The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Will
Quince) With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement on how
the Government are responding to “The independent review of
children’s social care” and the Competition and Markets Authority’s
children’s social care report. This Government believe in a country
where all children are given an equal chance to fulfil their
potential, but sadly we are not there yet. That is why we made our
manifesto...Request free trial
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education ()
With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement on how the
Government are responding to “The independent review of
children’s social care” and the Competition and Markets
Authority’s children’s social care report.
This Government believe in a country where all children are given
an equal chance to fulfil their potential, but sadly we are not
there yet. That is why we made our manifesto commitment to launch
the independent review of children’s social care in March 2021;
its report was published today. The review was commissioned to
take a fundamental look at the children’s social care system, and
to gain an understanding of how we must transform it to better
support the most vulnerable children and families. I want to
extend my heartfelt thanks to Josh MacAlister and his team for
this comprehensive review, as well as thanking the children, the
experts by experience board, and the care leavers, families and
carers who shared their experiences of the current system and
their aspirations for a future one.
The review is bold and broad, calling for a reset of the system
so that it acts decisively in response to abuse, provides more
help for families in crisis, and ensures that those in care have
lifelong loving relationships and homes. I look forward to
working with the sector, those with first-hand experience and
colleagues in all parts of the House to inform an ambitious and
detailed Government response and implementation strategy, to be
published before the end of 2022. To get us there, I have three
main priorities. The first is to improve the child protection
system so that it keeps children safe from harm as effectively as
possible; the second is to support families to care for their
children so that they can have safe, loving and happy childhoods
which set them up for fulfilling lives, and the third is to
ensure that there are the right placements for children in the
right places, so that those who cannot stay with their parents
grow up in safe, stable and loving homes.
To enable me to respond effectively and without delay, I will
establish a national implementation board consisting of people
with experience of leading transformational change, to challenge
the system to achieve the full extent of our ambitions for
children. The board will also include people with their own
experience of the care system, to remind us of the promise of
delivery and the cost of delay.
I want to be straight about this: too many vulnerable children
have been let down by the system. We cannot level up if we cannot
make progress on children’s social care reform. However, we are
striving to change that. Our work to improve the life chances of
children is already well under way, and is aligned with the key
themes of the review and the CMA report. On 2 April, we backed
the Supporting Families programme with £695 million, which means
that 300,000 of the most vulnerable families will be supported to
provide the safe and loving homes that their children need in
order to thrive.
We welcome the review’s recognition of this programme as an
excellent model of family intervention, and today, with the
review as our road map, we are going further. We will work with
the sector to develop a national children’s social care
framework, which will set a clear direction for the system and
point everyone to the best available evidence for how to support
children and families. We will set out more detail later this
year.
I pay tribute to every single social worker who is striving to
offer life-changing support to children and families day in, day
out. Providing more decisive child protection relies on the
knowledge and skills of these social workers, which is why I
support the principle of the review’s proposed early career
framework. We will set out robust plans to refocus the support
that social workers receive early on, with a particular focus on
child protection, given the challenging nature of this work.
We will also take action to drive forward the review’s three data
and digital priority areas, ensuring that local government and
partners are in the driving seat of reform. Following the
review’s recommendation for a data and technology taskforce, we
will introduce a new digital and data solutions fund to help
local authorities to improve delivery for children and families
through technology. More detail will follow later this year on
joining up data from across the public sector so that we can
increase transparency, both between safeguarding partners and the
wider public.
Recognising the urgency of action in placement sufficiency, we
will prioritise working with local authorities to recruit more
foster carers. This will include pathfinder local recruitment
campaigns that build towards a national programme, to help to
ensure that children have access to the right placements at the
right time. As the review recommends, we will focus on providing
more support throughout the application process to improve the
conversion rate from expressions of interest to approved foster
carers.
Delivering change for vulnerable children is my absolute priority
and, as suggested by the review, I will return to the House on
the anniversary of its publication to update colleagues on
progress made.
This statement also provides an opportunity to welcome the
recommendations set out in the Competition and Markets Authority
report into the children’s social care market, which was
published in March. As an initial response, I have asked my
Department to conduct thorough research into the children’s homes
workforce, engaging with the sector and with experts to improve
oversight of the market.
