Children’s Social Care Implementation Strategy (Public Services
Committee Report) Moved by Baroness Morris of Yardley That this
House takes note of the Report from the Public Services Committee A
response to the Children’s Social Care Implementation Strategy (3rd
Report, HL Paper 201). Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab) My Lords, I
am pleased to move this debate on the response to the children’s
social care and implementation strategy. I am conscious...Request free trial
Children’s Social Care
Implementation Strategy (Public Services Committee
Report)
Moved by
That this House takes note of the Report from the Public Services
Committee A response to the Children’s Social Care Implementation
Strategy (3rd Report, HL Paper 201).
(Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased to move this debate on the response to the
children’s social care and implementation strategy. I am
conscious that this is a debate on a response to a consultation
to a report, and that we are still awaiting the final report, so
I suspect this will be one of the conversations and discussions
we have about this very important issue—one I know the committee
will wish to return to as things progress.
I thank everybody who has helped us bring about this report.
First, the many witnesses who appeared for us and sent written
evidence gave us their expertise and wisdom, and we could not
have come to our conclusions or understood the topic without
their contribution. I also put on record the thanks of all the
committee to our team: Tom Burke, Claire Coast-Smith and Lara
Oriju, led by our clerk, Sam Kenny. Their ability to draw
together all the different strands and help us make sense of what
we heard is invaluable and underpins the report we are discussing
today. I personally thank the members of the committee, who have
been enthusiastic and assiduous in our work on this topic, as
they always are, and I am grateful to those who could turn up
today.
I give a special mention and thanks to the young people we spoke
to as part of our inquiry. The part of our report that summarises
what they said is worth reading. If there is one thing we can do
at ministerial and committee level, it is to keep that by our
side and judge our success by how much we can say, “That will
never happen again”, and that people in care will get a better
deal. All those young people were doing good things with their
lives and making a success of things, but not one of them was
doing it because of the quality of social care they had received.
They were doing it despite it. That really sums up where we
are.
Unusually, perhaps, for a policy area of such importance, there
is a shared understanding across the nation, not just across
politicians, of the importance of this area, what has gone wrong
and what needs to be put right; and a shared ambition that this
needs to be a priority for everyone and we need to make things
better.
Every single witness we spoke to and who wrote to us welcomed the
direction of travel the Government have set out. It surprised
some of them that the Government had gone further in their
ambition than they said they wanted to, and that might have been
expected. I acknowledge, as the committee does in its report,
some important individual policies that were good and welcome and
will make a small difference. To put kinship care firmly in the
policy was important, because it has been ignored in the past.
Although we could debate that and talk about improvements, the
Government have shown a commitment to kinship care, and we see
from what they say that they intend to take it forward. We are
pleased that the Government’s response to our comments on the
importance of independent advocacy shows that they listened, and
some change there is promised. We welcome the increase in the
foster care allowance the Government have announced.
However, just as I can confidently say that almost everyone who
appeared before us shared the ambition and understanding, they
also all said, without exception, that there was a lack of
urgency or boldness. I want to focus on that today, because that
and the recommendations around it are the main part of our
report. I could use many words, but it is perhaps worth quoting
from our report what Josh MacAlister, who led the independent
inquiry, said. He said two things, and both are true:
“I genuinely think this is the right direction and that the
Government made some very positive announcements.”
In the same set of evidence, he went on to say that this was a
“missed opportunity” and that
“it is not of the scale of … change that will see a tipping point
in the system for some time.”
That was backed up by a lot of witnesses. Joe Lane, head of
policy and research for Action for Children, said:
“We could easily be sitting here in three or four years,
potentially longer, with the same problems.”
That is what worries us, not the lack of ambition. People say
that the response is not ambitious enough. I think it is, but it
does not have the means of achieving that ambition. That is very
different. Politicians are good at words, and it is easy to write
a report that is ambitious. It is more difficult to write a
report that convinces people that there is a route to
implementation of that ambition. That is what is lacking and what
I want to focus on now.
The evidence for that can be seen in the language of the report
and its approach to the key policies. If you go back and look at
Josh MacAlister’s independent review, you can pick up the words
again and again. It calls for a radical reset. It calls for a
fundamental shift. It talks about policies being delivered at
pace and with determination. When you look at the Government’s
response, you see the same shared ambition and the same common
understanding of what is wrong with the social care system, but
what comes out again and again are words such as “we will
consider the options”, “encouragement to review” and “we will
explore the case for”. That is the problem. That language
underpins the approach that seems to be there in the Government’s
response. I was left thinking that where boldness was called for,
caution has been offered, and therein is the problem.
That approach can also be seen in the two key policy areas at the
centre of the proposals. We all agree that trying to move the
focus of social care to prevention rather than dealing with
crisis is fundamental to getting that right. If not, we are
constantly spending resource too late on things that are
happening and it is likely to have too little effect. One bit of
information that our committee picked up from Barnardo’s in
response was that of the £800 million increase in spending last
year —more money has gone in—80% was spent on late intervention.
That is the shift needed. Unless we can turn that round, nothing
will change. That is a big task that calls for boldness and huge
commitment, but what we have instead in this early help is
pilots.
I am all for evaluation, and it is crucial that we use evidence
to take us forward, but I am confident—and the committee and our
witnesses are equally confident—that there is enough evidence
available from over the years to make a start in every single
area of this country. Go back to Sure Start, look at the
Government’s family hubs, and look at what the research centre
the Government set up—I think it was called Early Help—decided.
There is ample evidence in our report of what works in early
intervention so that every area of the country could have started
now on something, with some resource, with some encouragement.
Then if we want to experiment further than that, we can roll out
a pilot of it. The truth is that, where we are at the moment, it
will be 2026 before the rollout of a national programme begins,
and that is not achieving the ambition and is not bold.
If you look at the second key area, which the committee said was
workforce reform, we know there is a problem. There are 8,000
vacancies and 18% of children’s social care staff were agency
workers only last year. There is good stuff. I think the early
years career framework could be the spine of something exciting
that can attract people and retain them in the profession.
