted. We needed to bring onside not only those involved in adoption at the local authority level, which largely we did, but, contemporaneously and in sympathy, those in the legal profession, as many judges felt put upon, in that they were being told how to run cases in their courts. I am afraid that the Government have failed to do that and should not therefore be surprised by the disappointing reversal in the adoption figures, which I hope will be reversed again, because adoption does offer the best chance at a second childhood—a second possibility of being brought up in a safe and loving family—for a lot of children who still do not get that chance and are still in the care system.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that although many younger children are being adopted, it is far more difficult to place older children? We need to do more to promote the benefits to those children of adoption at a later age.

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady is right about that, but shiny, squeaky new babies have always been much more attractive to people who want to adopt than problematic teenagers who have been through all the trials and tribulations of broken families—perhaps abuse, neglect, mental health problems and behavioural disorders—and have been pushed from pillar to post in the care system. Those are the children we have most let down, which is one reason why the introduction of adoption scorecards was based not just on improving the number of children adopted, but on concentrating on those harder-to-adopt children: older children; large sibling groups; and children from black and minority ethnic communities. Too often these children were at the back of the adoption queue. I am glad to say that in recent years disproportionately they have found themselves more likely to get adopted than they were before. This is still not enough and there remains a lot to be done, but that was absolutely the right focus to bring in over the past few years.

Another thing I am concerned about is that despite all the good work the Government did on paralleling the kraamzorg system for health visitors in Holland, we have lost 722 health visitors since January and there has been a 13% decrease in the number of school nurses since 2010. They are really important people in early intervention—in identifying children with problems, and those for whom the support of social services and other caring services is essential, sooner rather than later.

Of course, I am also worried by the recent rise, again, in social worker vacancy rates in many authorities around the country, and too often the positions are taken by temporary social workers. Social work, particularly when dealing with child protection, is an area where staff need to forge empathetic relationships with those vulnerable children and families whom they are there to look after. Being pushed from pillar to post, from one home to another, from one social worker to another reviewing officer—or whoever it may be—only accentuates the instability and vulnerability of those children.

I worry when, even in this place, we are still too quick to point the finger of blame at the social workers because a child has been brutally assaulted or killed, as still happens in too many cases, by their carer, parent or close relative. We hear the talk of “wilful neglect”. There are social workers who are not doing their job properly, and there are social workers who are not up to the job and should not be in social work, and they should be removed from it, but they are a small minority. We should not make the rest of our excellent, hard-working, dedicated social worker force feel constantly that they are the ones to blame for many of these tragedies. We have to up everybody’s game, but they are part of the solution; in the vast majority of cases, they are not part of the problem.

It is odd therefore that at the heart of the original Bill, since eviscerated of clauses 29 to 33, which it would seem are about to make an unfortunate reappearance, were radical new proposals supposedly to test new ways of working, under the guise of promoting innovation. As I said earlier, the clauses were not remotely welcomed by the vast majority of people who are involved in the whole field of child protection. They were opposed by the British Association of Social Workers, the Care Leavers Association, the Children’s Rights Alliance for England, CoramBAAF, which is the Government’s appointed adoption provider, the Fostering Network, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and Action for Children. In various polls, about 90% of working social workers did not support those clauses either, which was hardly surprising given that the clauses came out of the blue. There was no consultation on absolutely fundamental changes to the way in which we apply duties of care to vulnerable children in this country.

I pay tribute to the House of Lords, particularly to Lord Ramsbotham, for putting forward the amendments that saw those clauses taken out of the Bill. Lord Ramsbotham referred to clause 29 as nothing less than

“the usurpation of the proper parliamentary process.”

He asked

“how the courts are expected to respond where a young person or child in a particular local authority area is clearly disadvantaged by the arbitrary disapplication or modification of the law as it is applied in all other parts of the country.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 8 November 2016; Vol. 776, c. 1056.]

As I said earlier, a child needs protection wherever he or she may be in the country. We cannot have a competition between different areas on ways of looking after vulnerable children, some of which will not work and some of which might. Every child needs the protection of the law as set out by Parliament, and it should not be subject to a postcode lottery, as is convenient for certain local authorities.

In the debate in the other place, Lord Low said:

“It is perfectly possible to test different ways of working…within the existing legislative framework…it makes no sense to get rid of the duty.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 8 November 2016; Vol. 776, c. 1063.]

