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Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I support the amendment but also the wise words of the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth—this might not be the best way of dealing with the matter after three social workers. I support Clause 13, which concerns visiting. However, visiting will be completely useless if a social worker visits a number of children without the individual social worker giving the continuity that a child wants. I have had, as I am sure has the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, a large number of children come through my hands who have had multiple movements. Twenty movements for a child in two years is not, I regret to say, all that unusual with some local authorities. The worst I have come across was 40 moves, and it was no surprise that that child ended up in the Caldecott therapeutic centre. I know how difficult it is for social workers—I totally take on board what the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said—but if you keep changing the social worker, as noble Lords have said, the child will be disrupted by not knowing who is the person to whom to turn. There has to be someone. I would like to see a trigger in primary or secondary legislation that reminds local authorities that they have to do something about this. I can understand what happens in the small and difficult-to-manage local authorities of north Wales, but it also happens in large local authorities that ought to know better. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, that we should be looking round this point, but it certainly should be there somewhere.