Care Crisis Review

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Wednesday 5th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Lucy Allan]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point that perfectly illustrates my argument about the duties of local authorities to spend on the statutory crisis intervention measures they are required to take by law. They have nothing left in the pot for the preventive measures that would reduce in the long term the need to spend on crisis funding. It is difficult for a local authority to have the flexibility to do what it knows would work in the long term, because it is a statutory requirement that it uses its budget primarily to meet the statutory needs of the most vulnerable children in the borough.

That is a big issue that we neglect. If there are tight budgets for children’s services, councils have to take an increasing number of children into care, which costs more, and there is less chance of reducing that number through early intervention and support. That is why we have to think and act for the long term. If we believe that families do a better job than the state, we must work with families to support them, not just judge them and find them wanting—that helps no one. The Minister will agree because, like me, he has a wonderful family. The greatest gift he could give to any child to secure their life chances is a strong family.

Anyone who works in the system will say that the short-termism that they are forced to work with is wrong, and that instead of being able to fund early help, most authorities have to proceed with the statutory interventions that so many families experience as oppressive and destabilising. My plea is to invest in early help to make long-term savings. I am thinking not just of the huge financial savings, but of the emotional cost to a child of being removed from their family and losing their home, their siblings, their friends and their school. We know that happens. The Education Committee hears too often about fostering breakdowns, which cause children to go through a whole series of placements. Time and again, children feel abandoned and isolated, and have to put their possessions in a black plastic bag to move from foster home to foster home. They never quite feel that they belong.

I know that every Member would want to prevent that from happening to any child if possible. That is why I believe that the Government could be doing so much more to set the direction and insist on a ring-fenced element of funding for early intervention and prevention. As a Conservative Government, we care about families. We care about people being able to help themselves. We believe in helping people to help themselves, but we are not doing that. We are simply saying, “The state will take care of this, because you have failed as a parent.” What message does that send about our vision of society? The number of children in care goes on increasing while everyone takes a back seat and says, “Well, it’s not really central Government’s problem, because local authorities have to make these decisions on a case-by-case basis. It just so happens the numbers are going up.” We have to look at why that is, and that is exactly what the care crisis review did.

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

I declare an interest, which is detailed in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I agree with much of what my hon. Friend says, although I take issue with some of her analysis. Does she agree that the early help recommendation of the Munro review back in 2011 was crucial to allowing more preventive work to be done to keep families together? Alas, that recommendation never became reality. She will also be mindful of the worrying finding in the “Storing Up Trouble” report by the all-party parliamentary group on children, which came out at a similar time to the care crisis review and to which the Minister contributed, about the huge differences in intervention outcomes between authorities. A child in one local authority can be seven times more likely to be taken into care than one in another. That causes great concern.

[Lucy Allan]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that contribution. He has a long track record of expertise in this area, not least as an excellent Children’s Minister. His point about different treatment in different local authorities is vital, because it demonstrates that with the right support for families there is less need to take children into care. With the right support, children are more likely to be able to thrive safely at home. That illustrates my argument.

All Members would agree that taking children from their families must be a last resort. Indeed, the Prime Minister said exactly that when I raised the care crisis review at Prime Minister’s questions a few months ago. However, if nothing else is on offer to support a family in crisis, it suddenly is not a last resort—in some cases, it becomes the only tool a local authority can deploy. As I said, that will be of huge consequence to children, society and the state if we continue down the path of saying simply, “Let’s not invest in the long term and enabling children to stay safely at home with their families.”

Had I not seen it for myself, I would not have believed the cost of care proceedings where parents object, or the agonies they go through to keep their child with them. I have seen cases where the legal process has cost the state millions. Just think of the difference we could have made if only we had been able to support such families before they reached crisis—not only to the children’s lives, but with the millions of pounds we have spent on the court process, which is the most awful process for any family to have to go through.

I pay tribute to Edward Timpson, another excellent former Children’s Minister, for the work he did and for his knowledge and understanding of this area. He initiated fantastic projects such as Pause, which works with women who have repeatedly had children taken from them and put into the care system. To deal with their loss and grief, women continued to have children, which the state simply took away from them one after another without doing anything whatever to help them get out of the situation they were in. The futility of all that anguish seems senseless, so I am grateful to Edward Timpson for his legacy.

The only thing I would say about such projects is that, admirable as they are, they too often tinker at the edges rather than setting an overarching, long-term view of what could be done differently. That is why I welcome the suggestions in the care crisis review. Yes, some of them are about funding, which I have touched on, but the review contains all sorts of other suggestions. The Minister is very familiar with them, and I urge him to consider which ones could be implemented and which he could put his weight behind. It is important that we do not just have debates in which the Minister says, “I’m going to consider it,” and then the proposal dies a death. I have seen that happen many times. This is a real opportunity to use work that has been done for the Government by experts in the field to look carefully at what the Government can do to improve the system and make things better for children and families.

The cost to the state of a child being in care is enormous. We all know about the outcomes for care leavers and the huge challenges they face when they leave the care system. We know the statistics about the make-up of the prison population. Too often, people who have children taken from them are care leavers who did not have a parenting role model. The state deems that in itself to be a risk factor when assessing their suitability to parent. In too many cases, there is a self-perpetuating cycle of misery, and the Government do not intervene in the way they could to do amazing good. We have seen from the great projects I mentioned how much good can be done, but there does not seem to be an overarching, long-term Government strategy. Instead, understandably, the point is made that local authorities have to act on a case-by-case basis and the Government cannot intervene.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Nadhim Zahawi)]

It is an honour and a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) on securing this important debate. I know she is concerned about the number of children being taken into care and that she is a firm believer in early intervention and family support services as a vehicle for lowering care demand.

