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Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

We fully share the concerns expressed to enable as many children as possible to remain at home with their birth family and to enable more children who cannot live at home to be cared for by family and friends. Similarly, we share a commitment to improve the support available to all those who care for vulnerable children, including relatives and friends, and to enable families to play a key role in decision-making where that is safe and practicable. We are investing significant extra resources in this area to enable local authorities to make a wider range of services available. I turn to Amendment No. 12. As I said in Grand Committee, Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 places a general duty on local authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in need in their area through the provision of a range and level of services appropriate to fulfilling those children’s needs. There is also a particular duty under Section 17 of that Act to promote the upbringing of such children by their families, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, has just noted. We debated family group conferences at some length in Grand Committee, and some of that debate was taken up with considering the merits or otherwise of using primary legislation to highlight a particular service or to drive practice on the ground. The purpose of the 1989 Act has never been to prescribe particular services in other than the broadest terms. We are wary of doing so because such prescription could easily appear exclusive to practitioners. However, family group conferences are specifically commended in the revised Children Act 1989 statutory guidance on court orders and are included in the practice flowchart. In all applications for care proceedings, local authorities will be required to show what efforts have been made to enable the child to live with wider family and friends. A family group conference would be an excellent means for a local authority to demonstrate how it has fulfilled this duty. We expect the use of such conferences to increase in future. On Amendment No. 50, it is right to raise the issue of ensuring that we use the most effective interventions in our work with the most vulnerable children and families.