That this House takes note of the Report from the Public Services Committee A response to the Children’s Social Care Implementation Strategy (3rd Report, HL Paper 201).
My Lords, I am pleased to move this debate on the response to the children’s social care and implementation strategy. I am conscious that this is a debate on a response to a consultation to a report, and that we are still awaiting the final report, so I suspect this will be one of the conversations and discussions we have about this very important issue—one I know the committee will wish to return to as things progress.
I thank everybody who has helped us bring about this report. First, the many witnesses who appeared for us and sent written evidence gave us their expertise and wisdom, and we could not have come to our conclusions or understood the topic without their contribution. I also put on record the thanks of all the committee to our team: Tom Burke, Claire Coast-Smith and Lara Oriju, led by our clerk, Sam Kenny. Their ability to draw together all the different strands and help us make sense of what we heard is invaluable and underpins the report we are discussing today. I personally thank the members of the committee, who have been enthusiastic and assiduous in our work on this topic, as they always are, and I am grateful to those who could turn up today.
I give a special mention and thanks to the young people we spoke to as part of our inquiry. The part of our report that summarises what they said is worth reading. If there is one thing we can do at ministerial and committee level, it is to keep that by our side and judge our success by how much we can say, “That will never happen again”, and that people in care will get a better deal. All those young people were doing good things with their lives and making a success of things, but not one of them was doing it because of the quality of social care they had received. They were doing it despite it. That really sums up where we are.
Unusually, perhaps, for a policy area of such importance, there is a shared understanding across the nation, not just across politicians, of the importance of this area, what has gone wrong and what needs to be put right; and a shared ambition that this needs to be a priority for everyone and we need to make things better.
Every single witness we spoke to and who wrote to us welcomed the direction of travel the Government have set out. It surprised some of them that the Government had gone further in their ambition than they said they wanted to, and that might have been expected. I acknowledge, as the committee does in its report, some important individual policies that were good and welcome and will make a small difference. To put kinship care firmly in the policy was important, because it has been ignored in the past. Although we could debate that and talk about improvements, the Government have shown a commitment to kinship care, and we see from what they say that they intend to take it forward. We are pleased that the Government’s response to our comments on the importance of independent advocacy shows that they listened, and some change there is promised. We welcome the increase in the foster care allowance the Government have announced.
My Lords, I declare an interest as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, on opening the debate so compellingly, and I congratulate her and the whole committee on this excellent report.
It happens that it follows, helpfully, the recent debate on the implementation of the Children and Families Act 2014. We were told then by the Minister, who is on duty again tonight, that many of our recommendations would be considered and taken forward as part of the implementation strategy we are debating tonight. I welcome that commitment and look forward to working with Ministers on it.
In the short time available, I shall make some general points about children’s social care. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, has reminded us, the independent review of children’s social care called for an immediate investment of £2.6 billion to address the existing crisis in children’s social care. It talked about a revolution in family help to prevent children entering care where possible. It talked, as we have been told, of a
“once in a generation opportunity”
to better protect children, deliver the right support for families at the right time and create a sustainable system that delivers value for money.
However, more than a year later we seem to be little further forward on the reform that is so urgently needed. The Government have pledged just £200 million over a two-year period to fund 12 family first pathfinders and regional care co-operatives, but the national rollout of new family help services will not happen until 2026 at the earliest, and there is no legislative timetable for introducing further reform. I agree that we need to see a far greater sense of urgency and pace to these reforms.
Recent analysis commissioned by some of the UK’s leading children’s charities reveals that the funding will now need to exceed £2.6 billion due to the impact of inflation and the cost of delaying reforms. That research supports the Public Services Committee’s finding that the level of investment in the stable homes strategy is “inadequate” and will have long-term social and financial costs.
My Lords, I thank the committee for this report. It is a fair and, in a sense, generous report to the Government but it raises some serious issues, as my right honourable and noble friend Lady Morris did in her excellent opening speech. This could not be more serious for thousands and thousands of children and families. We want to see that urgency and challenge in the Government’s implementation of the MacAlister report.