The squeeze on funding, which Members have mentioned, and which is, I am afraid, inevitable at the moment—[Interruption.] I am afraid that it is inevitable because of the disastrous way in which the Labour Government ran the economy into the ground. In too many cases now local authorities are providing only what is their duty; additional services are no longer on the agenda at all. Taking away that duty means that some of these fundamental things could not happen in the future.

Clause 29 as it was would have allowed local authorities to request exemptions from their statutory duties in children’s social care. Every Act of Parliament and every subordinate piece of legislation concerned with children’s social care from 1933 onwards could have been affected. The proposed mechanism for exemption orders was to be statutory instruments, which would have handed over enormous powers to the Secretary of State and the Department for Education. I am afraid that the Minister for School Standards is wrong: the DfE acknowledged that this part of the Bill directly concerns children’s fundamental rights. How can vulnerable children challenge those lack of services? I gave an example—it was one of many examples raised in the House of Lords—of independent reviewing officers. I am a big fan of IROs—I think we can do better, and there is a bit of a postcode lottery—as their role is to stand up and be the voice, or the advocate, of children who are not getting the services to which they are entitled and which they need from local authorities. If no IRO is available because an exemption has been applied for and granted, which means that the authority has no IROs, where is that child to go? There are not just IROs, but key legal protections that exist in the form of regulations now, including the ban on corporal punishment in foster care and children’s homes, protection for disabled children placed away from home, leaving care entitlements and complaints procedures. All of those could be granted an exemption and could disappear from fundamental rights, which we apply to protect vulnerable children now. This would be the first time in the history of children’s welfare that legislation made for all vulnerable children and young people could be disapplied in a particular area. This is a very radical proposal that warranted at least a Green Paper and a White Paper and proper consultation, but there was none.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the NSPCC and Action for Children said that

“the case that the Government is making presents considerable risk. Despite numerous conversations with ministers and officials, the evidence for the need for this power remains unconvincing and does not justify the potential risks of suspending primary legislation.”

The British Association of Social Workers said:

“If the clauses are re-introduced it will pave the way for significant and dangerous changes to the provision of children’s social care which would jeopardise hard fought victories for children’s rights spanning decades.”

How would the pilots for these provisions be monitored? How would we monitor whether children were still safe and what the results were for those children? It is no surprise that only one in 10 practising social workers surveyed by the BASW and by Unison thought this was a good idea. That is why I have severe reservations if the clause is to be returned to the Bill.

The Munro review took away much of the bureaucracy from social workers. It gave flexibility on the timing of assessments of children and how social workers could prioritise. It gave greater powers and confidence back to social workers to use their professional judgment to do what they thought best in the interests of vulnerable children. Sometimes they will get it wrong. I always say to social workers, “What I want to do, and what the Munro review was all about, is to give you the confidence to make a mistake—hopefully, not often, but to do it for the very best of reasons, not simply because that’s what it says on page 117 of the rule book and you needed to tick the boxes.” That is not what social work is all about. It is not a science. It is a complicated and challenging job.

If we are going to give social workers those flexibilities and allow them to act in different and innovative ways because they think that is the best way of looking after vulnerable children, we do not need to take away the statutory duties of the local authorities which are the corporate parents of those children, so that those new ways do not have to abide by the fundamental duties which ensure that social workers are doing the right thing and looking after those vulnerable children.

Finally, I shall look at a few specific clauses and ask the Minister some questions, which I hope he will refer to in his summing up. Clause 1 is about corporate parenting principles, which I welcome, but it is not clear exactly what they amount to in practice. Are they in addition to the section 23 commitments of the Children Act 1989 or do they replace them? I have used examples which I welcome: promoting physical and mental health, promoting high aspirations and securing the best outcomes for those children and young people. Nobody could vote against such things, but in clause 3 new section 23CZB(7) states:

“Where a former relevant child to whom this section applies is not receiving advice and support under this section, the local authority must offer such advice and support . . . at least once in every 12 months.”

Once in every 12 months will not go very far for a vulnerable child who needs intensive help. Subsection(4) makes provision for personal advisers. The problem is that too many children in care whom I met and children leaving care had never heard of personal advisers, let alone knew who their own personal adviser was.