However, the national rollout will be from 2026, whereas the
committee recommended that some measures be implemented this year
and that we adopt ambitious targets. That is the problem. This
report says that all we are going to do until 2026 is trial
things. That means that lots of areas of the country will see
nothing, or very little, not enough to make a change, and change
in all areas for every child has to start now. Even then, it is
only the beginning of a journey.
The last thing is that, whereas the report called for £2.6
billion over four years, there is £200 million over two years. I
want to give this example of what I think we are trying to say
which for me summarises it best. Take two initiatives from the
last Labour Government and the present Conservative Government:
the literacy and numeracy strategies from the last Labour
Government and the academy strategy from the present Conservative
Government. It does not matter whether you agree with them or
not; no one was in any doubt that they were going to be
implemented. With literacy and with academies, they were not
implemented in full in the first year. It was an evaluation. We
were trialling, but no one did not believe that resources would
be found to carry that policy forward. I always knew that we
would carry forward literacy and numeracy. Every Government
Minister has believed that they would take forward the academies
programme, and we are not convinced of that in this policy area.
There is neither a timeframe, a promise of legislation, political
leadership or resource set out that gives the committee the
confidence to think that action will definitely follow these
initial stages.
I finish by asking for some more information on one or two key
areas. The one area where we disagreed, were very uncertain and
definitely asked the Government to go slow and evaluate was
regional care co-operatives. It was not just local authorities,
which could be said to have a vested interest in this, but some
of those representing user groups who were not convinced that the
argument had been made for regional care co-operatives, so we ask
that they be kept under review. There was also very little
mention of residential homes. However well we do, there will
always be a need for some children, at some point in their care
journey, to be in a residential home.
The phrase “once in a generation opportunity” is overused, but it
is apt here. I think the stars are aligned—the need is proven,
the wish is there and the ambition is shared—but we need a plan
that convinces everyone on the ground that it is actually going
to happen, and on that the report falls short. I hope the
Minister will reflect on our comments and perhaps reflect them in
the report that is eventually published. I beg to move.
8.51pm
(LD)
My Lords, I declare an interest as co-chair of the All-Party
Parliamentary Group for Children. I congratulate the noble
Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, on opening the debate so
compellingly, and I congratulate her and the whole committee on
this excellent report.
It happens that it follows, helpfully, the recent debate on the
implementation of the Children and Families Act 2014. We were
told then by the Minister, who is on duty again tonight, that
many of our recommendations would be considered and taken forward
as part of the implementation strategy we are debating tonight. I
welcome that commitment and look forward to working with
Ministers on it.
In the short time available, I shall make some general points
about children’s social care. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris,
has reminded us, the independent review of children’s social care
called for an immediate investment of £2.6 billion to address the
existing crisis in children’s social care. It talked about a
revolution in family help to prevent children entering care where
possible. It talked, as we have been told, of a
“once in a generation opportunity”
to better protect children, deliver the right support for
families at the right time and create a sustainable system that
delivers value for money.
However, more than a year later we seem to be little further
forward on the reform that is so urgently needed. The Government
have pledged just £200 million over a two-year period to fund 12
family first pathfinders and regional care co-operatives, but the
national rollout of new family help services will not happen
until 2026 at the earliest, and there is no legislative timetable
for introducing further reform. I agree that we need to see a far
greater sense of urgency and pace to these reforms.
Recent analysis commissioned by some of the UK’s leading
children’s charities reveals that the funding will now need to
exceed £2.6 billion due to the impact of inflation and the cost
of delaying reforms. That research supports the Public Services
Committee’s finding that the level of investment in the stable
homes strategy is “inadequate” and will have long-term social and
financial costs.
I underline the importance of a shift to a focus on early
intervention. As we have heard so many times, not least in
reports from the APPG for children in recent years, we need to
switch from crisis to preventive work to protect children
properly. That means championing the importance of family help
and support.
The research that I mentioned by children’s charities has already
found that local authorities across England increased their
spending on children’s services by £800 million in 2021-22, a
substantial 8% surge from the previous year. However, as we have
heard, over 80% of that increase was funnelled into crisis
intervention: safeguarding, child protection and the ever rising
number of children in care. In short, of the additional money
spent, £4 in every £5 went on late intervention services. In the
light of that research, the Public Services Committee’s
recommendations—to roll out early help nationally and to ensure
that this is linked to family hubs—are welcome. Unless this
pattern of expenditure is shifted significantly, frankly, nothing
is ever going to change.
Turning very briefly to child protection, the record number of
children who are now looked after by the state, the horrific
killings of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson, and the abuse
of disabled children recently uncovered in residential settings
in Doncaster are powerful reminders of the urgent need for
reform. Meaningful, sustainable change requires long-term
investment, yes, but the Government must also introduce an
emergency package of measures to stabilise the current child
protection system. Can the Minister please provide an update of
what is happening in this area?
We also need to see sustained funding for family help services,
ranging from children’s centres and youth clubs to targeted
support on issues such as drug and alcohol misuse, to stop
problems further spiralling. Of course, we cannot ignore the
workforce challenges, which we have already heard about from the
noble Baroness, Lady Morris.
Finally, on links with wider policy, particularly on health and
disability, what assurances can the Minister give that the major
conditions strategy will focus on children and young people, in
particular mental health, to help alleviate the additional
pressure that the crisis in mental health support places on
social care? Can the Minister say what support will be made
available to adopted children needing help to overcome trauma and
what special measures are being put in place for children in
care, who are four times as likely to experience mental health
issues as their peers?
The Government’s test-and-review approach to reform is unlikely
to lead to the level of investment and changes so desperately
needed. I conclude once again by urging the Government to
reconsider the scope for further investment at their next
spending review.
8.56pm
(Lab)
My Lords, I thank the committee for this report. It is a fair
and, in a sense, generous report to the Government but it raises
some serious issues, as my right honourable and noble friend Lady
Morris did in her excellent opening speech. This could not be
more serious for thousands and thousands of children and
families. We want to see that urgency and challenge in the
Government’s implementation of the MacAlister report.
