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Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 10: 10: Before Clause 7, insert the following new Clause— ““Reviews for social worker turnover 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. Amendment No. 14 stipulates that arrangements must be based on the idea, "““that the child’s accommodation placement should be changed the fewest number of times””." 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.