In clause 4 new section 23ZZA(3) gives a local authority this extraordinary power:

“A local authority in England may do anything else that they consider appropriate with a view to promoting the educational achievement of relevant children educated in their area”—

motherhood and apple pie. Why do we require that sort of thing in legislation? It strikes me that a bit much of this is a bit too mushy and full of cotton wool—too many vague assumptions which in practice, particularly with funding pressures and duties taken away, will not amount to a row of beans, if we are not careful.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

Obviously, the primary focus and concern is the duty of care to children, but there is also the issue of mothers who might well end up having successive children who end up in care. The local authority needs to have a responsibility for those vulnerable women, who may well be victims of a coercive relationship and have complex needs as a result. The sooner there is intervention and therapeutic care, the better, to avoid subsequent issues—maybe subsequent children and subsequent costs and concerns for all.

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend, who has great expertise in this area, is right. Of course we cannot look at vulnerable children in isolation; we need to look at their families holistically. There are some really good examples. I hope that the Minister will stick to his word and provide funding for things such as FDAC, the family drug and alcohol court set up by the excellent Nick Crichton, a fantastic family district judge.

At FDAC, a mother—often a single mother—at risk of losing a child to the care system because of substance abuse or an abusive partner, say, is given a clear choice of an intensive package that will help her back on to the straight and narrow so that she can bring up her own child. It is a tough, challenging exercise. Alternatively, perhaps both parents will be involved. If they are able to do that, the whole family is put back together and the child stays, which is the best outcome. If not, that child will head for care.

I have sat in court, as has my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who will speak shortly, seeing mums who have had six, seven or eight children taken into the care system. We have to tackle the root of that problem: why is it? Is it that the mother just does not know how to parent, in which case what are society, social workers and the troubled families programme doing to help her become a fit parent if she remotely can? If she cannot, that child must go to a safe family elsewhere who can give them a second chance of a beneficial and happy upbringing.

I would like to make a few other quick points, Mr Deputy Speaker; I am aware that there are not too many speakers for this debate, so I have an opportunity to elaborate on some important points a little longer than the Chair normally allows. I know how generous you are in these matters, which are of great interest to you.

Clause 5 is about the designation of a member of staff at school

“having responsibility for promoting the educational achievement”

of children in the care system. That is a good initiative, but it already exists for children with caring responsibilities and alas that does not work in practice. It is a good idea, but it has to have some teeth so that it means something on the ground: that children in the care system have special attention from a designated teacher who understands the particular needs of such children, who are often subject to bullying, mental health problems and everything else. There must be more than a clause on paper in a Bill: the proposal has to work in practice.

There are some good points on the child safeguarding review panels, although I have concerns about the independence of the panels. Certainly when we gave a commitment before the 2010 election that we would publish serious case reviews—opposed by the Labour party, although the reviews have now become the norm—one of my concerns was also about the calibre of the people producing those SCRs and the quality of some of the reports. Effectively, they were not properly monitored; they were monitored only on a local basis. Some time ago, I put forward the idea that a national body should oversee the quality and that there should be a national register of authors of serious case reviews with a requirement for continuous professional development; there needed to be training, which would be updated. Before now, anybody, effectively, could apply to be the author of a serious case review. We need to regulate that important area rather better.

Under clause 13, the panel

“must publish the report, unless they consider it inappropriate to do so.”

Given that, previously, when serious case reviews were published, they were seen only by a few people locally and Department for Education officials if we were lucky, it was really important that, other than in exceptional circumstances where there could be detriment to surviving children or families, the reviews should be published and the lessons learned to see how they could apply elsewhere. This new review panel is an exercise in doing that and in disseminating best practice rather better. I very much support that, and I would like more details on how it is going to work.

Then, however, we have the section about safeguarding partners. These appear to be replacing the local safeguarding children boards, which are a really important feature of bringing together local agencies to make sure that we have workable solutions and partnerships in place, particularly to deal with child sexual exploitation at the moment. We need to be convinced about how these new bodies are better than, or different from, local safeguarding children boards and, in particular, about how they are going to be funded. Clause 20, on funding, says:

“The safeguarding partners for a local authority area in England may make payments”

towards the expenditure of these bodies

“by contributing to a fund”

or making payments directly. It also says:

“Relevant agencies for a local authority area…may make payments”.