This report demonstrates the value in the House of a committee
which is ongoing but can keep returning to serious issues. Under
my chairmanship, I think we had two or three reports. This one
follows those up and, as my noble friend Lady Morris made clear,
the current committee will also do that, which is a very
important aspect of our work.
In the short time I have—I have already used far too much—I do
not have time to comment on everything, so I will be very
specific. I am currently chairing an advisory group to the North
East Child Poverty Commission and really want to talk about what
I have been learning from that. The north-east has experienced
the steepest increases in child poverty in the country over much
of the last decade. It has risen from 26% in 2014-15 to 35% in
2021-22. The north-east has the highest proportion anywhere in
England, by a fairly significant amount, of looked-after
children. It also shares the highest proportion of children
within kinship care settings. All of those things matter, and
they add up to really effect the fabric for children in the
region.
In a joint submission to the initial report, the north- east’s
directors of children’s services—all of 12 them —said:
“Exceptional levels of poverty in the North East are driving
dramatic rises in child protection intervention and the number of
children in care. The cost of this cannot be afforded.
Exacerbated by reductions in government funding, spending on
early help has reduced at a time when it has been most needed.
This vicious cycle can only be broken by different ways of
working, backed up by adequate investment”.
They submitted another joint response to what the Government had
to say in response to the MacAlister report. Their concern
was:
“The long-term intergenerational impact of poverty and
deprivation is not being addressed and will continue to feed
rising demand for services. A new national child poverty strategy
is needed”.
An academic study last year, I think by the University of
Liverpool, found that rising child poverty can be linked to an
additional 10,000-plus children having been taken into care
across England between 2015 and 2020. The problem with this is,
as my right honourable and noble friends said, the more that
services locally are having to spend on the crisis in the care
system, the less they are spending on prevention. That has become
more difficult in the last year, rather than easier. We really
have to face up to that.
The other thing is that during austerity the north-east suffered
the highest level of funding cuts to local government. Child
poverty increased and local government services were reduced by
26% across the region on average, which means that the support
and help for children and families simply was not there. Is it
any wonder that I want to associate myself with what the report
says in its plea for the Government to show more “pace” and
“ambition” to enact the review? We need that in the north-east.
The children in the north-east need it and the Government really
must respond.9.02pm
(LD)
My Lords, I thank the chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, for
her excellent introduction and the brilliant way in which she
chairs the committee. I also thank her predecessor, the noble
Baroness, Lady Armstrong, for her continued commitment to child
social care. It is very rewarding to see.
Oddly for me, I also thank the Government for recognising that
there is a crisis and for their willingness to take on board the
urgency of the findings of the plethora of challenges outlined in
Josh MacAlister’s independent review. Unfortunately, despite some
positive recommendations, the Government’s response is neither
radical, urgent or financially credible considering the scale of
the challenge. Far too many calls for further evidence is
incredibly disappointing.
The challenge was illustrated to me when the committee had the
opportunity and privilege to meet a number of young people with
direct experience of the current social care system. One highly
articulate young woman, now aged 20, had, together with her twin
sister and younger sibling, been placed in care at the age of 11.
Her grandmother had previously cared for the children but was
deemed unsuitable due to financial reasons—an issue for kinship
carers that we highlighted in our report. After a year, the
children were split up. The youngest child stayed, but the twins
were put into residential care, only to be moved through four
different foster homes before eventually being separated. “Stable
homes built on love” is a distant dream.
On her journey, our witness was moved without explanation from
inner London to a rural setting, where she felt totally out of
place and was bullied. She regularly asked social workers to move
her back to London and an urban environment, which did not happen
until post-16, when she was moved to a hostel in London. To the
committee’s amazement, she was not bitter. She recognised the
challenges of the care system, but urged the committee to plead
with the Government for the voices of children to be heard and
for changes to be explained by those making decisions before the
changes actually happened.
She commented to the committee:
“I am not a number, I am a person … we are all humans”,
as she reflected on the inability of the system to act as
corporate parents and the lack of time that social workers have
to work with individual children. What was so rewarding for me
was that, despite the frequent changes, she had really enjoyed
her schooling, had now secured a care leavers’ internship and was
able to articulate her concerns just a few weeks ago on an ITV
programme.
I have spent most of my adult life, 36 years, working in the most
deprived areas of Leeds and Cleveland as a youth worker, teacher
and head, and I know the price that society pays for its lack of
investment in our most at-risk young people. More than half of
children in care have a criminal record by the age of 24—four
times more than those not in care—with 18% receiving a custodial
sentence before they are 16. That is a staggering set of
statistics. Only one in 50 of these children gained five GCSEs,
and 92% had special education needs and disabilities.
It is so important to recognise that, to children in care,
education is a vital key to help solve so many problems. But, as
the recent findings of Action for Children reported, between 2019
and 2021 more than half of children with social care referrals
failed either English or maths at GCSE. Trying to separate school
from social care, when a third of a child’s early life is spent
in education, is a gross mistake. They are part of the same. It
is this need to fundamentally change how we approach the
education and support of children in care that makes me urge the
Government to think again about their funding proposals.
It is difficult to know what to think when an inquiry which
looked at the whole detail looks for £2.6 billion, and we end up
with £200 million to be spent over two years. It is really quite
insulting to all the people who made such a commitment not only
to our inquiry but constantly to the issue of trying to make a
better life for children.
My worry with regard to this report, which I think has been well
received not simply by the Government but by all the
organisations involved in child social care, is that next year
when we have a general election and things get knocked even
further back, there will be yet another set of reports and ideas.
What we will see is not 2026, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris,
indicated, but 2036 coming without a great deal of change. This
is far too important for party-political diversity. It is such an
important issue and we all, whatever our backgrounds and
political requirements, must get behind this report and seek from
the Government the sort of commitment they have. I plead with the
Minister to ask young people what they think when they are in
care, because that is one of the key principles that should be
added to the six principles that they have quite rightly put in
their answers.
9.08pm
(Lab)
My Lords, it has been a harrowing privilege to serve on the
committee that produced this report. Before moving on, I pay
tribute to the highly consultative but steely chairing of this
inquiry. It has been extremely well done, and we are all very
grateful to the committee clerk, Sam Kenny, and Tom Burke and
Claire Coast-Smith, who have really backed us up and have been
tremendous.