This report demonstrates the value in the House of a committee which is ongoing but can keep returning to serious issues. Under my chairmanship, I think we had two or three reports. This one follows those up and, as my noble friend Lady Morris made clear, the current committee will also do that, which is a very important aspect of our work.
In the short time I have—I have already used far too much—I do not have time to comment on everything, so I will be very specific. I am currently chairing an advisory group to the North East Child Poverty Commission and really want to talk about what I have been learning from that. The north-east has experienced the steepest increases in child poverty in the country over much of the last decade. It has risen from 26% in 2014-15 to 35% in 2021-22. The north-east has the highest proportion anywhere in England, by a fairly significant amount, of looked-after children. It also shares the highest proportion of children within kinship care settings. All of those things matter, and they add up to really effect the fabric for children in the region.
In a joint submission to the initial report, the north- east’s directors of children’s services—all of 12 them —said:
“Exceptional levels of poverty in the North East are driving dramatic rises in child protection intervention and the number of children in care. The cost of this cannot be afforded. Exacerbated by reductions in government funding, spending on early help has reduced at a time when it has been most needed. This vicious cycle can only be broken by different ways of working, backed up by adequate investment”.
My Lords, I thank the chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, for her excellent introduction and the brilliant way in which she chairs the committee. I also thank her predecessor, the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, for her continued commitment to child social care. It is very rewarding to see.
Oddly for me, I also thank the Government for recognising that there is a crisis and for their willingness to take on board the urgency of the findings of the plethora of challenges outlined in Josh MacAlister’s independent review. Unfortunately, despite some positive recommendations, the Government’s response is neither radical, urgent or financially credible considering the scale of the challenge. Far too many calls for further evidence is incredibly disappointing.
The challenge was illustrated to me when the committee had the opportunity and privilege to meet a number of young people with direct experience of the current social care system. One highly articulate young woman, now aged 20, had, together with her twin sister and younger sibling, been placed in care at the age of 11. Her grandmother had previously cared for the children but was deemed unsuitable due to financial reasons—an issue for kinship carers that we highlighted in our report. After a year, the children were split up. The youngest child stayed, but the twins were put into residential care, only to be moved through four different foster homes before eventually being separated. “Stable homes built on love” is a distant dream.
On her journey, our witness was moved without explanation from inner London to a rural setting, where she felt totally out of place and was bullied. She regularly asked social workers to move her back to London and an urban environment, which did not happen until post-16, when she was moved to a hostel in London. To the committee’s amazement, she was not bitter. She recognised the challenges of the care system, but urged the committee to plead with the Government for the voices of children to be heard and for changes to be explained by those making decisions before the changes actually happened.
My Lords, it has been a harrowing privilege to serve on the committee that produced this report. Before moving on, I pay tribute to the highly consultative but steely chairing of this inquiry. It has been extremely well done, and we are all very grateful to the committee clerk, Sam Kenny, and Tom Burke and Claire Coast-Smith, who have really backed us up and have been tremendous.
Going back a little bit, many years ago in my late teens I spent a number of vacations working in a home for children in care. The local authority was the LCC, now redundant, and the model of care, now redundant, was a large campus with hundreds of children, based on the public school model of houses, playing fields, a chapel and a lot of open space. Since then, we have moved on; we have moved people back into the community by and large and have provided local services—standards have improved. But here we are at a moment of inflection, when radical change is needed: just as it occurred all those years ago when we changed the model of care, we have to do it again. So we have this opportunity—and the MacAlister report showed us the way. However, as other noble Lords have said, it could be characterised as high on ambition and aspiration, but I do not quite see how it is going to happen. I shall return to the money in a minute.
I turn to the question of pace. It is wonderful— I sometimes wonder whether all government reports are like this: you commission a report, you buy a bit of time, you consult, you buy a bit more time, you run a pilot, you buy a bit more time, then it fades away—time and again. This, however, has to be different, because this is a critical group of people.
I want to touch quickly on four areas, which cover the generalities. First, there are 13,000 children in residential homes. That is still an enormous number. There should be better ways of caring for them. However, while we have them, we also need better regulation. We need to see what Ofsted is doing to develop that inspection framework. Another point is proximity. Those children are often sent away to care homes that are remote, and they are often remote because the property is cheap. In other services, proximity has become key. We should be moving the children closer, not only culturally but physically, to where they come from.