Sadly, we know that too many children are still not being
protected from harm quickly enough. This is unacceptable. On
Thursday, the child safeguarding practice review panel will set
out lessons learned from the heartbreaking deaths of Arthur
Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson, and the Secretary of State for
Education will come to this House to outline the Government’s
initial response to these tragic cases. For too long, children’s
social care has not received the focus it so desperately needs
and deserves. I am determined to work with colleagues across the
House and with local authorities across our country to deliver
once-in-a-generation reform so that the system provides
high-quality help at the right time, with tangible outcomes. For
every child who needs our protection, we must reform this system.
For every family who need our help and support, we must reform
this system. For every child or young person in care who deserves
a safe, stable and loving home, we must reform this system. This
is a moral imperative, and we must all rise to the challenge. I
commend this statement to the House.
Mr Speaker
I call shadow Minister .
4.12pm
(Dulwich and West Norwood)
(Lab)
I thank the Minister for giving me advance sight of his statement
today. Labour welcomes the report of the independent review of
children’s social care. I would like to add my thanks to Josh
MacAlister and his team for their hard work and commitment. I
also want to pay tribute to the social workers, support workers,
foster carers, children’s home staff, youth workers and everyone
else who strives day in, day out to provide safety, support and
stability to children who are in need or whose own families are
unable to care for them. Their work is vital, it makes a huge
difference, and it often goes unrecognised. At the top of my mind
today are the group of care leavers I hosted in Parliament
earlier this year. They were articulate, thoughtful and kind. All
had been through experiences that no child should have to endure,
and they all deserved far better than the current system had been
able to deliver.
I welcome the review’s conclusion that a total reset of
children’s social care is needed. That conclusion is a terrible
indictment of the extent to which this Government have been
failing children for more than a decade. During those 12 years,
we have seen the number of children living in poverty rise to 4.3
million. That is a key causal factor underpinning the
Government’s failure of children: the unbearable pressure on
families increases the risk of abuse and neglect. We have also
seen the number of looked-after children increase continually, up
by a quarter since 2010; the number of section 47 inquiries, when
a local authority has cause to suspect that a child is in need,
has gone up by 78% since 2011; half of all children’s services
departments have been rated “inadequate” or “requires
improvement”; vacancy and turnover rates for children’s social
workers are increasing; and outcomes for care-experienced
children and young people are worsening. In the meantime, the 10
biggest private providers of children’s homes and private foster
care placements made a jaw-dropping £300 million in profits last
year.
We welcome the review’s clear statement that providing care for
children should not be based on profit—it should not. The law
recognises childhood as lasting until the age of 18, and it is
shocking that the Government have continued to allow children to
be placed in unregistered children’s homes and other completely
unsuitable accommodation. We welcome the review’s conclusion that
the use of unregistered placements for 16 and 17-year-olds must
stop, and stop now.
At the heart of the Government’s failure is the erosion of early
help and family support, which is demonstrated no more starkly
than by the 1,300 Sure Start centres that have closed since 2010.
We welcome the review’s focus on restoring early help to families
so that many more children can be supported to remain and to
thrive with their own family, on supporting kinship carers and on
seeking to ensure that every looked-after child can build
lifelong links with extended family members.
Although the Minister reannounced a series of policies today,
there is nothing here that will deliver the transformation in
children’s social care that the review demands. Successive
piecemeal announcements are yet further indication of what the
review describes as
“a lack of national direction about the purpose of children’s
social care”.
The Minister does not seem to grasp the depth of change that the
review requires, at scale, across the whole country.
Will the Minister commit to a firm date for publication of a
comprehensive response to the review and a detailed
implementation plan? Does he expect that there will be a need for
legislation? How does this square with the Queen’s Speech voted
on last week, from which children’s social care was completely
absent? How will today’s announcement of early help investment in
a handful of additional places ensure that early help services
are available in every single area of the country, so that every
family who need help can be supported?
What representations is the Minister making to the Treasury in
response to the review? Will he commit, as the review demands, to
an end to profiteering in children’s social care? How will he
ensure that the voices and experiences of children are always at
the heart of children’s social care? How will he guarantee that
the workforce, who are the backbone of children’s social care,
are fully engaged and involved as the reforms are implemented?
