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Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]
4.40 pm
House again in Committee (on Recommitment).
Baroness Morris of Bolton moved Amendment No. 10:
A local authority must conduct a review of a child’s experience of care if, during a child’s time in care, he or she has been looked after by three or more different social workers during the course of one single year.”
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 14. The new amendment fits in with the central tenet of our approach to this Bill; that is, to do what we can to ensure continuity of care so that meaningful relationships can be forged without fear of them being continually broken off, thus bringing an element of stability to the lives of children and young people in care. As I said in Grand Committee, the amendments are inspired by the Minister, who, at Second Reading, mentioned that some children see as many as 30 social workers and go through nine or 10 care placements within a few years. Amendment No. 10 places a duty on local authorities to review a child’s experience of care if he or she is looked after by more than three social workers in one year.
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Amendment No. 14 stipulates that arrangements must be based on the idea,
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Judd, for adding his name to that amendment.
In the White Paper, Care Matters, the Government say that they want,
- “children in care to have kind, understanding and committed carers—whether foster carers or residential staff—and we want to encourage that element of ‘stickability’ which research has shown to be key to the successful continuation of relationships. The more engaged carers are in all aspects of the child’s life and the greater their role in decision-making, the more likely they are to develop that close bond which will lead to a successful outcome for the child”.
That is what we all want, but one of the greatest frustrations is how that will happen.
We are fully aware that there are often good reasons for changing a social worker or moving a child. The last thing we want to do is constrain local authority provision or cause false alarms that require unnecessary reviews. Our intention is simply to have a structure whereby a significant problem in the care system—social work turnover and the number of placements—is checked.
In Grand Committee, the Minister said that he did not think it was necessary to have this in the Bill as there are already many reviews of the child’s care plan. But something must be wrong with these reviews if we still see so much instability in the system. We do not envisage that our review will simply be a cursory glance at the situation, but that it will go as deep as it needs in order to understand the reason for the turnover of social workers or why a child was moved. In Grand Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said in support of our amendment:
“I do not think that those at the top of these organisations give enough attention to these implications when they are planning systems. I am also conscious that organisations, including my own, do not like reviews or their time-consuming developments ... it would be a signal to social services that, if they did not sort out their systems ... they would have endless reviews. That would be difficult, expensive and embarrassing”.—[Official Report, 14/1/08; col. GC 396.]
I was most grateful to her for her knowledgeable support.
The negative effects of the two areas our amendments seek to deal with are of such importance that we feel that they can be addressed only through a statutory duty. I beg to move.
4.45 pm
Baroness Walmsley: I support the principle behind the amendments because these children have already experienced enormous turmoil in their lives. They probably have quite a number of different teachers at school, so the idea of them having to get to know social worker after social worker to deal with their very personal care needs in any particular year is outrageous. If all these amendments can do is to put pressure on local authorities to do their very best to ensure good and sustainable placements in the first place so that children do not have to keep moving,
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Baroness Howarth of Breckland: While I have sympathy with the intent of the amendment, I have some concerns about it. I want to free up as much social worker time as possible so that they can actually intervene on behalf of and work with children. Endless reviews with no particular objective are not necessarily the way forward. It might be useful to set it out in statutory guidance that if there were more than three changes of social worker in a year, an independent reviewing officer would have to look at the case and assess whether a special review should take place.
Social workers change for many reasons, so the most important part of this is to research into the reasons for it and what local authorities might do to change the situation. However many reviews there are—and I have lived through what feels like more than 30 years’-worth of this sort of reviewing—unless you are able to use the material from those reviews to find out why their recommendations are not properly put in place to change the system, social workers will continue to feel deeply frustrated. I have pointed out on numerous occasions in these debates that social workers do not necessarily want to change their caseloads—they have nothing but the best intentions for these children—but that often the resources they want are simply not available to enable them to implement a plan which has been made at a review. Until we make absolutely clear the links between planning, resources and implementation—I make no apology for repeating this yet again—however many reviews we have, they will not make a difference to the lives of children. It is therefore vital that we have a way of intervening in and assessing why social workers are changing frequently and that there is a way of collecting that information. However, I would not want to see this become a statutory duty because that would take valuable time away from social work provision by local authorities, which should be used to carry each child’s plan forward.