The problem with LSCBs at the moment is that not all the partners pull their weight. In too many cases, key partners are, first, not turning up at the table and, secondly, not helping to fund the work of the LSCBs. Too often, it falls to the local authority—the default partner —to pick up too much of the tab. If we are going to put these things on a statutory basis, can we make sure that it is laid out clearly and unequivocally that the funding contribution from, and the active participation of, all the relevant partners is absolutely essential?

I am also concerned because clause 21 says:

“The safeguarding partners for two or more local authority areas in England may agree that their areas are to be treated as a single area”.

How big can they be? It is important that LSCBs are able to come up with local safeguarding plans and local plans to tackle child sexual exploitation in their areas—plans that are relevant to Rotherham, given the particular problems there, to Rochdale or to wherever. If these bodies are going to be looking after huge areas, their effect will surely be diluted in key hotspots. The Bill also talks about having cross-border constabulary co-operation, but these are very large areas, and I am concerned about how big these new bodies could become.

On the part of the Bill about the new body, Social Work England, I think we need to improve the regulation of social workers. I am not sure whether this is the right way to do it, and I would like to see more details. The demise of the College of Social Work is a shame, and I think it would have performed a lot of this function if it had been allowed to continue and to thrive. A lot of effort went into setting it up in the first place.

I am also concerned about the independence of Social Work England. My understanding is that it will be an Executive agency of the Department for Education, and we need to have some clarity over that.

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

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Tim Loughton]

Yes—I am delighted I am getting a response.

[Edward Timpson]

I can reassure my hon. Friend that the new Social Work England regulatory body will not be an Executive agency; it will be a non-departmental public body, so it will be at arm’s length from the Government and provide the independence that people called for and that I think is right.

[Tim Loughton]

I am grateful, and gratefully reassured, and I look forward to being able to support that provision, as opposed to some others that I am not so reassured about.

In clause 31, one of the overarching objectives of Social Work England is

“to promote and maintain public confidence in social workers in England”,

and that is quite right. However, that is also the job of the chief social worker. One disappointment to me is that when we set up the chief social worker—originally, it was to be one chief social worker covering the elderly and children, but then it was split into a child social worker and an adult care social worker—the point was for them to be a high-profile face of social work, particularly for the public, and a reassuring face of child protection for the public in times of high-profile tragedies and disasters involving safeguarding issues. Therefore, while the current chief social worker for children said recently:

“I don’t pretend I am the voice of the profession. I am a civil servant and I see my role”

as

“offering advice to ministers based on what other people tell me about a the system”,

I think there is more to the role. This person must not just be a civil servant. They need to work closely alongside Ministers and civil servants, but equally—in action out on the street—to work alongside social workers, consultant social workers and practitioners at the sharp end. We need to revisit the balance that we currently have in that regard.

I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker, for going on at length. This is a subject that interests me enormously. I have spent most of my career in Parliament involved with child safeguarding and child protection. I am very proud of the progress that has been made over years, but very worried that we still have a long way to go. Most of this Bill will help in that journey, but certain parts will not. I hope that when scrutinising the Bill in Committee and on Report, the Government reflect a little more before they rush to do some things that clearly are not in the best interests of vulnerable children.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and to have heard not only Opposition Members’ broad support for the Bill, but the important points they have raised. There can never be too much consensus on these issues. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said, we just need to do better for vulnerable children. Challenge is part of that, as are new ideas. We cannot allow the Bill to be a missed opportunity in terms of prevention or the knowledge we give to children, because they are as much a part of the safeguarding process as any other structure or law that we put through this place.

The focus of the Bill is very much children who cannot remain in the family home, but its scope has been widened, particularly through Government amendments made in the other place, to broader issues around child welfare. I will focus on some of the broader issues, particularly the provisions regarding adopted children and ongoing support for them; the more contentious issue of the power to innovate, which some Members have talked about today, the measures on which were voted down in the other place; and, finally, what more the Bill could do to improve the welfare of children and to empower children.

The Bill proposes improvements to the long-term placement of children for adoption and the assessment of their current and future needs through care orders. I hope that the Minister will take this opportunity to tell the House how the new measure sits alongside recent Government announcements on the adoption support fund. In particular, I am thinking about the interim cap on financial support that was put in place midway through the financial year.