Finally, how will he ensure that, as the reforms are implemented,
the framework of accountability for decisions made by the state
about the care of children is strengthened?
This review sets out the urgent need for the Government to put
children first and to stop poverty, mental illness, substance
misuse, domestic abuse, sexual abuse and other adverse childhood
experiences becoming the defining experience of a child’s whole
life, so that every child can thrive. Labour will always put
children first. We did so in government, and we will do so again.
This review represents an opportunity to deliver the total reset
that is needed in children’s social care. It is an opportunity
that must not be missed, and we will hold the Government to
account every single day on the framework of support and the
outcomes for our most vulnerable children.
The hon. Lady asks a lot of questions, and I genuinely mean it
when I say that I want to have as much of a cross-party approach
as possible in tackling this issue and delivering the review.
I thank the hon. Lady for her largely constructive comments, and
I thank her for the tone in which she referred to the review. We
all want to act on the review to bring about the change we all
want to see. Although I completely understand why she wants to
talk about the past, we have to be honest with ourselves that,
despite years of real-terms funding increases to children’s
social care, too many children and young people have been failed
and let down, and are still being failed and let down, by the
system. System reform is decades overdue, so I hope she will
understand why I want to focus on the future and how we will look
to implement the review.
The hon. Lady rightly pushes me on implementation, which is key.
The Secretary of State and I are determined that this will not be
just another report gathering dust on a shelf in Whitehall—this
is far too important. That is why I am establishing an
implementation board with sector experts to drive the change that
we want and need to see. An implementation plan will be delivered
by the end of this year.
Finally, the hon. Lady should not, in any way, doubt my personal
determination to implement many of the review’s recommendations.
Many colleagues who look at my Instagram feed say I have the best
job in Government, and to some extent they are right, but what
they do not see is that every weekend I read the serious incident
notification report detailing all the children who have been
killed, murdered, abused or neglected, or who have taken their
own life, during the previous week. It is a harrowing read. I
know that no legislation, process, procedure or review—however
good it is—can prevent evil, and I cannot promise that there will
not be further cases like Arthur, Star, Victoria, Daniel or
Peter. However, with this most excellent review—it really is
excellent—we have a plan, a road map, and an opportunity that we
must and will grasp to ensure that such cases are as rare as they
are tragic.
Mr Speaker
I call the Chair of the Education Committee.
(Harlow) (Con)
I strongly welcome the report, which is visionary in its scope. I
thank Josh MacAlister for briefing me on its findings a few days
ago. It is very much a “family, community and upwards” report,
rather than a “top down from the Government” review, and that is
important. I hope that the Government are bold on the funding
issues raised—costs of, I think, more than £2.4 billion—and the
proposal of a windfall tax on private companies to raise money
for more vulnerable children.
As colleagues will know, the Education Committee is finalising
our inquiry on the educational outcomes of children in care. We
know that just 7% of children in care achieve a good pass grade
in GCSE maths and English, and Josh MacAlister’s report says:
“In too many places the contribution and voice of education is
missing”.
What are the Government doing to ensure that these vulnerable
children are being placed in good or outstanding schools, and
that they are receiving the right, targeted catch-up tuition and
mentoring support to help them to catch up on lost learning and,
ultimately, to get the good jobs that they rightly deserve when
they come out of care?
Our intention is to be bold and ambitious. The plan is to set out
an immediate response today. There will then be a full response
and implementation plan by the end of the year. The Government
and I very much welcome this reset opportunity, and I hope that
our level of ambition is clear to the House.
My right hon. Friend is right that the results for children who
have been through and are currently in the care system are
unacceptable. His Select Committee is rightly working on a review
into the matter, and I look forward to working closely with him.
This is all about improving the outcomes and life chances of some
of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children in the country;
the key is ensuring that they have the opportunity to fulfil
their potential.
(Hackney North and Stoke
Newington) (Lab)
What does the Minister intend to do to support children and
families who are suffering in social care?
We have to ensure that we level up social care. What does that
mean at its heart? Yes, it means continuing our investment in
children’s social care, but it also means setting the level of
ambition significantly higher, which is exactly why the
Government initiated the independent review of children’s social
care and are looking at the 80-plus recommendations closely, and
why we have an implementation board, which will develop a clear
implementation plan.