The Earl of Listowel: I warmly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, for bringing this proposal back. These children are often very powerless in their early lives within their families, so their best advocate should be their social worker. That social worker should be given the professional development and support to enable them to be the most effective and efficient advocate for each child in their care. However, that aim is undermined if the individual social worker changes frequently, so this is an important point to hammer home and get sorted out.
I also support my noble friend Lady Howarth in her point about ensuring that detailed information about rates of staff turnover is published as widely as possible. Guidance on this issue should be looked at, so that if anything can be done to improve the situation, it certainly should be done. Moreover, I wonder whether anything could be done through joint area reviews, thus ensuring that inspections take into consideration the turnover rate of social workers for children, or possibly through a thematic review of the provision for children.
I was grateful for a letter from the chief inspector of Ofsted on my previous questions about the role of the inspectorates. There might be a role for them here in identifying our failures in practice and in providing support to improve and raise standards. We have often discussed the model used in Barnet of smaller social work teams with new roles. This keeps experienced people at the front line, supporting their newer colleagues, and thereby improving stability in the workforce. I hope the Minister will feel able to give the amendment some support and I look forward to his response on this question.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote: I, too, support the amendment. As we all know, it has arisen because there have been far too many cases where something like 30 different social workers have been involved and the outcomes have been appalling. For that reason, the issue is very high on our agenda.
There may well be a way of doing this which does not require a fully statutory commission or group to oversee these matters. My noble friend Lady Howarth is right that it may be possible not only to carry out a review if there are more than three changes, but to make it publicly available. That might or might not
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Baroness Howarth of Breckland: I apologise for intervening but, for clarification—I am sure that my noble friend did not mean this—it may appear that we are implying that the individual review would be made public. Of course, neither of us meant that children’s confidential information would be made public. It is the aggregated information about why these children are in these circumstances that should be made public.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote: I am grateful for the correction.
Lord Elystan-Morgan: I find myself in great sympathy with and full of respect for practically everything that has been said by noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. It stands to reason that there is no more vulnerable constituency of persons than children in care. If there is one principle that dominates everything else in relation to their welfare, the principle of consistency in their care must come very high on the list.
As a family judge, over the years I saw many instances of a multiplicity of officers responsible for cases. To some extent I regarded the officer as being in loco parentis, on the same level, possibly, as a carer or the matron of a home. Therefore, the uprooting effect of changing that relationship more often than you have to is at the very heart of this problem. I respect very much the amendment moved by the noble Baroness.
Exactly how one deals with the problem is another matter. I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, that in many cases this has nothing to do with slovenliness or a lack of appreciation for and sympathy with the situation of children; it has much more to do with maternity leave, illness, people having to attend lengthy courses, retirement and so on. Therefore, if one makes the procedure too rigid, one may well be punishing people unnecessarily in adding another wheel, as it were, to the coach. However, if one made some reference to it in statute, not of necessity on the lines of the wording of the amendment—I am sure the noble Baroness would be prepared to consider any improvement of the nature of widening it somewhat and making it less specifically prescriptive—it would have the benefit of becoming a statutory obligation. Social services, often in an impoverished country, would be able to say, “We are not able to carry out that specific statutory obligation”. That is the strength of the argument in favour of a reference in statute—but, as I say, not of necessity within the exact terms of the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness.
Lord Northbourne: I support the amendment. My experience of children in care is infinitely less than that of my noble friend Lady Howarth and of many Members of this House, but I have come across enough children to realise the importance for children in care, particularly those who have not had the advantage of a secure attachment in their extreme
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To touch on the point that I think my noble friend Lady Howarth made about the shortage of resources, there is a need for a quantum increase in available resources so that there are reserves of people who can come in. There are other aspects of the matter. The career structure often moves social workers on just as they are getting to know their clients, and there is room for lateral thinking there too.