My Lords, I briefly interrupt to remind noble Lords that there is a five-minute advisory speaking time. There have been some wonderful speeches and we want to hear everyone in the fullness of time.
My Lords, I echo the thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, for tabling this Motion and for the very real concern she and the committee have shown for such an important issue. There are many others in this Chamber far more expert than me on social care, but I was moved to speak in this debate by the fact that I see the results of these policies weekly. As some noble Lords may know, I am a teacher in a state academy in Hackney. Like the noble Lord, Lord Willis of Knaresborough, I am at the gritty end of this subject, where the consequences of these decisions are often manifest.
As Action for Children recently reported, 53% of young people with a social care referral failed either English or maths at GCSE. Of the 2004-05 birth cohort, 58% of young people with a social care referral were persistently absent at some point in their school careers, missing 10% or more of their classes in a school year.
Schools can provide a safe, structured environment for children, and teachers are the weathervanes of social care. We are trained to spot signs of abuse, neglect and bullying and most schools have a clear system of reporting. Those reports, often of tiny changes or instinctive hunches, can become part of a jigsaw puzzle whose final picture could lead to a referral and future action. A case study in the strategy talks about two young people who disclose physical abuse to their teachers. It is the referral from the school that leads Jackson and Madison to be placed with foster parents. Children will often open up to a trusted teacher when they will not talk to anyone else. Through teachers, the missing voices of young people can be heard—something the strategy has been heavily criticised for.
When I talked to members of the safeguarding team at school, one of their top concerns was the wide variation in care between boroughs—some are excellent, while others do not even answer phone calls or emails about referrals. A child can get lost in the cracks if they move boroughs, which can be used deliberately by the families to disappear from the system. As the response says, the strategy will have an impact only in a few areas, and then only as a pilot programme. This will surely exacerbate the problem.
My Lords, it was a pleasure to serve on the committee, which was so well chaired by my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley. I agree with the committee’s conclusions and recommendations, particularly its comments relating to legal aid in kinship cases. Of course we welcome the extension of legal aid to prospective special guardians, but the concern was that many kinship carers would be unable to access it.
However, I want to talk about residential homes and their system, and emphasise, as our report does, the essential need for radical reform of residential homes. Alas, the Government’s proposals do not go anywhere near far enough. The issues facing residential homes are stark and, in my view, one of those hidden, rather British, deep scandals that are not talked about nearly enough, and are not acted on by the political class. What persuaded me that radical change is necessary was my five years as a police and crime commissioner. Indeed, I was on the way because of 25 years as a criminal law barrister, defending in the Crown Court countless young people who had been in residential care. As a police and crime commissioner, it was painfully obvious to me that vast amounts of precious police time were taken up dealing with offences, serious and not so serious, committed by those who were or had been in residential care, as the noble Lord, Lord Willis, mentioned a moment ago.
If it was not offences to deal with, then it was the constant issue of missing persons, regularly young girls picked up by bad men outside their homes and taken God knows where, to do God knows what, before being returned. Please do not misunderstand me: it is not the fault of the local authority, let alone the vast majority of staff in residential homes, all of whom perform as well as they are allowed to by the system—I pay tribute to all of them. It is the fault of an underfunded, underresourced, often ignored system that results too often in the most vulnerable children—many of whom are traumatised when very young—not receiving the care, protection and love they need and deserve. What chance do many of them really have?
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However, just as I can confidently say that almost everyone who appeared before us shared the ambition and understanding, they also all said, without exception, that there was a lack of urgency or boldness. I want to focus on that today, because that and the recommendations around it are the main part of our report. I could use many words, but it is perhaps worth quoting from our report what Josh MacAlister, who led the independent inquiry, said. He said two things, and both are true:
“I genuinely think this is the right direction and that the Government made some very positive announcements.”
In the same set of evidence, he went on to say that this was a “missed opportunity” and that
“it is not of the scale of … change that will see a tipping point in the system for some time.”