We are taking steps now, because this is not just about money; it
is about culture change, system change, and process and procedure
change. I hope that over the next days, weeks and months, we can
get the right team in place and set the right strategic direction
so that the plan can be ready by the end of the year and we can
really get motoring with the change that the right hon. Lady and
I so desperately want to see.
(East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
May I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register
of Members’ Financial Interests?
Mr Speaker, I know I am getting old; indeed, this week I take
receipt, amazingly, of my senior person’s railcard. In my 25
years in this House, I have sat through many once-in-a-generation
reform programmes, many children’s Acts and many reviews, some of
which I launched myself and some of which my hon. Friend the
Member for Eddisbury () launched subsequently.
As the Minister quite rightly said, a review is only as good as
its delivery, so why will it be any different this time? In
particular, will he point to the welcome references —there are
some very welcome points in this review, for which I pay tribute
to Josh MacAlister—to “family help”, which seem similar to the
Munro review’s “early help” 10 years ago? How do they interrelate
with the family hubs that the Government are pushing forward and
the welcome “best start in life” programme, which is being pushed
forward by my right hon. Friend the Member for South
Northamptonshire (Dame )?
I thank my hon. Friend for all the work he did as Children’s
Minister when he was at the Department. He is right to say that
we have to ensure that the implementation of this report and
review is different from what has gone before. It may not shock
him to know that in the back of my mind I have the 2014 special
educational needs and disability review; that plan was bold and
ambitious, and many considered it to be the right one, but the
implementation was not and, as a result, it was not delivered and
we have had to revisit it. That is why I am not going at this
like a bull at a gate.
There are 80-plus recommendations and they have to be considered
very carefully. We have to listen to the sector, stakeholders and
others to make sure we get it right. That is why, although I have
responded immediately to set out the things we can do right now,
I am also setting up an implementation board to ensure that we
listen to the sector experts with experience of transformational
change, so that we can deliver the change that we all so
desperately want to see. I know that my hon. Friend will welcome
the level of ambition and that he is desperate to see change,
too.
(Kingston upon Hull West and
Hessle) (Lab)
I urge the Minister to look in particular at what happens to care
leavers when they reach the age of 18 and how the support
immediately falls away. Two organisations have been working on
this issue for a long time: one, Every Child Leaving Care
Matters, has been campaigning for a long time for additional
support for people when they reach 18, and the other, Wild
Intervention, is in my constituency. When the Minister does his
review and comes to his conclusions, will he find out what
happens when somebody goes from 17 to 18 years old? I do not want
to speak for everyone, but I am not sure that I would have been
capable of doing everything independently at the moment I turned
18. We seem to expect an awful lot from these young people.
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. By bringing about some of the
changes I have outlined, we will really change the game and turn
around the life chances of some of the young people who have
adverse experiences both in the care system and after it. I will
of course look carefully at the detailed recommendations in the
review. The key thing is not to see children’s social care as a
siloed issue, because it is not just a Department for Education
issue. Every Department, every local authority and even, dare I
say, businesses need to step up, recognise some of the challenges
that care leavers face and make appropriate changes. We are
taking some immediate steps—over the next two years, we are
investing £172 million in programmes such as staying put and
staying close, and in support for personal advisers—but I am
conscious that we need to do far more in this policy space.
(Sleaford and North
Hykeham) (Con)
As a paediatrician, I have seen far too many neglected children
and children who have been injured by their parents or carers. I
welcome Josh MacAlister’s report and thank the Minister for his
commitment to the issue. I ask him to do two things. First, will
he ensure that the plan leads to better evidence-based care for
children, and not simply more bureaucracy? Secondly, will he look
at schemes such as those I have seen at my medical practice, in
which new babies—many children in care are young babies—are cared
for with their parent, as a joint foster placement, thereby
enabling the parent to develop the skills they need to provide
ongoing care for their child?
My hon. Friend is a fount of experience on this and many other
issues, especially those relating to safeguarding. She is right
that we have to consider different and innovative approaches to
keep families together wherever possible. When that cannot work,
we should look into alternative arrangements. In future, I would
like to pick my hon. Friend’s brains. I want all Members to
contribute to how we deliver on the review.
