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Looked-after Children

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She will know that we made a recommendation for a cap on the number of cases that such social workers should carry, and we have developed that argument further in the new inquiry. This is also a question of recruitment and support. We found that the role of the carer in the substitute family was quite mysterious in some places. It was unclear how they got into the work, how they had been recruited and how they were maintained in the profession that they had chosen. The process was very professional in some local authority areas that I visited, and not very good in others. In many of our inquiries, one of the great dangers that we find is cases being thrown into the agency pot. The most horrific term that I have come across—and the idea that I am most worried about—is the "spot purchase" of placements. I find it horrible that there is a market in which someone with an emergency case can purchase a placement through an agency. No one can guarantee where such placements are going to be. They are often miles from the child's school or from the kin family, and sometimes within a different local authority area. The spot purchasing of placements in foster care is extremely worrying; it is the mark of a failure in the system.