That was backed up by a lot of witnesses. Joe Lane, head of policy and research for Action for Children, said:
“We could easily be sitting here in three or four years, potentially longer, with the same problems.”
That is what worries us, not the lack of ambition. People say that the response is not ambitious enough. I think it is, but it does not have the means of achieving that ambition. That is very different. Politicians are good at words, and it is easy to write a report that is ambitious. It is more difficult to write a report that convinces people that there is a route to implementation of that ambition. That is what is lacking and what I want to focus on now.
The evidence for that can be seen in the language of the report and its approach to the key policies. If you go back and look at Josh MacAlister’s independent review, you can pick up the words again and again. It calls for a radical reset. It calls for a fundamental shift. It talks about policies being delivered at pace and with determination. When you look at the Government’s response, you see the same shared ambition and the same common understanding of what is wrong with the social care system, but what comes out again and again are words such as “we will consider the options”, “encouragement to review” and “we will explore the case for”. That is the problem. That language underpins the approach that seems to be there in the Government’s response. I was left thinking that where boldness was called for, caution has been offered, and therein is the problem.
That approach can also be seen in the two key policy areas at the centre of the proposals. We all agree that trying to move the focus of social care to prevention rather than dealing with crisis is fundamental to getting that right. If not, we are constantly spending resource too late on things that are happening and it is likely to have too little effect. One bit of information that our committee picked up from Barnardo’s in response was that of the £800 million increase in spending last year —more money has gone in—80% was spent on late intervention. That is the shift needed. Unless we can turn that round, nothing will change. That is a big task that calls for boldness and huge commitment, but what we have instead in this early help is pilots.
I am all for evaluation, and it is crucial that we use evidence to take us forward, but I am confident—and the committee and our witnesses are equally confident—that there is enough evidence available from over the years to make a start in every single area of this country. Go back to Sure Start, look at the Government’s family hubs, and look at what the research centre the Government set up—I think it was called Early Help—decided. There is ample evidence in our report of what works in early intervention so that every area of the country could have started now on something, with some resource, with some encouragement. Then if we want to experiment further than that, we can roll out a pilot of it. The truth is that, where we are at the moment, it will be 2026 before the rollout of a national programme begins, and that is not achieving the ambition and is not bold.
If you look at the second key area, which the committee said was workforce reform, we know there is a problem. There are 8,000 vacancies and 18% of children’s social care staff were agency workers only last year. There is good stuff. I think the early years career framework could be the spine of something exciting that can attract people and retain them in the profession. However, the national rollout will be from 2026, whereas the committee recommended that some measures be implemented this year and that we adopt ambitious targets. That is the problem. This report says that all we are going to do until 2026 is trial things. That means that lots of areas of the country will see nothing, or very little, not enough to make a change, and change in all areas for every child has to start now. Even then, it is only the beginning of a journey.
The last thing is that, whereas the report called for £2.6 billion over four years, there is £200 million over two years. I want to give this example of what I think we are trying to say which for me summarises it best. Take two initiatives from the last Labour Government and the present Conservative Government: the literacy and numeracy strategies from the last Labour Government and the academy strategy from the present Conservative Government. It does not matter whether you agree with them or not; no one was in any doubt that they were going to be implemented. With literacy and with academies, they were not implemented in full in the first year. It was an evaluation. We were trialling, but no one did not believe that resources would be found to carry that policy forward. I always knew that we would carry forward literacy and numeracy. Every Government Minister has believed that they would take forward the academies programme, and we are not convinced of that in this policy area. There is neither a timeframe, a promise of legislation, political leadership or resource set out that gives the committee the confidence to think that action will definitely follow these initial stages.
I finish by asking for some more information on one or two key areas. The one area where we disagreed, were very uncertain and definitely asked the Government to go slow and evaluate was regional care co-operatives. It was not just local authorities, which could be said to have a vested interest in this, but some of those representing user groups who were not convinced that the argument had been made for regional care co-operatives, so we ask that they be kept under review. There was also very little mention of residential homes. However well we do, there will always be a need for some children, at some point in their care journey, to be in a residential home.