Going back a little bit, many years ago in my late teens I spent
a number of vacations working in a home for children in care. The
local authority was the LCC, now redundant, and the model of
care, now redundant, was a large campus with hundreds of
children, based on the public school model of houses, playing
fields, a chapel and a lot of open space. Since then, we have
moved on; we have moved people back into the community by and
large and have provided local services—standards have improved.
But here we are at a moment of inflection, when radical change is
needed: just as it occurred all those years ago when we changed
the model of care, we have to do it again. So we have this
opportunity—and the MacAlister report showed us the way. However,
as other noble Lords have said, it could be characterised as high
on ambition and aspiration, but I do not quite see how it is
going to happen. I shall return to the money in a minute.
I turn to the question of pace. It is wonderful— I sometimes
wonder whether all government reports are like this: you
commission a report, you buy a bit of time, you consult, you buy
a bit more time, you run a pilot, you buy a bit more time, then
it fades away—time and again. This, however, has to be different,
because this is a critical group of people.
I want to touch quickly on four areas, which cover the
generalities. First, there are 13,000 children in residential
homes. That is still an enormous number. There should be better
ways of caring for them. However, while we have them, we also
need better regulation. We need to see what Ofsted is doing to
develop that inspection framework. Another point is proximity.
Those children are often sent away to care homes that are remote,
and they are often remote because the property is cheap. In other
services, proximity has become key. We should be moving the
children closer, not only culturally but physically, to where
they come from.
Other noble Lords have talked about voice. We heard about some
very moving cases. It seems that, at both the micro and macro
levels, the voices have not been listened to. We need to get out
there. Again, the concept is there; we know that we need to
develop opt-out advocacy services. We need to develop these
things, and it should be a question of when, not if. It is easy
just to say the policy.
Other Members have touched on workforce. How can we be 7,900
people short? That is bound to lead to bad care being provided.
Similarly, in residential care, people are badly paid and the
churn is colossal. There may be the right number of people for
the CQC inspection, but the fact that some are coming and some
are going obviously affects the quality of care. Can the Minister
say when the shortfall in care workers will be eradicated? Are we
paying enough? How do we get this level of temporary labour down.
It is amazing—it is a sign of a bad system.
For me, perhaps the most important thing—beyond early
intervention—is kinship care. The report touched on this. Some
estimates show that there are about 150,000 to 200,000 in such
care, as opposed to 57,000 in foster care. This is a worthy thing
of course—it is how families used to do it; they would group
together. In recent times, the funding has made that much more
difficult; it is patchy and depends on the postcode. We need to
see what we can do about that. A review is due, so let us hope it
is comprehensive and has some money attached to it. If, however,
it is another aspiration and another pilot, taking longer and
longer, we will fail to grasp the opportunity. This is a terrible
situation. Often, a grandparent is taking a grandchild, and it
often means the grandparent walking away from their own children;
they are separated from them. That is harrowing, and we need to
back those people up as far as we can and as quickly as we
can.
As others have said, it all comes down to being long on
aspiration. It would be really helpful to put some dates on
things, and then put some money behind it all, so that progress
can be monitored rather than the can constantly being kicked down
the road. Pace and ambition have been mentioned but, for me, it
is about the practicality of how we do it. As ever, we know what
to do; the fault often is that we do it only once. This is about
taking forward a national programme.
I end quickly by quoting Barbara Kingsolver’s book Demon
Copperhead—many noble Lords may have read it. She says in her
dedication:
“For the kids who wake up hungry in those dark places every day,
who've lost their families to poverty and pain pills, whose
caseworkers keep losing their files, who feel invisible, or wish
they were: this book is for you”.
I hope that the Government can make it for them as well and move
on.
(Con)
My Lords, I briefly interrupt to remind noble Lords that there is
a five-minute advisory speaking time. There have been some
wonderful speeches and we want to hear everyone in the fullness
of time.
9.14pm
(CB)
My Lords, I echo the thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of
Yardley, for tabling this Motion and for the very real concern
she and the committee have shown for such an important issue.
There are many others in this Chamber far more expert than me on
social care, but I was moved to speak in this debate by the fact
that I see the results of these policies weekly. As some noble
Lords may know, I am a teacher in a state academy in Hackney.
Like the noble Lord, , I am at the
gritty end of this subject, where the consequences of these
decisions are often manifest.
As Action for Children recently reported, 53% of young people
with a social care referral failed either English or maths at
GCSE. Of the 2004-05 birth cohort, 58% of young people with a
social care referral were persistently absent at some point in
their school careers, missing 10% or more of their classes in a
school year.
Schools can provide a safe, structured environment for children,
and teachers are the weathervanes of social care. We are trained
to spot signs of abuse, neglect and bullying and most schools
have a clear system of reporting. Those reports, often of tiny
changes or instinctive hunches, can become part of a jigsaw
puzzle whose final picture could lead to a referral and future
action. A case study in the strategy talks about two young people
who disclose physical abuse to their teachers. It is the referral
from the school that leads Jackson and Madison to be placed with
foster parents. Children will often open up to a trusted teacher
when they will not talk to anyone else. Through teachers, the
missing voices of young people can be heard—something the
strategy has been heavily criticised for.
When I talked to members of the safeguarding team at school, one
of their top concerns was the wide variation in care between
boroughs—some are excellent, while others do not even answer
phone calls or emails about referrals. A child can get lost in
the cracks if they move boroughs, which can be used deliberately
by the families to disappear from the system. As the response
says, the strategy will have an impact only in a few areas, and
then only as a pilot programme. This will surely exacerbate the
problem.
It was also said that the threshold is exceptionally high. For
social care to open a case, there needs to be a significant risk.
This is completely understandable, as it does not have the
resources to complete early intervention work, but this results
in firefighting as opposed to early help in prevention when it
could be most effective, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Morris of
Yardley and Lady Tyler of Enfield, have said. If care workers are
transitory and lasting relationships can never be built, that is
never going to happen. The focus on recruitment and particularly
retention of staff as a priority is vital. Otherwise, much of the
other work is pointless.
