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Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

My Lords, first, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, on behalf of the management for the attempt to dragoon him into speaking in a different debate. He did not say what the subject was but I am sure that it would have benefited from his wisdom in any event. Perhaps he will be encouraged to speak twice in one day. My noble friend Lord Hunt is much looking forward to the noble Lord’s intervention. I thank noble Lords on all sides of the House for their generally warm welcome for the Bill. I pay tribute to the noble Baronesses, Lady Morris, Lady Verma, Lady Walmsley and Lady Sharp, for their speeches and for the highly constructive approach that they have taken to the measures in the Bill. As they and other noble Lords rightly said, we shall want to return to a large number of issues in Committee and on Report. I can already see significant debates ahead of us and I much look forward to them. Of course, this is an area where noble Lords who sit on the Cross Benches make an especially important contribution to our proceedings. That has been amply demonstrated this evening by a series of extremely worthwhile speeches based on substantial personal knowledge and long engagement in various aspects—for example, the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, on fostering and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, on looked-after children. I could mention all the noble Lords and noble Baronesses who have spoken in that respect. We greatly value their contributions and, as I said, look forward in Committee and on Report to engagement on the issues raised. There has been a broad welcome for the measures in the Bill in respect of local placement, the voice of the child, the stability of placements, more independent support for children in care and promoting educational performance and opportunity for children in care. I should like to begin by taking forward the dialogue which always takes place between the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and myself on these issues—an extremely friendly dialogue it is too. No one in the House speaks with greater experience of these issues than the noble Baroness. To be brutally frank, I took to be the essence of her remarks to be whether the Bill is beside the point. In a sense, the rest of the debate demonstrated that the provisions of the Bill are not beside the point. All its provisions are focused on special improvements to the provision for children in care. The noble Baroness is profoundly right that the Bill on its own will not transform the lot of children in care, and she is also right to say that legislation is not required to put in place a substantial number of important changes that will improve the lot of such children. She rightly highlighted two of the most significant elements in improving the lot of children in care. One is a motivated workforce of social workers. There is nothing more important than that in the provision for children in care and no legislation on its own will make a difference there. The second element also relates to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, on the subject of foster carers, who take responsibility for the majority of our children in care. We must see that they are motivated and prepared to come forward in large enough numbers to take on this work. Again, no legislation will meet that point. In a sense, I believe that we can have both parts of that equation. The provisions of the Bill are important, as are all the points raised by the noble Baroness, and it would not be right to say that we have not paid close attention to them. On the issue of social workers, which the noble Baroness raised, I am the first to accept that a great deal more needs to be done. However, since 1995, there has been a 21 per cent increase in the number of whole-time social workers. In our Modernising Social Services strategy, which started in 2000, we set out an ambition to recruit 6,000 extra social workers to close the vacancy gap. In fact, we recruited more than 6,000 but the number of available posts also rose in the same period, meaning that the pressure to fill posts remained as great as it was before, despite the increase. In terms of our investment, expenditure on children’s social care increased from £2.1 billion in 1996-97 to £5 billion in 2006-07—a real-terms increase of 88 per cent—so we have been taking forward the very important investment agenda, irrespective of legislation. For example, the huge increase in investment in children’s social care made it possible for the average pay of a newly qualified social worker in children’s social care to rise from £24,600 in 2001 to £29,900 in 2005, which is an increase across the four years of 21.7 per cent. Again, the noble Baroness is absolutely right that an improvement in the social work agenda is hugely important. I believe that we have been seeking to get to grips with it, although we recognise that there is more to do. Because we recognise that there is more to be done, we published the Options for Excellence review. The noble Baroness asked me what has happened to that since it was published in October 2006. In June, we published Care Matters, the White Paper that set out a number of proposals in respect of the social care workforce. We are taking those forward. My right honourable friend Beverley Hughes, the Minister for Children, has set up a working group with practitioners to look at a whole series of measures in respect of the social work profession, and we will be producing a children’s workforce strategy action plan early in the new year in conjunction with stakeholders in the sector. The Care Matters White Paper sets out a number of complementary agendas for improving