The phrase “once in a generation opportunity” is overused, but it is apt here. I think the stars are aligned—the need is proven, the wish is there and the ambition is shared—but we need a plan that convinces everyone on the ground that it is actually going to happen, and on that the report falls short. I hope the Minister will reflect on our comments and perhaps reflect them in the report that is eventually published. I beg to move.
I underline the importance of a shift to a focus on early intervention. As we have heard so many times, not least in reports from the APPG for children in recent years, we need to switch from crisis to preventive work to protect children properly. That means championing the importance of family help and support.
The research that I mentioned by children’s charities has already found that local authorities across England increased their spending on children’s services by £800 million in 2021-22, a substantial 8% surge from the previous year. However, as we have heard, over 80% of that increase was funnelled into crisis intervention: safeguarding, child protection and the ever rising number of children in care. In short, of the additional money spent, £4 in every £5 went on late intervention services. In the light of that research, the Public Services Committee’s recommendations—to roll out early help nationally and to ensure that this is linked to family hubs—are welcome. Unless this pattern of expenditure is shifted significantly, frankly, nothing is ever going to change.
Turning very briefly to child protection, the record number of children who are now looked after by the state, the horrific killings of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson, and the abuse of disabled children recently uncovered in residential settings in Doncaster are powerful reminders of the urgent need for reform. Meaningful, sustainable change requires long-term investment, yes, but the Government must also introduce an emergency package of measures to stabilise the current child protection system. Can the Minister please provide an update of what is happening in this area?
We also need to see sustained funding for family help services, ranging from children’s centres and youth clubs to targeted support on issues such as drug and alcohol misuse, to stop problems further spiralling. Of course, we cannot ignore the workforce challenges, which we have already heard about from the noble Baroness, Lady Morris.
Finally, on links with wider policy, particularly on health and disability, what assurances can the Minister give that the major conditions strategy will focus on children and young people, in particular mental health, to help alleviate the additional pressure that the crisis in mental health support places on social care? Can the Minister say what support will be made available to adopted children needing help to overcome trauma and what special measures are being put in place for children in care, who are four times as likely to experience mental health issues as their peers?
The Government’s test-and-review approach to reform is unlikely to lead to the level of investment and changes so desperately needed. I conclude once again by urging the Government to reconsider the scope for further investment at their next spending review.
They submitted another joint response to what the Government had to say in response to the MacAlister report. Their concern was:
“The long-term intergenerational impact of poverty and deprivation is not being addressed and will continue to feed rising demand for services. A new national child poverty strategy is needed”.
An academic study last year, I think by the University of Liverpool, found that rising child poverty can be linked to an additional 10,000-plus children having been taken into care across England between 2015 and 2020. The problem with this is, as my right honourable and noble friends said, the more that services locally are having to spend on the crisis in the care system, the less they are spending on prevention. That has become more difficult in the last year, rather than easier. We really have to face up to that.
The other thing is that during austerity the north-east suffered the highest level of funding cuts to local government. Child poverty increased and local government services were reduced by 26% across the region on average, which means that the support and help for children and families simply was not there. Is it any wonder that I want to associate myself with what the report says in its plea for the Government to show more “pace” and “ambition” to enact the review? We need that in the north-east. The children in the north-east need it and the Government really must respond.
She commented to the committee:
“I am not a number, I am a person … we are all humans”,
as she reflected on the inability of the system to act as corporate parents and the lack of time that social workers have to work with individual children. What was so rewarding for me was that, despite the frequent changes, she had really enjoyed her schooling, had now secured a care leavers’ internship and was able to articulate her concerns just a few weeks ago on an ITV programme.
I have spent most of my adult life, 36 years, working in the most deprived areas of Leeds and Cleveland as a youth worker, teacher and head, and I know the price that society pays for its lack of investment in our most at-risk young people. More than half of children in care have a criminal record by the age of 24—four times more than those not in care—with 18% receiving a custodial sentence before they are 16. That is a staggering set of statistics. Only one in 50 of these children gained five GCSEs, and 92% had special education needs and disabilities.
