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Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

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. 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.