(Birmingham, Hall Green)
(Lab)
First, will the Minister join me in extending gratitude to the
thousands of social workers and family foster care workers who do
the hard work day in, day out? We have a huge difficulty in my
Birmingham, Hall Green constituency with children not being
matched with families from certain minority groups because of the
lack of awareness and the lack of families coming forward to
foster. Will the Minister commit to making sure that when foster
carers are not coming forward, everything will be done to
encourage Muslim families and ethnic minority families to do so,
so that the children do not miss out and the responsibilities to
them are taken seriously?
I very much welcome the hon. Gentleman’s question. There are few
professions that can claim to transform lives as much as child
and family social workers. I know that he and colleagues from
across the House will join me in paying tribute to those who work
hard to support our most vulnerable children and families,
delivering some of the most challenging and important work that
is out there. We have invested another £100 million over the next
two years alone in the recruitment, retention and professional
development of child and family social workers in England, and we
will do more in that space. Specifically related to his question
about minority groups, he is right that we have a shortage of
foster carers generally. All across the country, we need more
foster carers of all different backgrounds to come forward, so we
will be looking at a fostering campaign. We also need adopters to
come forward, too. All of us across this House have a duty—even a
moral imperative—to encourage as many people as possible to
consider those roles.
(Eddisbury) (Con)
I welcome this serious and substantial report, which is rightly
ambitious for vulnerable children right across the country. It
builds effectively on the Munro review, the Children and Families
Act 2014 and the Children and Social Work Act 2017, as well as
the learning from the innovation programme with projects such as
Mockingbird. Although financial resource will be a part of making
the report’s recommendations a reality, a huge amount of work
will need to be undertaken, as my hon. Friend will know from the
13 pages of implementation advice in the report, over a
significant period. Although the national implementation board is
a good first step, may I have my hon. Friend’s assurance that he
will try to ensure that there is relentless prioritisation, focus
and delivery across the whole of Government, not just the
Department for Education, which will be essential to make this
happen for vulnerable children?
My hon. Friend has considerable experience from his years as
children and families Minister, and I very much appreciate his
past and ongoing wise counsel. He is right that implementation is
key. This is not, as I mentioned, just a DfE issue. It is for
every Government Department and every local authority to step up
and act. Some of the changes within systems, local authorities
and children’s services are cultural, and they will take time to
embed, which is exactly why I am not rushing to legislation. We
must take the time to get this right. This is, as my hon. Friend
rightly points out, a fantastic piece of work, of more than 270
pages. To ensure that we get it right, we must digest it,
stress-test it, market-test it and hear from stakeholders. We
have some initial recommendations, but we will need a full
implementation plan by the end of the year and help from the
board to deliver it with a laser-like focus.
(Birmingham, Yardley)
(Lab)
I welcome the review. The Minister says that he wishes to speak
to stakeholders. I offer myself up wholeheartedly to provide any
help that I can give. I want to ensure that he includes
specialists in violence against women and girls, because that
matter is handled woefully in children’s services in our country,
with dreadful consequences. What comes out of this review and
also the previous review into sexual exploitation of children is
that, between 2018 and 2020, 22 16-and-17-year-olds tragically
died while living in unregulated settings. Both reviews called
for a stop to those deregulated settings. The Minister could do
that today; I urge him to do so.
I thank the hon. Lady—dare I even say my hon. Friend? I had taken
it for granted that she would be a key driver in helping to
implement much of our plan. She rightly references victims of
domestic abuse as needing and deserving help and support from a
range of national and local services. I assure her that I am
committed to working across Government to ensure that children’s
social care works with the police, health, justice and, most
importantly, victims and those who have experience of domestic
abuse to get the support that they need, including, where
appropriate, support with parenting. The statutory duty in the
Domestic Abuse Act 2021 will help us with that. On regulation, we
have £142 million earmarked to support the regulation of settings
for 17 and 18-year-olds.