The adoption support fund ensures that important therapeutic support can be funded for adopted children, some of whom are coping with difficult trauma, complex and challenging behaviour, and mental health problems. That can result in a high risk of adoption breakdown. The fund already helps thousands of families—I believe it was 3,500 last year—and the Government are increasing the budget to about £23 million this year. That significant investment perhaps underlines the Minister’s deep knowledge of the subject and his understanding of the challenges that parents of adopted children face, which he has gained from his own family’s experiences. I put on record my thanks to the Minister for all that he has done to support families with adopted children. I know that my constituents are enormously grateful for his expertise in this area.

Perhaps we should be unsurprised to hear that the demand for the fund has outstripped the supply of finances. The Minister, with the inevitable fiscal duties on him, had to introduce a cap to the budget in October. Although that was understandable as a normal response to keep control of budgetary pressures, it has inevitably created uncertainties for families such as my constituents, Mr and Mrs Cross, who adopted their son in August 2013. Mr and Mrs Cross are incredible. They have adopted a young child with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder which, as many will know, means their son requires significant support.

Mr and Mrs Cross have taken the necessary measures and are doing a fantastic job. The child’s therapy has been hugely beneficial, leading to real progress, but because it costs in excess of the new £5,000 cap, it is uncertain whether the funding will be available in the near future. The next phase of treatment costs about £10,000 and would require the local authority in Hampshire to match fund, in year, any costs over £5,000. Clause 8 calls for long-term plans for the care of a child to be in place, yet my constituents, who have made an incredible choice to care for a severely disabled child, are now unsure whether his care can be funded. I hope that the Minister, perhaps in his response to the debate, will reflect on how a local authority such as mine in Hampshire might respond, and reassure Mr and Mrs Cross that the support for their child will continue.

The second issue I want to speak about is the controversial power to innovate, which was contentious in the other place. Indeed, the then clauses 15 to 18 were removed from the Bill after a vote. The provisions would have allowed local authorities to apply to the Secretary of State to test new ways of raising children’s outcomes and to allow high-performing local authorities to be involved in that work. It is important that we pay heed to the strongly held concerns raised by expert voices, not just in the other place but outwith this place, and I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response to those concerns, which have been echoed again today.

None the less, the Department has put in place something that we need to look at again: the idea of giving “partners in practice”—my local authority in Hampshire is one of only eight in the country—the opportunity to look at innovative ways of working. If we are to find better ways to care for the vulnerable children about whom we all feel so deeply, we need to be open to new ideas, so I hope that we can revisit this idea, which was strongly supported by my local authority as well as experts such as Professor Eileen Munro. It is right that this tightly regulated area is as protected as it is, but I cannot believe that there would not be a benefit from our looking at new ways of working. We will all have seen examples of that in today’s briefings.

The problem might be—hon. Members might have put their finger on it today—that the proposals came somewhat out of the blue, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said. We need to take care that we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I do not think that the Minister had any intention for the proposals to create competition between local authorities; rather, the intention was to drive improvement, which we would all applaud. No one is suggesting that this approach would do anything other than drive innovation in an area that has developed, inevitably, in a piecemeal way in response to the various and sometimes quite appalling situations in which local authorities have found themselves.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham talked about the need for policy and law to work in practice. When I read the Hansard report of what the Minister in the other place said, I felt that that was exactly the purpose of the proposals. I think the intention is that local authorities are able to look at how they can make the law work in practice, rather than creating something of a postcode lottery. When there is an insight into better ways of working, authorities need to be able to pass it on to other areas to improve the way in which we care for this vulnerable group of individuals.

The final issue I want to raise, building on what the hon. Member for Walthamstow said, is what we are doing to empower children themselves, especially vulnerable children who might not have the consistent involvement of their parents in their lives and who, frankly, face really difficult situations when they have to take decisions about their own welfare without the input of other adults to guide them. This Bill is one of many pieces of legislation that have put in place laws, procedures and protocols to help to protect and improve the welfare of children through a whole host of agencies, but that does not directly address what we will do to help those children themselves. We need to ensure that they are armed with the knowledge that they need to make the right choices to safeguard themselves.

