Asked by
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to implement
the recommendations of the 2022 Independent Review of Children's
Social Care.
The Minister of State, Department for Education ( of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, reforming children's social care is critical to giving
hundreds of thousands of children and young people the best start
in life. It is also necessary to achieve financial stability for
local authorities. The previous Government oversaw the
Independent Review of Children's Social Care in 2022. This
Government have already moved quickly to set out our legislative
programme. The children's well-being Bill will deliver on our
manifesto commitment to ensure that all children can thrive in
safe, loving homes.
(Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer and say “Hello” to
her with her new hat on. All of us know that the state of our
children's care system is totally unacceptable. It is a system
with growing financial shortfalls, where rising numbers of
placements squeeze spending on prevention and, most importantly,
where the most vulnerable children in our country are, for cost
reasons, being sent sometimes hundreds of miles from their home
and their kinship circles. Can I ask the Minister about
regulation in response to this? Last week, Ofsted said that it
should be given the powers and resources to stop unregulated
children's homes, where hundreds of children currently reside,
and to equip Ofsted to regulate private equity-run companies that
increasingly dominate children's care services, often based
overseas and facing little regulatory oversight. Can the
Government commit to meeting these important Ofsted demands?
of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend is right, I am afraid, in his description of the
enormous challenge in children's social care at the moment,
particularly by identifying the role of Ofsted. As I outlined in
this House last week, Ofsted will be working closely with the
children's social care sector to determine how it can protect
children in the way that he described. Also, on the particular
challenges in the children's social care placement market that my
noble friend outlined, local authorities are facing enormous
rising costs for these places and, as my noble friend says, for
places which increasingly are not serving the needs of children.
This Government are clear that excessive profiteering from
vulnerable children in care is unacceptable. Through the
legislation that we will bring forward, and through the
regulation that he described, we will tackle this.
(Con)
My Lords, the MacAlister review described foster carers as the
bedrock of a social care system. However, in the last five years
we have lost 1,000 foster carers, with 5,000 more children in
care. For many children, a children's home with dedicated staff
is the right answer, but living with a family in foster care may
provide a more stable environment at a quarter of the cost. What
is the Minister doing to encourage more foster carers to come
forward and provide that care for children?
of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord is right: for many children the stability that
comes from being in a loving family with foster care is
absolutely appropriate for them. Therefore, it is disappointing
that, since 2019, the number of mainstream local authority foster
carers has dropped by 11%. We will continue the policy of foster
care hubs to provide support and resource for local authorities
and foster carers in 10 different places—covering 64% of the
country—and, where those hubs do not have impact, we will also
develop the foster link resource to support children's social
care services in other parts of the country. There is a role to
play for all of us and all local authorities in celebrating
foster carers and encouraging more people to think about doing
it.
(CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that there are two main thrusts
of this report? First, there needs to be a huge increase in
family support services to prevent, as far as possible, children
being removed from their parents. Secondly, for the children that
are in care, the state has a responsibility to be a good parent
and that means helping these children fulfil their full
potential. Does the Minister think that the Government have the
ambition to achieve these two things?
of Malvern (Lab)
Given the noble Lord's enormously distinguished career in this
area and his contribution to ensuring that children are kept
safe, I think the whole House will listen to what he has to say.
He is right that the objective of the MacAlister review and this
Government is to bring timely support to children and families
that need help; evidence shows that preventing problems from
escalating leads to better outcomes. We will build on the work of
the Families First for Children pathfinders, which,
unfortunately, are only in 10 places at the moment, to think
about how we can develop that early help. The noble Lord also
makes the very important point about all our responsibility, as
corporate parents, to ensure that children who have to come into
the care system get the same very best care from us that we would
expect for our own children. That is certainly something that
this Government will pursue and think about how we can embed that
even more broadly in the public sector and in our
communities.
(LD)
My Lords, I will pursue the point made so eloquently by the noble
Lord, . Last week, the children's care
coalition of charities highlighted that, for the first time, more
is being spent on residential care placements than on early
intervention. Can the Minister say how the Government plan to
rebalance that spending, given the current tight fiscal climate,
including in the upcoming Budget and spending review, to ensure
that families, children and young people get the support they
need before reaching crisis point?
of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness makes a very important point. The Local
Government Association also found that, whereas in 2022-23 91% of
councils that responded spent at least £10,000 per week or more
for one placement, in 2018-19 that had only been 23%. Not only
does the position in the placement market disadvantage children
in not being able to find those loving and stable placements that
they need, but it is also an enormous burden to local government.
That is why, as she said, we have to build on, for example, the
£45 million invested in the Families First for Children
pathfinders this year to help families get support earlier. Where
there is clear profiteering from some providers in the placement
market—evidence of this has been discovered—we need to take
action and we will do so.
(Con)
My Lords, I recognise the Minister's sincerity and that of her
colleagues in addressing this issue, but we know that when we
talk to children with personal experience of the care system,
what they tell us is how many different social workers they
interact with. I am not sure what the opposite of stability is,
other than instability, but it is a series of fractured and
fragmented relationships. Can she update the House on how the
Government plan to address this?
of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness is right. I have recently been in a position
to talk to children in social care in Sandwell and she is
absolutely right, as one of their top concerns is not having
continuity of social worker. That is why it is so worrying that
local authorities are becoming even more reliant on agency social
workers, as 17.8% of all local authority child and family social
workers are agency workers currently. There are many good and
high-quality social workers who come through the agency route,
but their position is more likely to be unstable than it would be
with a permanent worker. That is why the department is already
building a new relationship with the children's social care
workforce and is looking at how to improve support for workers in
children's social care. Thinking particularly about working
conditions as a key factor in keeping social workers in the
profession, this autumn we will release resources to support
local authorities with best practice to retain social workers. We
will continue the work of the national workload action group,
which will make independent recommendations on acting on
workloads by January 2025.
(Lab)
My Lords, between 2011 and 2023, 816 care homes were
involuntarily closed by the regulator. Of these, 804 were
operated by for-profit organisations. They profiteered from
regulation and safety breaches, low staffing and harms to
residents. Local authorities and not-for-profit care homes
provided the best care. In the light of this evidence, can the
Minister say when the Government will end the running and
operation of care homes by for-profit organisations?
of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend has certainly identified a challenge, where
providers of placements and homes for children focus more on
profit than on the quality that is being provided to those
children. Local authorities are currently providing 45% of
looked-after children's placements and the private sector is
providing 40%, some of which offer stability, high-quality and
loving care for our children. However, where it is clear that
placement providers are profiteering from the most vulnerable
children in the country, this Government are absolutely committed
to taking action.