(Keighley) (Con)
I commend the work done by the review’s author Josh MacAlister,
and all the families, young people and professionals who kindly
shared their own experiences to form the review. Vulnerable
children and families across the UK, especially in Keighley and
the Bradford district, which I have spoken about so many times on
this issue, need much better support, and that can only be
achieved through a fundamental shift in how children’s social
care services are delivered. I ask my hon. Friend to outline the
new measures that will be implemented on the back of today’s
announcements that specifically focus on children’s protections
and the children’s protection system?
I thank my hon. Friend for all the work he has done alongside
parliamentary colleagues in relation to Bradford. Keeping
vulnerable children safe from harm is non-negotiable, and where a
council is not meeting its duty to do that, we will act to
protect children and put their needs first. As he knows,
Bradford’s children’s social care is being lifted into a trust
that will drive rapid improvements following recommendations made
by the children’s services commissioner on what the council must
do to improve.
On Thursday, the Secretary of State will set out more on
immediate action in response to the tragic deaths of Arthur and
Star. First, social worker early career support, especially
around child protection expertise and specialism, will be key.
Secondly, a national children’s social care framework will be
developed, embedding best practice in every local authority and
children’s services department up and down our country.
(Denton and Reddish)
(Lab)
As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on kinship care and
as a special guardian to my own grandson, I welcome the review
and the Minister’s statement. At Education questions the Minister
will have heard me congratulate Stockport children’s services on
attaining a “Good” rating from Ofsted. However, I must say that
my and my wife’s experience of Tameside children’s services was
frankly dreadful. Will the Minister commit to delivering on the
proposals in the MacAlister review to unlock the power of family
networks, including the family group decision making and the
package of support for kinship carers set out in the review?
On Tameside, where local authorities are failing to deliver
high-quality children’s services the Department acts quickly and
decisively. As the hon. Gentleman—I think I can call him my hon.
Friend—knows, we are expecting Ofsted’s findings on Tameside in
the coming weeks. I assure him that I will not hesitate to take
action should it find failings.
On the broader point about kinship care and special guardians, I
am full of admiration for anybody who steps up as the hon.
Gentleman has; in many cases, it avoids a child’s going into care
and keeps them within that loving family environment. It will not
always be appropriate and it will not always work, but wherever
possible we must explore it and ensure that social workers do so
at the earliest opportunity—before a child is taken into care—and
not as an afterthought. We will look carefully at the
recommendations made in the independent review into children’s
social care, but he can trust me when I say that I want us to
change the game on kinship care and special guardians.
(Meon Valley) (Con)
I welcome this excellent report and the Minister’s statement. In
2007 I worked with my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing
and Shoreham () and experts to publish a report into children’s
social workers. Does the Minister agree with us that we need a
career path that gives experienced children’s social workers the
choice of staying on the frontline rather than moving into
management?
I thank my hon. Friend for her considerable expertise in this
space. We need to look at recruitment of social workers, but we
must also look at retention. There is a real danger that we will
lose experienced social workers not just to leadership, but to
other areas and other council functions. That is why we are
looking closely at the development of a national children’s
social care framework and of social worker early career support,
so that there is both progression and a specialism and expertise
in child safeguarding. I would be happy to meet her to discuss
her ideas further.
(Twickenham) (LD)
As the Minister has set out, kinship carers are unsung heroes who
often step in at short notice to care for children that the local
authority would otherwise care for. The review sets out what we
already knew: the outcome for children in kinship care is often
better than for others in non-parental care. Yet kinship carers
receive no financial support unless they register as foster
parents, a process that denies them parental responsibility for
the child. I ask again: will the Minister accept the review’s
recommendations that kinship carers get the same financial
allowances as foster carers?
I will look very carefully at the review, which has more than 80
recommendations so I am tentative; I am not going to pick some to
respond to immediately and some not. We are taking clear initial
steps and I will publish an implementation plan by the end of the
year. Broadly, I agree with the hon. Lady. There are two aspects
to address if we want to ensure better outcomes and life chances
for children and young people in care. If we can avoid children
going into care by enabling them to stay with a kinship carer or
special guardian, we must look at that. The secondary factor is
the cost to local authorities, and therefore the taxpayer, of
children going into care. Where there is the opportunity for them
to stay with a family member, it can be advantageous for us to
invest in that family member to avoid the child going into care,
saving the taxpayer money and leading to better outcomes, so of
course I am looking at that. I have given the hon. Lady the
clearest steer I can, but I will respond by the end of the
year.