That is not a new concept, but something that we have done for many years. For example, we have tried to encourage children to understand the dangers of drugs, alcohol and, indeed, early pregnancy. It is important to take that forward in a more structured way. As parents and carers, we know that we have the prime responsibility to protect our children, but we also know that our children need the ability to make good choices. We cannot be there 24/7; social workers cannot be there 24/7. It is crucial that children have the ability to make decisions themselves in an informed way.

The Bill provides a perfect opportunity for the Government to respond positively to the five Select Committee Chairs who have called for PSHE and, in particular, sex and relationships education, to be made compulsory for school-age children. I am one of those Select Committee Chairs. Our work taking evidence on our recent inquiry on sexual harassment and sexual violence in schools was a sobering experience for all members of our Select Committee.

We need to help to empower children to make their own decisions. When we hear the evidence and some of the statistics about the challenges that young people face in respect of their own personal welfare, it becomes clear that this debate is overdue and that we need to take action now. Two thirds of girls regularly experience sexual harassment in school. Children as young as eight are seeing online pornography as a place to learn about sex, and there were 47,000 sexual offences against children in this country in the last year, a third of which were perpetrated by children against other children. Communities should be able to enjoy freedom and safety, and school communities are no different from any others.

When we look at what happens to children after their school life, we find that, according to a study by the National Union of Students, 68% of students say that they are subject to verbal or physical sexual harassment on campuses. The problem does not stop there, as some 85% of women are experiencing unwanted sexual attention in public places.

The hon. Member for Walthamstow is absolutely right when she says that this is all about prevention and making sure that we can stop these problems from happening in the first place by ensuring that children have the knowledge they need to make good decisions, to understand what consent means, and to achieve some control over their own personal space and their own bodies.

The Bill has been extensively debated in the other place, where many amendments were tabled, particularly relating to the importance for the welfare of children of joint working between agencies, including local authorities, the police and clinical commissioning groups. In the other place, the Government tabled amendment 113, which dealt with that, because they recognised that a multifaceted strategy was vital to children’s welfare.

Another set of organisations also have a crucial role to play in children’s welfare: schools. If the Bill is to do what it sets out to do and to promote welfare for children, it must make sex and relationships education compulsory. What is currently compulsory in secondary schools is the science of reproduction; the rest is based on guidance that was last updated at the turn of the millennium and makes no reference to pornography, through which, as we know, more young children are finding out about sex. We also know that 40% of schools do not teach SRE very well. Perhaps all that explains why organisations such as Barnardo’s have made clear that the development of an early understanding of and respect for each other’s bodies, and a knowledge of when to ask for help through PSHE, can help to build resilience and an understanding of what healthy relationships look like, as well as mitigating the effects of exposure to such things as pornography.

[Tim Loughton]

I am closely following what my right hon. Friend is saying and agree with much of it. As is the wont of speeches on Bills concerning children, hers is straying into a number of subjects that relate to children but are not dealt with in the Bill, but I support her on this subject. Does she agree that one way of securing the better-quality PHSE and SRE that we desperately need would be to bring in experts from outside schools, especially young experts such as youth workers? They could empathise with young people who would listen to them, take notice of them and act on their advice. Would that not be better than giving the task to Mrs Miggins the geography teacher who just happens to have a couple of free periods on a Thursday afternoon?

[Mrs Miller]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Expertise is necessary when it comes to teaching those subjects. However, as I have said, I have raised this issue because if we are to tackle the welfare of children, we must ensure that we do so effectively. It is no good leaving children out of the equation; we must tackle their welfare head on. While I do not disagree with my hon. Friend’s point that undertrained teachers will not provide effective sex and relationships education, I think that all teachers—whether they are Mrs Miggins teaching geography or anyone else—need to understand how they can stop the sexual harassment and sexual violence that too many young people told the Committee they took for granted in their everyday school lives, and which we would never take for granted as adults. All teachers should have some sort of training in this sphere because they are responsible for the wellbeing of children while they are at school.

Children and Social Work Bill [Lords]

Tim Loughton Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Heidi Allen]

That is the strength of a decent consultation. I and many of us in this House believe that we can do both. The new clause allows us to spread the burden. It is tough, as some councils have borne a disproportionate burden of responsibility on their shoulders. Those councils have done amazingly, and it is time that other local authorities that have capacity share some of that burden. Guess what? If we consult as well as I think we can, I sense that we will find that we have capacity to manage both.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I declare my interest. My hon. Friend knows that I put my name to the amendment and that I support her. I do not want to get hung up on any particular scheme, Dubs or otherwise, because the Government have done an awful lot across many schemes, as the Home Affairs Committee has seen. Many authorities have come forward, and my concern is that we need to know exactly what capacity they realistically have to care for refugee children without there being a detriment to indigenous children, for whom there is a crisis in the number of foster care and residential children’s home places. The amendment might achieve that, whatever she might think.