The Earl of Listowel: I have a brief observation: it occurs to me that sometimes it is necessary to change the social worker because the child is unsatisfied, or perhaps the social worker is not up to that particular job. This debate highlights for me the importance of the need for representative advocacy for children. I am grateful that the Government are introducing the right to an independent advocate when a child has a complaint to make, but this also suggests the need for children to have greater access to advocacy altogether. We must be careful; while we must not demonise social workers, neither should we idealise them. They are not all perfect. A child is dependent on the professionalism of the social worker who is caring for them, so there also needs to be some mechanism for that social worker to be changed if need be. I hope we can bear that in mind when we come again to discussions about advocacy for children later in these considerations.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Children, Schools and Families (Lord Adonis): The Government share the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that have given rise to the amendment. We are all concerned about the problems of high vacancy and turnover rates for children’s social workers. These have been consistently too high and we are seeking to reduce them. The vacancy rate stood at 9.5 per cent in 2006 while the turnover rate stood at 9.6 per cent. The vacancy rate is particularly high in regions where the competition for graduates is most intense—in London, for example—and some authorities are very reliant on the use of agency staff. I made all that clear at Second Reading and in Grand Committee. The cause of difference between us is not the underlying problem but whether we should set out further requirements in primary legislation.
On reviews of individual cases, as I set out in Grand Committee, regulations already require reviews of children’s cases at regular intervals. The current legal framework provides for a minimum of three case reviews in the first year in care. After the first year, children’s cases are reviewed at least every six months, but the frequency of reviews prescribed in regulations is only the minimum. I stress that the reviews are not, as the noble Baroness suggested, intended to be cursory; they are intended to be proper reviews, taking account of all the factors that are relevant to the case in question.
Independent reviewing officers can also direct that reviews should be carried out more frequently where that is appropriate; for example, they can direct that
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5 pm
Regulations already require local authorities to inform IROs of any significant failure to implement decisions made during a review of the care plan and of any significant change in circumstances after a review. As I said a moment ago, we set out in statutory guidance that IROs should consider calling additional reviews in such circumstances and we are prepared to look at whether that guidance can be strengthened. Furthermore, IROs already have the power to report to senior managers where actions from a review are not being carried out, including in such circumstance where a change in social worker is delaying implementation of decisions made at review.
The Bill will require that the IRO is better equipped to challenge at review meetings poor local authority practice, including in the deployment of social workers. Clause 11, for example, provides for the first time that a named IRO be identified for each child to strengthen continuity for the child and provide better and more consistent oversight of the implementation of the care plan. The IRO will also have to ensure that any views of the child have been ascertained and given due consideration by the local authority. That would include the child’s views on, for example, the impact of changes in the social worker for his or her case.
The regime for reviews in the Bill is therefore strong—significantly stronger than that which was previously in place. It will enable us to tackle social worker turnover by process of review, which is the concern of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. As I have said, we will look further at whether we should strengthen guidance to IROs on the circumstances in which they should call reviews, including issues of social worker turnover as one of the triggers where they believe that that is appropriate.
The Earl of Listowel: Perhaps I may ask the Minister a question to which I am sure I should know the answer. What is the cost or penalty to the local authority if the independent reviewing officer says, “You’re doing a very bad job. You’re letting this child down”? Will such a negative report from the reviewing officer have an impact on the star rating of the local authority?
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Lord Adonis: IROs have the power to report to senior managers where actions from a review are not being carried out. We expect those reports to be taken seriously. If they are not, a further review could lead to action being escalated to a higher level within a local authority, which would have consequences for the managers who had failed to implement actions the first time round.
Baroness Morris of Bolton: I thank the Minister for his thorough and thoughtful answer on the amendment and I thank all noble Lords for having taken part in the debate. I know that the Government share our concerns. I am grateful to the Minister for saying that he will look at strengthening the guidance, which could be one of the ways of addressing the matter, because we are all looking for that principle of consistency of which the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, spoke.
Far from being a review without a reason, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth of Breckland, said, the proposed review would have a specific reason. We would hope that it addressed problems in the system. It would easily ascertain whether it was for a perfectly understandable reason that a social worker was changed; for instance, if they were ill or on maternity leave. In answer to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, I say that the last thing that we would want would be to keep a child with a social worker with whom they were unhappy, which would be unforgivable.
I understand the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, but the amendment is our attempt to put in the Bill those anchor points that are missing. The Bill has been much improved by the Government’s changes, but it still lacks those drivers that would ensure that all our concerns are answered. The review could be one of those drivers, but only if it were a statutory duty. I would therefore like to test the opinion of the Committee.
5.04 pm
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 10) shall be agreed to?
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