(Stoke-on-Trent South)
(Con)
I very much welcome the review. As the Minister knows, over the
last few years we have had serious challenges in children’s
social care in Stoke-on-Trent, but the city council is now taking
significant action to improve children’s social care in the city
and we have seen some promising signs. Does my hon. Friend
welcome those improvements, and does he agree that we need
partners to work with the city council—the police, health
services and others—to drive further improvements?
I am pleased to see the improvements made in Stoke-on-Trent. My
hon. Friend is absolutely right when he says that the Department
for Education and local authorities cannot do this alone; they
need other agencies and partners to be involved, and not just
when it comes to safeguarding, although that is hugely important.
We need the multi-agency approach, with all arms of the state,
and indeed local businesses, communities and the voluntary
sector, pulling together to improve the life chances of the most
disadvantaged and vulnerable children in our country.
(York Central)
(Lab/Co-op)
I truly welcome the report and thank Josh MacAlister for the work
that he and his team have done on the review. The social cost of
adverse outcomes reaches £23 billion a year, yet the
recommendations looked at £2.6 billion over a five-year
implementation period. They included bringing in regional care
co-operatives, as has happened with adoption and permanency in
the regional adoption agencies. Will the Minister ensure that the
report is implemented in full—not bits picked out of it—and that
the funding will be there?
I cannot commit to implementing the entire report in full; there
are more than 80 recommendations and it is right that we take it
away, stress-test it, consider all the aspects of the proposals
and their consequences, intended and otherwise, and speak with
the sector and stakeholders. I recognise the level of ambition
and I support huge aspects of the review.
Funding is important, and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor is
as committed as I am to ensuring that all children are given an
equal chance to succeed by supporting the most vulnerable in our
society. Look at the evidence from “The Case for Change”, which
set out the initial findings of the care review: more than £2
billion into children’s social care; £695 million into the
supporting families programme, a 40% increase which I know the
hon. Lady will welcome; £259 million into building new children’s
homes, secure and open; and the £300 million investment in family
hubs in half the local authorities in our country.
(Devizes) (Con)
I too welcome the report wholeheartedly. In my view, Josh
MacAlister has set out a template for social policy in general,
not just for children’s social care. Too often, our interventions
in the social space are too late, too siloed and too statist,
whereas what Mr MacAlister suggests is a framework around
building stronger families and stronger communities that also
funds prevention, in the knowledge that that will save money
later, as well as distress. I see my right hon. Friends the
Minister for Crime and Policing and the Home Secretary on the
Treasury Bench, and we are talking about saving their budgets
too. Does the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon.
Friend the Member for Colchester (), accept the argument that
up-front investment in a good system will save money later and
pay for itself?
I certainly do accept that argument, but it is a case that we all
will have to make to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There is a
significant spend-to-save argument in the review. It is important
to stress that we have already invested significantly in early
intervention. I talked about the package for families—family
hubs, start for life services in more than 75 local authorities
across our country, and the expansion of the supporting families
programme. That is all part of the mix, but we will continue to
consider carefully those issues on which the review suggests we
should go further—in particular issues around early help and
making the case for it. As I say, we have an ambitious
implementation strategy and implementation plan, which I will
report on by the end of the year.
(Weaver Vale) (Lab)
As I speak, there are children in inappropriate
placements—placements that are out of area, that are unregulated,
and where there is no professionalism, not the right culture, not
the love and compassion that are required, and more focus on
profit and shareholder value. What will the Minister do to change
that culture? He referred to shaping a market. In-house provision
would save the taxpayer a considerable amount of money—and, very
importantly, children would be centre stage.
I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern that some providers out
there are providing a very poor service to children and young
people and are making excessive profits. We need to look at that,
in short. The care review gives us a number of options. As a
Conservative, I am not in and of itself against profit, as long
as good-quality services are being provided that lead to good and
high-quality outcomes for children and young people, and it
represents good value for money for the taxpayer. Doing things
in-house is not always cheaper and better, but it is important
that we get value for money and have good outcomes. I have no
issue with profit; I have an issue with profiteering, and that is
why I will look closely at the Competition and Markets
Authority’s report, and will respond fully by the end of the
year.