All this, I am afraid, is dependent on money. If the committee’s
report is true and the strategy lacks the political buy-in and
funding to deliver reforms for young people and families, it
would be a huge lost opportunity for change. I am also concerned
that, in the strategy and the report, the increasing burden of
work that falls on schools is hardly acknowledged. I am also
unclear quite how schools are to be embedded into the new plan.
The strategy recommends that schools should be made a statutory
safeguarding partner and contribute to the strategic and
operating delivery of multiagency working. It also recommends
that they have a greater role in supporting and protecting
vulnerable children without making clear how or what budget will
be provided for the extra training, and necessary staff, that
will inevitably be needed for the extra responsibility alongside
their main job, which is usually to teach.
The strategy is called Stable Homes, Built on Love. Might it not
be better to aim for stable lives, built on love?
9.19pm
(Lab)
My Lords, it was a pleasure to serve on the committee, which was
so well chaired by my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley. I
agree with the committee’s conclusions and recommendations,
particularly its comments relating to legal aid in kinship cases.
Of course we welcome the extension of legal aid to prospective
special guardians, but the concern was that many kinship carers
would be unable to access it.
However, I want to talk about residential homes and their system,
and emphasise, as our report does, the essential need for radical
reform of residential homes. Alas, the Government’s proposals do
not go anywhere near far enough. The issues facing residential
homes are stark and, in my view, one of those hidden, rather
British, deep scandals that are not talked about nearly enough,
and are not acted on by the political class. What persuaded me
that radical change is necessary was my five years as a police
and crime commissioner. Indeed, I was on the way because of 25
years as a criminal law barrister, defending in the Crown Court
countless young people who had been in residential care. As a
police and crime commissioner, it was painfully obvious to me
that vast amounts of precious police time were taken up dealing
with offences, serious and not so serious, committed by those who
were or had been in residential care, as the noble Lord, Lord
Willis, mentioned a moment ago.
If it was not offences to deal with, then it was the constant
issue of missing persons, regularly young girls picked up by bad
men outside their homes and taken God knows where, to do God
knows what, before being returned. Please do not misunderstand
me: it is not the fault of the local authority, let alone the
vast majority of staff in residential homes, all of whom perform
as well as they are allowed to by the system—I pay tribute to all
of them. It is the fault of an underfunded, underresourced, often
ignored system that results too often in the most vulnerable
children—many of whom are traumatised when very young—not
receiving the care, protection and love they need and deserve.
What chance do many of them really have?
A major part of the problem is that if any system should be
solely in the public domain, it is surely a system that is
responsible for bringing up, educating, housing and, indeed,
parenting young people, who are our fellow citizens and future
participants, we hope, in our society. However, I am afraid that
we have seen fit to allow the profit motive—often a good thing in
society—to play a leading part in this precious, vital and
difficult area. One of our prime witnesses, John Pearce, a
vice-president of the Association of Directors of Children’s
Services, said this in paragraph 121 about regional proposals,
but it applies to my point just as much:
“With about 80% of the residential care provision currently
sitting with independent providers, many of which are backed by
private equity, the suggestion that in the North East the 12
authorities coming together are going to have more influence over
a substantial provider backed by a state investment fund than an
individual local authority, and that that is going to change the
dynamic, is flawed”.
That is an understatement. This area needs drastic, fundamental,
urgent and radical reform so that, instead of the near conspiracy
of silence that has existed, we can be proud of how we help our
most vulnerable children. It is time to act.
9.24pm
(LD)
My Lords, I have found this a very helpful, focused debate. I
hope that the Minister will find that this debate and our report
will be a useful aid to government thinking on the implementation
strategy, and on the kinship care plans to be published later
this year.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said, we heard from many
young people who are doing positive things with their lives,
despite all the disadvantages of being in the care system. It was
impressive to listen to witnesses who supported the Government’s
desire to improve the children’s social care system. Generally
speaking, people want it to be done more quickly. The strategy is
going in the right direction. It can be improved, but can it be
sped up? The strategy is to have trials and pilots, but some have
a sufficiently robust evidence base now to be rolled out more
quickly. For example, elements of family help could be rolled out
nationally faster than currently planned. It would be good if all
young people could see some benefit from the Government’s
strategy over the next couple of years.
We ask the Minister: can we speed up? We can, but the strategy
lacks the funding needed to deliver the reforms. As we have
heard, the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care in 2022
said that investment of £2.6 billion was needed over the next
four years, and that so far only £200 million is being provided
over two years, which is simply not enough. To quote paragraph
28, as a committee our formal conclusion was:
“The level of investment outlined in the Strategy is entirely
inadequate and will ensure the Government will fail to achieve
its vision for children’s social care”.
It would be helpful if we could have a specific comment from the
Minister about that.
We say things in the report around young people’s need for
advocacy. It was instructive to hear from young people
themselves, who said that they were not listened to by those
making decisions about their care. The strategy on advocacy is
currently too vague about how to listen to young people, and
establishing clear standards will be very important. Can the
Minister tell us what the plan is? Will it be an opt-out model,
and can she guarantee that it will be independent of local
authorities, for it must be?
We were told that there are some 20,000 children in England
living as separated siblings. Of course, as we heard from the
noble Lord, Lord Willis, in one case they were twins. Many
children are being placed too far from home. It is essential that
this issue is addressed, partly through funding, and partly
through the structures, which I will come back to in a moment. If
there is to be a radical reset in the system, it needs far better
cross-departmental co-operation and policy alignment. I am
pleased that there is a cross-government care leaver Minister
now, but Whitehall needs to be a great deal more joined-up than
it is.
We have heard about kinship care. The strategy is due by the end
of the year, and it is clear that increased support for kinship
carers is needed. It is hard to see why we should wait until
spring next year to know what that amounts to, for 150,000
children are living in kinship care, and the Nuffield Trust has
shown that young people in kinship care have better outcomes than
young people in foster or retirement care.