social work, including improving skills training and support for children and family social workers, increasing the capacity of social workers to support other staff, looking at social work qualifying degrees to ensure that they equip social workers with the necessary knowledge and skills to work in a modern children’s workforce, and reviewing the support and training for newly qualified social workers by, for example, developing a newly qualified social work status—an issue raised repeatedly in the House by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel—that would give a guarantee of support, training and induction. We are also looking at new recruitment incentives and campaigns, benefiting from the experience of the teacher recruitment campaigns run by the Training and Development Agency for Schools, which have been successful in recent years. Those will further boost the social work profession, as will the work that we are doing in remodelling the social care workforce, building on good practice in that area. We are also working with the Children’s Workforce Development Council to set up remodelling pilots based on social work teams in about 30 local areas. Therefore, I hope that I can demonstrate to the House that we are not neglecting the agenda that the noble Baroness set out. In respect of social work practice pilots, I make it clear that this will be—certainly for the early stages of implementing the agenda that I have set out—only a very small part of the work that takes place out in the field. I would not want to exaggerate the important of the pilots but we believe it right to pilot this potentially beneficial reform. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, asked me whether we would publish the results of the pilots. We certainly intend to do so, and I can state clearly that one of the factors on which we will judge their success is whether they bring more and better social workers into the profession for the benefit of children. In respect of foster parents, the noble Lord, Lord, Hylton, asked me whether it is possible for approved adopters, if they so wish, to adopt from the moment of birth, and asked me to make our policy clear. It is possible for a child to be placed from near birth—a mother cannot give consent to the placement of adoption until the child is six weeks old. The reason for the six-week rule reflects the fact that mothers need to be given time to recover from pregnancy before they make irrevocable decisions, but from very close to birth it is possible for that step to be taken. The reality is that very few babies are relinquished by their mothers for adoption at that early stage, but the noble Lord asked for our statement of policy. In respect of the great majority of children who go on to be fostered, the most significant issue, as the noble Lord said, is that we have sufficient, well-motivated foster carers. That is partly an issue of training; it is also an issue of remuneration in its widest sense. I gave the figures in my opening speech about the increase in funding of about £230 million for children in residential care and £330 million for those in foster care between 2000 and 2004-05, which reflects the reality that significantly larger payments are being made by local authorities than was the case before. As noble Lords rightly observed, the payments to foster carers come in two elements: the allowance and the fees. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, welcomed the fact that we brought in the minimum allowances. The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, asked me what we would do about authorities paying less than the allowances. I can tell her that we are committed to looking with Ofsted at monitoring allowances paid by all foster providers. In the light of our monitoring of the allowances, we will consider whether further action is necessary at national level to ensure compliance. We have the statutory power to do that if necessary, so I hope that that reassures the noble Baroness. In respect of the fees that are paid over and above the allowances, the fee levels of course vary widely but, significantly, funding has been continuously made available to local authorities to strengthen and expand their own fostering services. We believe that the right policy is to ensure full transparency in the payment of fees and the publication of fee rates, which is what we are seeking to do. We do not want to overregulate the actual fees paid, not least because that may discourage some authorities from paying higher fees, which in their own individual circumstances may be necessary to attract foster carers. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, also raised the issue of allegations against foster carers. I do not minimise the importance of that issue and the need for effective procedures for dealing with allegations. That is why we have already funded the publication of a range of information and training materials relating to improving the way in which allegations against foster carers are handled, and to support foster carers through the process. However, in addition the review of the implementation of the guidance on handling allegations is currently under way. That guidance relates to anyone working with children and young people, including foster carers. Fostering organisations are among the stakeholders participating in the review, and I can tell the noble Lord that there will be a report to Ministers before Christmas and that the outcome of the review will be published in the new year in time for our debates in Committee and on Report. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, raised the related issues of private fostering and the registration scheme. As she knows, the Children Act 2004 strengthened the notification scheme and notification responsibilities in respect of private fostering. There have been only two years of this new regime so far. While we have not ruled out a registration scheme, we believe that the evidence base is not yet sufficient to decide on the merits of such a step and we believe it right to take the necessary time to collect and evaluate information on the current arrangements before we decide whether to proceed with a national registration scheme. Several noble Lords raised the issue of out-of-authority placements and no arbitrary restrictions. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for saying that she thought that we had appropriate flexibility in this regard. We believe that that is the case. Under existing legislation the local authority has a responsibility to give consideration to placing a child near to home. The Bill builds on that and introduces an obligation on local authorities to place a child in their area, except in circumstances when the use of such a placement would not be consistent with the child’s welfare. I emphasise that last element in the Bill. Clause 8 is very clear that all placements in respect of children in care must be "““consistent with the child’s welfare””." If it is not so consistent with the child’s welfare to be placed in area, it is absolutely permissible for local authorities to make such placements out of area. Why have we introduced that provision? Again, it is because of the startling fact that at the moment, more than a quarter of children subject to placements are placed outside their local authority area, and the statistics on the achievements of such children show that they do notably worse than those placed inside their local authority areas. As to the definition of a local authority area, in some cases it may be close to a border, or if in a municipal authority, have a large number of local authorities. Local authorities will have to be absolutely reasonable in how that duty is interpreted but we believe that the new provisions will give much greater emphasis to local authorities to see that they make appropriate placements in their locality, which will benefit the children in care. The noble Lord, Lord Rix, raised a number of issues relating to disabled children, of whom he is a champion in this House, and has been for many years. As he rightly said, it usually takes the Government a few decades to catch up with his proposals. He is right to say that what we are doing in respect of short breaks is something for which he has campaigned for some time. All I can say in mitigation is that producing a national short-break service, which in effect is what we are doing in the ““Aiming high for disabled children”” strategy, which we published two months ago, is an expensive business. We are spending £330 million over the next three years on implementing that strategy, and £280 million of that will go into providing short-break services. We are in discussions with local authorities on how to define what the core offer should be in order to ensure that this additional funding is wholly additional to existing funding and does not simply substitute for existing funding. I chair a working group that is looking into the detail of all these issues so that we can deliver on the commitments that the noble Lord is so keen for us to meet. Our view is that the improvement in the quality of services is vital. That is what we are concentrating on at the moment. We are not persuaded that new legislative requirements will be a means to bringing about those ends. I hope the noble Lord will accept that that additional funding shows that we are very serious about improving those services. The noble Lord also asked about looked-after children status in 52-week placements. The point to stress is that the basis on which accommodation is provided, and the length of time provided within each year, varies enormously between children and different categories of children. The issue of looked-after status depends crucially on the assessment of the particular needs of each child and the nature of their disability, not simply on a mathematical read across of the number of weeks that their placement occupies in a year. We believe that the Bill goes some way to meeting the noble Lord’s concerns because of the new duty in the Bill for children who are in long-term placements to be visited by the local authority—the Clause 16 duties. The new duties strike the right balance between safeguarding children’s welfare without unnecessarily interfering in family life as might be the case if there were a simple blanket extension of looked-after children status to those in whole-year placements. My noble friend Lord Judd raised the Clause 13 duty on local authorities to ensure that visits to looked-after children are conducted by social workers and asked why we did not specifically put that it should be social workers in the Bill. This was to allow local authorities the flexibility to appoint a member of their staff who is most appropriate to undertake the functions that will be set out in regulations. However, statutory guidance will make it clear that, in most cases, the visitor should be a social worker. It may be the case, however, that others are able to undertake the function under appropriate supervision; the statutory guidance will make that clear. Similarly, I was asked whether the designated member of staff in Clause 17, responsible for the educational welfare of looked-after children, will be a teacher. That designated member of staff will be a teacher, and that will be set out in regulations. Of course, it is important that schools ensure that there is no stigmatising of looked-after children. The fact that there is a designated teacher does not mean that there will be any revelation—of the names of looked-after children in a school, for example—in any stigmatising way.