[Heidi Allen]

Absolutely, and not least because of the refugee crisis. This is good housekeeping. It is good for us to have transparent data so that we can understand the capacity of our local authorities and our care system, which has to help children who are already in the UK care system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton]

I come in at the end of the Bill’s progress, having been in at the beginning on Second Reading, but I want to pay tribute to the hard work that has gone into the Bill and to crave your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, in talking about something that did not make it into the legislation.

Having had experience of children’s Bills over the past 15 years or so, I find it interesting that they have a propensity to be hijacked by things not present on Second Reading that then become the headline in the final stages. True to form, that has happened again with amendments about sex and relationship education, which I fully support—I added my name to that amendment—and about child refugees, which I also support but which did not make it into the Bill in the form that some of us had hoped for. In many respects, that is a shame because it takes attention and focus away from the really important meat of the everyday experiences of vulnerable children, particularly those who find themselves in the care system through no fault of their own. Successive Governments have strived to do much and have achieved much for those children, but we still need to do much more. In welcoming the Bill, I draw the House’s attention to the really good things in it that we did not have much time to discuss today. They were perhaps the more important parts of the Bill as it went through its various stages.

I, too, welcome the addition of the sex and relationship educations clauses. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) said, that is ground breaking. Some of us have banged our head against brick walls in various shadow ministerial and post-ministerial positions over many, many years, and the need for it is so screamingly obvious, yet, for all sorts of reasons that I have never quite understood, the measure fails to make it into legislation.

There is an increasing online threat to our children. Shockingly, they are being lured into many things with which we would never have been confronted in our teenage years—just a few years ago in your case, Madam Deputy Speaker, but slightly longer ago for others. Children are exposed to those threats on a daily basis, and the best way to give them defences against those threats must surely be, at an early age at school, to educate, inform, warn and support them against the hazards out in the wider world and the wider web.

By way of example, there was a shocking interview with a teenage girl on “Woman’s Hour” a few years ago. She had been in a relationship with a teenage boy—I think both were under the age of 16—and he had forced her to watch and act out violent pornographic videos, and she had gone along with it. It is shocking that, at her young age, she was under pressure to do that and that it was deemed to be common practice. What was really alarming is that, when the interviewer asked, “Why on earth didn’t you tell him to get lost and report him?” her response was, “Well, I didn’t think I had the right.” If sex and relationships education is anything, it is about giving confidence and empowering young people, particularly young women, that theirs is the choice to say yes or no, and theirs alone.

If we can develop what has now become part of the Bill into an empowerment exercise for our young people, so that they respect other young people and have the confidence to say no—with no meaning no—we will have done this generation of children and future generations a huge service. We have taken a major step forward with this Bill, although the step was not intended on Second Reading, but fortunately it made it in at the last moment with wide cross-party consensus, which is excellent.

The House of Lords is forming a habit of disagreeing with the House of Commons, but I hope that in this case it does not disagree with us. When Ministers formulate the important guidance that needs to go with this legislation, I urge them to be sensitive because this is a big move for many people that will need to be handled carefully and cautiously.

There are many other good things in the Bill, including the local offer for care leavers. In our debates on the Bill we have heard numerous times the figures on the poor outcomes for children in care and for care leavers. The very small proportion who make it to university shows that we still have a long way to go. There is still a large gap in the educational achievement of children in care and others. The gap has narrowed a little, but we need to go so much further. The Government’s support for children in care and adopted children through the pupil premium is a small part of trying to level the playing field.

I welcome the measures, some more controversial than others, on regulating social workers and the need for continuing professional development, but the problem remains that we have a growing shortage of experienced child protection social workers. Work by the all-party parliamentary group for children—I will allude to the study in a minute—shows huge divergences between the experiences in different local authorities. At its worst, one local authority has a 57% locum rate for child social workers. How on earth can we have continuity of care and empathy of care for deeply traumatised and vulnerable children when they are being looked after by non-permanent social workers? That is a huge challenge, and we still have a lot of work to do.