I ask the Minister, on foster care, whether setting national or
regional targets actually works. Are they local enough? The
shortage of foster carers seems to me to need to be dealt with at
a local level. Getting prospective carers is a much more local
matter than the Government realise. On workforce issues, there
are apparently going to be 500 apprenticeships in children’s
social care. I would be interested to know what the timelines
around that are. However, there is an 8,000 staff shortfall in
the children’s care system. The Competition and Markets Authority
has said that the children’s care market in “dysfunctional”. The
demand is not forecast accurately, demand for placements is
higher than the supply, young people are being sent too far away
because of a lack of placements, and providers can profit from
the shortage of placements.
In our committee report, we raised questions as to whether
regional care co-operatives are seen as the solution. Are they?
Is the Minister confident of that? They are not local, and I do
not understand what their accountability regime actually is. It
is possible that Ofsted gave evidence to support the suggestion
that a regional care co-operative model could cause more children
to be relocated further away from their home area, but I hope
not. Will regional care co-operatives work in restoring a
functional market? Will smaller providers, not only big
providers, benefit from procurement? Might the Government look at
subregional procurement as opposed to regional procurement, if
they are unhappy with very local procurement?
In conclusion, as we have heard from various speakers, we have
had lots of reviews in recent years but we need to beware of yet
more reviews, because we need action to be taken. The evidence
base is there, and we need to ensure that we have more children
in safe, loving homes.
9.30pm
(Lab)
My Lords, I declare that I am a vice-president of the Local
Government Association, as noted in the register. I thank my
noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley and all members of the Public
Services Committee for this excellent, direct and wide-ranging
report on such a vital area of our social services provision. It
is indeed always worth listening to our young people.
The Government’s strategy, published in February 2023, followed
an independent review of children’s social care, which
recommended wide-ranging reforms based on principles such as
family help providing the right support at the right time;
unlocking the potential of family networks; and creating a system
that learns, improves and makes better use of evidence and data.
To where we are currently, we have seen the erosion of children’s
services for more than a decade, while poverty and inequality
have increased—points strongly made by my noble friend Lady
Armstrong of Hill Top. It is acute in the north-east and severe
elsewhere. Preventive services have been stripped back, leaving
the need for costly crisis interventions soaring. The independent
review on social care described a system that is
“skewed to crisis intervention, with outcomes for children that
continue to be unacceptably poor and costs that continue to
rise”,
and called for a “radical reset”. So what will this Government do
to address the huge deficit in children’s social care?
The strategy contains 12 local areas which will receive £45
million of additional investment for a new pathfinder role to
test models of family help. The Government also committed to
providing new multiagency child protection standards in 2023,
amending guidance to local authorities, police and health
partners to give greater clarity on their responsibilities. There
will be trials of kinship care support packages. Other measures
include £27 million in funding for foster carers. This is all
just a sticking plaster.
According to the review, the strategy lacks “scale, ambition and
pace” and will impact
“only a few areas, and then only as a pilot programme”.
There is no guarantee of long-term reform, which is badly needed.
Some of the proposed pilot programmes already have strong
evidence behind them, so they would be ready to be rolled out
nationwide. The committee felt that, although the strategy had
aspects to recommend it, it was being rolled out slowly and would
therefore leave many children behind. Improvements for
residential care were almost entirely absent from the strategy,
and my noble friend has made the strongest of
arguments for urgent review of this sector.
We in the Labour Party believe that the strategy represents a
piecemeal approach to long-standing and entrenched issues in
children’s social care. It does not provide the serious strategy
needed to fix the crisis in the workforce, to help kinship carers
and to deliver on the greater protections that vulnerable
children and families desperately need. As my noble friend Lady
Morris quoted, this is what Josh MacAlister called a “missed
opportunity”.
The Local Government Association analysis of the strategy prior
to high levels of inflation indicated an existing shortfall of
£1.6 billion per year simply to maintain current service levels.
The independent care review recommended an additional investment
of at least £2.6 billion over four years, prior to the impact of
inflation. The LGA further suggested that multiple factors would
be key to the success of regional care co-operatives, including
resourcing, IT systems, and clarity on structure and roles held
between councils and providers. The LGA also argued that the
strategy
“could have gone much further”
in relation to the provision of mental health services for
children in care and care leavers.
Although the Government opened a consultation into the use of
agency social workers, there is no plan to end the domination of
for-profit children’s home places, which account for 78% of
places in England. Some of these providers have been the subject
of inquiries into abuse in children’s residential care. I
remember well when leader of Newport City Council the
eye-watering sums that private providers demanded for places in
their establishments for our children and young people—goodness
knows how much those sums have increased in the past few years.
It is not about the money but about the quality of provision for
children and young people, which always had to be the main
criteria despite the cost.
The 20 largest independent sector children’s social care
providers had an income of £1.7 billion in 2021, an 8.3% increase
on the year before. In October last year, a report by the Child
Safeguarding Practice Review Panel identified a “culture of
abuse”, including violence and sexual harm, in three residential
schools run by one of the largest private providers. Given that
the taxpayer is paying huge amounts for children to be given at
times appalling care, why on earth is this strategy not tackling
the role of private providers in children’s care?
We recently discussed the review of the Children and Families Act
2014. There are issues left unaddressed by that Act, such as
kinship care, that have been given some consideration in this
strategy. However, one aspect of the Children and Families Act
that struck me was the lack of ongoing data collection and impact
evaluation. As the implementation of this strategy progresses,
what will the Government do to ensure that it is regularly
analysed and evaluated? Do the Government really believe that the
strategy will make the difference needed to improve the 43% of
children’s services departments rated “inadequate” or “requiring
improvement”?
According to the Association of Directors of Children’s Services,
across regions in England there are varying degrees of interest
in taking up a RCC pathfinder opportunity—but, at present, no
region seems to be interested in adopting the approach outlined
by the DfE. The ADCS recently published a position paper coming
after the collapse of a joint procurement frame- work for
children’s residential care involving seven local authorities
across the north-east of England. It raised concerns over whether
government plans to move to regional commissioning of children’s
social care services should indeed be re-evaluated. While ADCS
members acknowledge that regional collaboration could offer some
opportunities, including regional sufficiency audits, workforce
gap analysis, and the opportunity for joint commissioning in
areas of greatest need, a number of concerns about the model
described by the DfE remain for the association; thus, the
position paper offers strong solutions for the Government.