I acknowledge the increase in the number of care order applications and the number of children being taken into care in recent years. The Government are acutely aware of the impact that that has had and is having on local authorities and the courts. We are also very conscious of the implications for children and families. I am immensely grateful to all those who have worked in child protection and the family justice system, whether they are social workers, court staff, CAFCASS guardians, judges or those in other roles. We want every child to be in a loving, stable home that is right for them. In most cases, children are best looked after by their families. Children are only removed as a last resort, which is why my Department is continuing to deliver a comprehensive reform programme for children’s social care across England. I will say more about our reforms later.

I recognise the sector’s care crisis review and acknowledge the work that the Family Rights Group and others involved invested in it. The review is an important contribution to the work being done across the family justice system to address the pressures caused by rising public law volumes for local authorities and the family courts. I am pleased to say that tomorrow the Minister for family justice, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), who also has an interest in the report, and I are meeting members of the review team—Nigel Richardson, who chaired the review, and Cathy Ashley, who helped drive it—to discuss its findings.

In advance of that meeting, I can tell Members that officials in both our Departments have been carefully considering the options for change set out in the report, and we have taken action. The sector’s report sets out two specific options for change in relation to our “Working together to safeguard children” statutory guidance. First, it states that the guidance should be

“reviewed and amended so that the principles underpinning the legislation, including partnership and co-production with families, are clearly expressed and the processes for managing individual cases reflect the messages from research on the effectiveness of relationship-based practice.”

Secondly, it argued that the same guidance should be

“amended to place greater emphasis on the role to be played by key partner agencies, in addition to that played by children’s social care, in assessing and meeting the accommodation, health and educational needs of children and their families.”

I am pleased to say that we have addressed both those issues in the latest version of the statutory guidance, which we published in July. I hope Members and those who took part in the review welcome that. It is particularly important to recognise that the sector’s review stated that

“there are many overlapping factors contributing to the rise in care proceedings and the number of children in care. This complex picture means that there is no single solution.

That is in keeping with the Government’s own analysis and is why, in addition to the many reforms we are seeking to deliver, including those I will talk about shortly, we are working across Government to consider what more we can do. It includes the work that officials from my Department and the Ministry of Justice are doing with members of national and local family justice boards across England, through which we are seeking to understand the challenges in the family justice system better and consider with sector representatives what can be done to address them.

My hon. Friend the Member for Telford has an interest in early intervention. I assure her that, across Government, we are addressing the root causes of children’s needs early—be it by supporting children with alcohol-dependent parents or in families affected by domestic abuse, preventing young people from being drawn into serious violence, or investing in early years and children’s and young people’s mental health. Our “Working Together to Safeguard Children” statutory guidance is clear that local areas should have a comprehensive range of effective evidence-based services in place to address assessed needs early. The Government have also committed £920 million to the troubled families programme, which aims to achieve significant and sustained improvement for up to 400,000 families with multiple high-cost problems by 2020.

On the point that my hon. Friend made on funding for preventive support services, it is for local authorities to determine how to spend their non-ring-fenced income on the services they provide, including services for preventive support measures.

[Tim Loughton]

The Minister mentioned the troubled families programme, which has been a huge success in west Sussex. There is concern that the funding will not be renewed after 2020. Will he give a commitment now that that successful programme will be continued?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend is one of my excellent predecessors—hon. Members mentioned Edward Timpson, but the work that my hon. Friend did in the Department has been a high bar for me to attempt to meet. I have seen first hand the effectiveness of the troubled families programme, and when it comes to the spending review, I will be a champion in ensuring that we continue to commit. In many of the cases that were highlighted to me by social workers in Islington and other parts of the country, a whole support system is required to help those families deliver stability for the family and the child.

Since 2016, we have been working to implement the reforms set out by my predecessor, Edward Timpson, in the “Putting children first” strategy. They centre on three key areas: people and leadership, practice and systems, and governance and accountability. I fully support the strategy and am committed to implementing it. “Putting children first” set out a five-year reform programme for children’s social care in Europe, which includes developing the social work profession, supporting innovation and improvement and establishing a new What Works centre. I will say something about them and the impact that our reforms will have.

On the social work profession, our successful Step Up to Social Work and Frontline programmes have brought new people into the profession and promoted social work as a desirable graduate career. Recently, I was pleased to be able to announce a further £25 million for Step Up to Social Work to bring a further 700 talented future social workers into children’s services. Through investment in professional development at key stages throughout their career, and the new national accreditation and assessment system, which the shadow Minister effectively dissed—[Interruption.] Not at all. The very good social workers who have been through it show very high satisfaction ratings. Hon. Members will hear more of that in the future. We are really helping to ensure that the quality of practice is consistently excellent.

Innovation and improvements are at the heart of the Government’s vision for children’s social care. The £200 million Children’s Social Care Innovation programme has deepened evidence about what good social work looks like and about the potential for innovation. It has generated a portfolio of promising successful innovations, which we are rolling out more widely to understand the potential wider impact. I am also pleased to note that the sector-led report points out that many projects are doing effective and innovative work with families who are at risk of breakdown, including helping to reduce the numbers of children being taken into care. Information from the programme will form the wider bank of evidence going into the new What Works centre, which is currently in a testing and development phase, to improve outcomes for young people and learning for the sector. The What Works centre is pressing ahead with its research programme, including examining what works on reducing the need for children to enter care. We hope it will support the uptake of quality evidence in frontline practice in children’s social care.