The refugee amendment did not make it into the Bill, but I hope that the spirit of that amendment, which had great support on both sides of the House and on which many undertakings were given by Ministers, will not be forgotten as the Bill’s measures are turned into practice.

Clauses 32 to 39, on the so-called powers to test different ways of working, are no longer in the Bill. I congratulate the Government, because this is a good example of their listening to people from across various professions—academics, practitioners, children’s charities, politicians and others, including me—who were seriously concerned about the huge principles that would have been at stake had the clauses passed into law. There are no parallels for allowing a local authority, or, indeed, other agencies to step outside primary or secondary legislation effectively at the whim of the Secretary of State of the day. That has not been tried with adults—there are no examples of parallels in the Care Act 2014, the Mental Health Act 2007 or the Mental Capacity Act 2005—so why on earth would the Government risk using vulnerable children as guinea pigs to experiment with a new model of working?

I am all in favour of innovation and of being creative in how we get better outcomes and better support for children who most need it, particularly in the care system, but I just do not think we need to remove primary and secondary legislation that has been built up since 1933, on a whim and without consultation. Whatever the safeguards we were promised, at the end of the day it would mean a postcode lottery for the rights of children and for the responsibilities towards those children of different local authorities, depending on when those children happened to be in care.

Back in 2010, one of the first things the coalition Government did in the Department for Education was to recruit Professor Eileen Munro and appoint her to head the complete overhaul of child protection social work. I was pleased and proud to be part of appointing her and implementing her recommendations. We reduced social work legislation from something like 760 pages in the “Working Together” manual, which had accrued over years and years during which the solution to better child protection was more legislation. In the end, that got in the way of social workers being able to use their professionalism, instincts and training to do the right thing by the child. Instead, they had constantly to look at the rule book and over their shoulders.

It was right that we reduced that rule book and that manual and gave greater freedoms and flexibility to social workers, but at no point did that require us, or was it required of us, to remove any of the duties that make up the safety net of primary and secondary legislation. Professor Munro never asked for it; we never considered it; and it was never done. It would have been absolutely inappropriate to do it now, so it was completely appropriate that Professor Munro did not give her support to the Government’s previous proposals. I am pleased that they have listened, and I am grateful to Lord Laming and Lord Mackay in the other place, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst) today, for putting that message across to Ministers.

The Bill has to address the huge variations in practice and outcomes for vulnerable children in care throughout the country. The all-party group for children is about to produce a report on the state of children’s social care. Last year, the average rate of referrals to children’s services was 532 per 10,000 children in the local population. The lowest rate for a local authority was 187 and the highest was 753 per 10,000 children—that is a difference of nine times, just depending on where the child happened to be. Last year, the average national rate of children becoming subject to child protection plans was 54 per 10,000, but the lowest local authority rate was 16.5 and the highest was 180.5—a difference of 10 times. Our report highlights huge differences in experiences and outcomes for children in care, depending on what local authority they happen to live in. That is the biggest challenge that we face. We owe the same duty of care and responsibility to a vulnerable child in care regardless of whether he or she lives in Yorkshire, Sussex or Cornwall. Those clauses that are now no longer in the Bill would have just widened those differential experiences. The Government’s priority now must be to narrow those gaps to make sure that we are doing an ever better job for every child in care in every part of the country.

In closing, may I say that I welcome this Bill? I also welcome the fact that the Government have listened, that the debate has contributed to a great strengthening of some of the measures in this Bill and that some additional measures have been included, but, at the end of the day, we owe our thanks, our respect and our regard to the social workers on the frontline who do an exceedingly challenging job in very challenging circumstances, often dealing with very challenged children and families. We owe a duty of care, thanks and respect to the many foster carers and, increasingly, adoptive parents coming forward to give those children a second chance of a safe, stable and loving home. If there is one upside from our debate on refugees and the publicity about refugees, it is that more people have come forward to offer themselves as foster carers and adoptive parents both for refugee children coming to the county and for the indigenous children for whom we still have a large shortage of places in foster care and for adoption. Those are the people on the frontline who make the difference to children’s lives. We have a lot more to do. We owe much greater care to our vulnerable children, but this Bill is a very good step in making that achievable.