In conclusion, as the final sentence in the report, which we all
hope will be taken up by the Government and acted on, notes,
“we need to ensure that all children and families engaged in the
care system see some immediate benefit and can be sure that
significant change will follow”.
9.39pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Education () (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of
Yardley, on securing this debate and express my thanks on behalf
of the Government to the whole committee for the important work
it has done and the valuable insights in its report.
As we have heard in a series of powerful speeches this evening,
children’s social care has the potential to transform lives for
the better. Sadly, as the independent review and two other key
reports set out last year, the system is not delivering
consistently enough for the children and families it supports.
The Government have heard the call for whole-system change and
are committed to responding. Earlier this year, we published our
implementation strategy, Stable Homes, Built on Love, which set
out our bold and ambitious plans to transform children’s social
care. I heard clearly from the opening remarks of the noble
Baroness, Lady Morris, the need to convince not just her but
others in this House of the urgency with which the Government are
approaching this task. We have previously debated in this House
the tension between really high-quality implementation and speed,
and I hear and will take back to the department the concern about
and criticism of the Government’s approach. However, I will try
to reassure the House that it is based on a determination to get
the implementation right, even if that means some delay in
national rollout.
We have also published our draft children’s social care national
framework and dashboard, which sets out in one place the outcomes
that should be achieved for children, young people and families
through local authority practice. It will aim to set national
direction and raise the quality and consistency of practice. The
noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, asked about the use of data. I
reassure her that that is central to our plans.
We heard from thousands of individuals in our three
consultations, which launched in February with the strategy. Most
particularly, I acknowledge the remarks of the noble Lord, , and the
personal story he told about one of the young people who gave
evidence to your Lordships’ committee. I echo that the stories we
heard from young people were the most powerful and were
invaluable in helping to shape the strategy; we thank them for
sharing them with us.
The committee launched its inquiry over the same period and
assessed whether the reforms would achieve the transformative
change the system needs. The report concluded that our strategy
sets the right direction for the system. That mirrors what we
heard through our public consultation on Built on Love. We will
publish our response to this and the national framework
consultation tomorrow—apologies to committee members that the
timing did not quite align perfectly. We know there will be areas
to go into further and that we will need to make available more
detail on how we intend to deliver that reform, but we
wholeheartedly support the case for urgent and extensive
system-wide reform of children’s social care.
The £200 million investment over this spending review period sets
the path for longer-term reform and provides an opportunity to
test and learn from some of the most complex elements. Your
Lordships made the comparison between the four-year national
rollout in the independent review and the £200 million for the
pathfinders. To be fair, we are not comparing like with like. The
Government completely understand that this is not the scale of
investment required for national rollout. Transformation on this
scale will take time and commitment, and we need to balance the
necessary reform with the need to ensure that we have
interventions that we know work and that can be rolled out safely
and effectively.
A number of your Lordships, including the noble Baroness, Lady
Tyler, asked about the wider package of support and commitment
that the Government were making. This funding of course builds on
the £3.2 billion announced at the last Autumn Statement for adult
and children’s social care and on further investments we have
made, including the £259 million over the 2021 spending review
period to maintain capacity and expand provision in secure and
open residential homes, £230 million over this SR to support
young people leaving care, £160 million over the next three years
to deliver our adoption strategy, and £142 million to take
forward reforms to unregulated provision in children’s social
care.
A number of your Lordships, including the noble Lord, , and the noble Baroness, Lady
Morris of Yardley, expressed very clearly their concerns about
residential children’s homes. I absolutely hear and recognise
some of the stories that the noble Lord, , referred to. When I worked in
the area of safeguarding before joining your Lordships’ House, it
was extraordinary how perpetrators could spot vulnerable children
and adults like homing pigeons. So, sadly, I recognised the
stories he told.
In addition to the capital investment and addressing the
disproportionate role of private sector-run children’s homes in
the sector, there is obviously the whole issue of recruitment and
retention, which your Lordships understand very well and is a
particular challenge in the residential children’s homes market.
We are exploring options to introduce professional registration
for staff working in children’s homes, alongside a national
leadership programme aimed at recruiting new talent into the
sector. We are clear that we need to raise the status and profile
of those working in the sector to address the recruitment
issues.
With regard to family help, as we heard in a number of your
Lordships’ speeches, these reforms are central to ensuring that
children grow up with loving relationships and stability. The
noble Lord, , talked about stable lives
rather than stable homes. I would challenge him and say that the
probability of having a stable life vastly increases if you start
with a stable home. I do not think he would disagree too
strongly—but, equally, stable lives are a great outcome also.
Through family help, we want to create a service that meets the
whole needs of a family, works at building on their strengths, is
delivered across multidisciplinary teams and makes sure that
there is collaboration within local areas between partners. In
July, we announced the first three local authorities that will be
taking part in the Families First for Children pathfinder, to
help us codesign this new model of working. It will go live in
three areas in the autumn.
We also recognise the vital role that kinship carers play, as the
noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lord, , acknowledged, in providing
loving, safe and stable homes for children. We absolutely agree
with the review’s finding that that support must improve. They
are at the heart of our strategy. We have announced the local
authorities involved in our family network pilots, which will
promote the use of a family-first approach to children’s social
care and test the impact of financial and practical support for
families to support children to stay safely at home. We have also
invested £2 million to deliver high-quality peer support groups,
as we know from talking to families who offer kinship care that
these groups can build very powerful supportive communities for
them. We are also establishing a training and support offer,
which will be accessible to all kinship carers within this SR
period.
We are also rightly championing foster carers and all that they
do to provide loving homes. We know that fostering can be hugely
rewarding, but obviously recognise that it takes hard work, skill
and dedication. We are investing £27 million to deliver a
recruitment and retention programme so that foster care is
available to more children who need it. I hope that the noble
Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, will be pleased that this
will start in the north-east—her voice has been heard—before a
wider regional rollout. The pathfinder will be fully up and
running in the autumn.