(Rochester and Strood)
(Con)
I declare an interest, as my sister is a social worker. I have,
over many years, seen poor outcomes for young people who have
travelled through our care system, so I welcome the review and
some of what was in it, but this is a complex area. As my hon.
Friend the Minister mentioned, we have seen a number of reviews,
and the many barriers in children’s social care that we all know
about have come up again in the review. On his implementation
board and the plan that will be brought forward before the end of
year, will he take social workers with him, so that they feed
into discussions on what that the measures look like on the
ground? Also, can we truly tackle, once and for all, these two
basic issues: the case load that social workers face in our local
authorities; and the need to enable local authorities to support
foster carers, so that the private sector no longer needs to fill
that gap?
I very much welcome my hon. Friend’s contribution, and I thank
her sister for what she does as a social worker, as well as all
social workers up and down our country. We are absolutely serious
about reform and delivering the change that we all want. My hon.
Friend mentioned two specific points. The first was about the
case load, which is at the moment around 16 cases; that is down
from about 20 in 2017, but the case load number is hugely
misleading. I have rightly spent plenty of time with social
workers up and down our country, and shadowed social workers in
Cumbria, so I know that one case can take as long as 20. This is
therefore not just about numbers. We have to look at the case
load and social worker recruitment. On foster carers, it is
absolutely right that we support them from the point at which
they make an application or expression of interest to the point
at which they become foster carers. Support should be ongoing,
too, so that placements do not fail.
(Bristol East) (Lab)
I have looked at the section in the report on children’s mental
health, which is okay as far as it goes, but we know that child
and adolescent mental health services are in absolute crisis.
Figures were released yesterday that show that more children than
ever are presenting with mental health problems, and many of them
will not get the help that they need. Children in care can carry
trauma with them their whole life if they are not helped. How
will the Minister work with his colleagues in the Department of
Health and Social Care to make sure that there is not a silo, and
that he is not just looking at the aspects of mental health for
which he bears responsibility? I am trying to avoid the phrase
“joined-up working”, but genuine joined-up working is what we
need.
The hon. Lady is absolutely right, and if there is one area in
which we need less silo working, it is children’s mental health.
My remit is broader than just Department for Education matters—it
is around children more generally—so of course that issue
concerns me. I can only do so much—there are the mental health
support teams in schools, and senior mental health leads, in
which we are making significant investment—but of course I meet
regularly with my counterparts in the Department of Health and
Social Care. Yes, that Department is making investments—for
example, there is the £2.3 billion for mental health support—but
in truth, too many children and young people are waiting too long
for CAMHS services. We know that is a driver for children’s
social care, so of course I will continue to have conversations
with my counterparts to make sure that the issue remains a
priority.
(Crewe and Nantwich)
(Con)
I enthusiastically welcome the report, and I thank Josh
MacAlister for his work. I also give my sincere thanks to those
with experience of care who contributed to it. It brought to my
attention that of 160,000 people who registered an interest in
fostering last year, only 2,000 were approved. That is an
absolute tragedy for children in need of loving homes, but it is
also a tragedy for the taxpayer. The Minister has talked
reasonably about the need to divide issues into the things that
he wants to take short-term steps on, and the things that will
take longer, but can he assure us that on his immediate to-do
list is ensuring that more people who want to foster get to do so
in the short term?
I reiterate my thanks to Josh MacAlister and his team for this
most excellent review. My hon. Friend is right that there will be
an immediate laser-like focus on foster care recruitment—local,
regional and, to some extent, national. That is hugely important
because we need additional places. The figures are a bit
misleading, because there are huge numbers of expressions of
interests, often to multiple agencies, and there are some people
in there whom we would not want to be foster carers. However, the
number of expressions of interest versus the number of successful
foster carers is not where we want it to be. That means massively
increasing the pool and, when it comes to expressions of
interest, really hand-holding and making sure that people get the
support that they need to go through to fostering and beyond.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
I thank the Minister for his statement and I congratulate him on
Colchester becoming a city. We are very proud of that in Essex.
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