The committee raised some important notes of caution with regard
to regional care co-operatives. We think that this new model will
represent a radical shift away from the way the sector currently
commissions and delivers care placements, which is why we are
working closely with Health and Justice to co-design it. We have
invited local authorities to express interest in setting up a
regional care co-operative pathfinder; we are now in the second
phase of that process. However, I will take back to colleagues in
the department the concerns that the committee raised in this
regard.
Our strategy made firm our intention to put loving and stable
relationships at the heart of children’s social care. We must
have a system that empowers children and young people to feel
seen and heard, whatever their needs. I note the remarks from the
noble Lord, , about the important role
that education can play. As I think the House is aware, we are
exploring how we can increase the role of schools and other
education settings in multiagency safeguarding arrangements. We
have consulted on our statutory guidance, Working Together, and
will use learning from that to form the proposals on whether and
how to make education a safeguarding partner.
Obviously, advocacy is incredibly important; your Lordships who
bring great experience to this issue will have heard that again
and again. We want to update and improve the system so that we
can help children navigate it, particularly at times of
transition, but we also want to be sure that we include ways that
standards apply to some special residential settings and develop
new standards for non-verbal children so that they too can access
advocacy. We plan to consult on the guidance and standards in
relation to this.
I want to update the House on where we are in relation to
supporting our social work workforce. If I may say so, I take
slight exception to the remarks from the noble Baroness, Lady
Wilcox, about the Government’s strategy overall, including in
this area. She often makes reference to what is happening in
Wales; she did not do so on this occasion but I remind the House
that, in its annual report, Care Inspectorate Wales talked about
the real challenges around recruitment and retention, the real
shortages in provision for children with additional needs, and
the unprecedented increase in demand for care. I in no way wish
to diminish the challenges that we face, but they are not unique
to England or this Government.
The Government are already investing £50 million each year during
this spending review period to recruit, train and develop our
child and family social workers. However, we know that there is
more to do to ensure that we fulfil our ambition of having a
valued and skilled social worker for every child who needs one.
Since publication, we have appointed eight early adopter local
authorities to help design our early career framework and we are
supporting local authorities to offer up to 500 social work
apprenticeships.
We are also tackling working conditions. We have launched a
national workload action group to make recommendations so that we
can support social workers to spend more time with children and
families. We will respond to our consultation on the agency
workforce rules later this year; a number of noble Lords raised
that issue.
The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, asked about
therapeutic support for children who are adopted. Since 2015,
over £300 million has been made available through the adoption
support fund to help fund therapy for adoptive and special
guardianship families.
She and the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, asked what we are doing
in relation to mental health for children in care. In the
Government’s strategy is a clear mission to reduce disparities in
both long-term physical and mental health outcomes for children
in care and care leavers. To do that, we have to work closely
with our health partners. We will set out clear expectations of
practice, including service planning and commissioning, through
updated joint guidance with the Department of Health and Social
Care. We want to make sure that that reflects the most recent
published research on the emotional well-being needs of care
leavers. We will revise and strengthen levels of knowledge and
skill in relation to mental health in the social care workforce,
including through the early careers framework.
I will finish by outlining some of the additional steps that we
will take in the coming months to progress further in delivering
our reforms. The Government will shortly publish responses to our
recent consultations. The families first for children pathfinder
and the “foster with the north-east” support hub will be live in
the autumn. We will publish a kinship care strategy by the end of
2023, setting out our national direction, and a children’s social
care data strategy. We will publish the national framework as
statutory guidance by the end of the year. The dashboard rollout
will be phased from 2024 to help us all learn and understand how
well we are achieving the outcomes for children’s social
care.
By updating our key statutory guidance, Working Together to
Safeguard Children, we will clarify and simplify the existing
requirements of practitioners to reflect updated best practice
and support new policy. Our national implementation board
continues to support, advise and hold the Government to account
for the reform programme. I know that the noble Lord, , was particularly
concerned about advocacy and the voice of children and young
people. We are seeking to develop a children and young people’s
advisory board to ensure that we hear the voices of those young
people right at the heart of our decision-making.
I again thank the noble Baroness, all noble Lords who contributed
to this important debate, and everyone who contributed to the
inquiry and to our public consultations. I extend my particular
gratitude for their courage to those with lived experience of the
system who have spoken to us and to all the professionals whose
work supports children and families across the country, every
day. Delivering on this will take great commitment and focus from
the Government, working together with local authorities and our
partners in the system. We will prioritise working with those on
the ground to make sure that we achieve the kind of change in
children’s lives that everyone in your Lordships’ House wishes to
see. I will end where the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, started:
it is one thing to write words on a page, but we need to make it
work in real life.
9.58pm
(Lab)
My Lords, indeed it is, and I think that is part of the problem.
I thank everybody who has contributed to the debate, and the
Minister. Inevitably, she was not going to be able to persuade us
that the Government are right and we are wrong, because she would
inevitably reiterate the paper that has already been published.
However, we look forward to the paper that we now understand is
being prepared tomorrow; this is something ongoing to which we
will return. I do not doubt the Minister’s personal wish and
determination to get this right; I do doubt the Government’s
ability to get it right or to have the means to get it right at
the moment. That is the discussion of which we want to be
part.
The Minister said that people spoke with passion and I think that
is true. One thing that has always struck me is the title of the
report, Stable Homes, Built on Love. One reason why that hit me
quite forcibly when I saw it is that there is probably no one in
this Room who does not know the importance of that phrase, either
because they received it when they were children or they gave it
to those who they care for.
For the children who do not have that, we are corporate
parents—we are part of that system. I genuinely think that the
Government are not entitled to understand how bad things are and
not be more determined to get them right. That is part of
discharging their responsibility as corporate parents. That is
what is to be won, to be gained, but also what is to be lost if
we do not do this with greater determination than is shown at the
moment. I am grateful to everybody for their contribution. I look
forward to continuing consultations.
Motion agreed.
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