It is so important to recognise that, to children in care, education is a vital key to help solve so many problems. But, as the recent findings of Action for Children reported, between 2019 and 2021 more than half of children with social care referrals failed either English or maths at GCSE. Trying to separate school from social care, when a third of a child’s early life is spent in education, is a gross mistake. They are part of the same. It is this need to fundamentally change how we approach the education and support of children in care that makes me urge the Government to think again about their funding proposals.
It is difficult to know what to think when an inquiry which looked at the whole detail looks for £2.6 billion, and we end up with £200 million to be spent over two years. It is really quite insulting to all the people who made such a commitment not only to our inquiry but constantly to the issue of trying to make a better life for children.
My worry with regard to this report, which I think has been well received not simply by the Government but by all the organisations involved in child social care, is that next year when we have a general election and things get knocked even further back, there will be yet another set of reports and ideas. What we will see is not 2026, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, indicated, but 2036 coming without a great deal of change. This is far too important for party-political diversity. It is such an important issue and we all, whatever our backgrounds and political requirements, must get behind this report and seek from the Government the sort of commitment they have. I plead with the Minister to ask young people what they think when they are in care, because that is one of the key principles that should be added to the six principles that they have quite rightly put in their answers.
Other noble Lords have talked about voice. We heard about some very moving cases. It seems that, at both the micro and macro levels, the voices have not been listened to. We need to get out there. Again, the concept is there; we know that we need to develop opt-out advocacy services. We need to develop these things, and it should be a question of when, not if. It is easy just to say the policy.
Other Members have touched on workforce. How can we be 7,900 people short? That is bound to lead to bad care being provided. Similarly, in residential care, people are badly paid and the churn is colossal. There may be the right number of people for the CQC inspection, but the fact that some are coming and some are going obviously affects the quality of care. Can the Minister say when the shortfall in care workers will be eradicated? Are we paying enough? How do we get this level of temporary labour down. It is amazing—it is a sign of a bad system.
For me, perhaps the most important thing—beyond early intervention—is kinship care. The report touched on this. Some estimates show that there are about 150,000 to 200,000 in such care, as opposed to 57,000 in foster care. This is a worthy thing of course—it is how families used to do it; they would group together. In recent times, the funding has made that much more difficult; it is patchy and depends on the postcode. We need to see what we can do about that. A review is due, so let us hope it is comprehensive and has some money attached to it. If, however, it is another aspiration and another pilot, taking longer and longer, we will fail to grasp the opportunity. This is a terrible situation. Often, a grandparent is taking a grandchild, and it often means the grandparent walking away from their own children; they are separated from them. That is harrowing, and we need to back those people up as far as we can and as quickly as we can.
As others have said, it all comes down to being long on aspiration. It would be really helpful to put some dates on things, and then put some money behind it all, so that progress can be monitored rather than the can constantly being kicked down the road. Pace and ambition have been mentioned but, for me, it is about the practicality of how we do it. As ever, we know what to do; the fault often is that we do it only once. This is about taking forward a national programme.
I end quickly by quoting Barbara Kingsolver’s book Demon Copperhead—many noble Lords may have read it. She says in her dedication:
“For the kids who wake up hungry in those dark places every day, who've lost their families to poverty and pain pills, whose caseworkers keep losing their files, who feel invisible, or wish they were: this book is for you”.
I hope that the Government can make it for them as well and move on.
It was also said that the threshold is exceptionally high. For social care to open a case, there needs to be a significant risk. This is completely understandable, as it does not have the resources to complete early intervention work, but this results in firefighting as opposed to early help in prevention when it could be most effective, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Morris of Yardley and Lady Tyler of Enfield, have said. If care workers are transitory and lasting relationships can never be built, that is never going to happen. The focus on recruitment and particularly retention of staff as a priority is vital. Otherwise, much of the other work is pointless.
All this, I am afraid, is dependent on money. If the committee’s report is true and the strategy lacks the political buy-in and funding to deliver reforms for young people and families, it would be a huge lost opportunity for change. I am also concerned that, in the strategy and the report, the increasing burden of work that falls on schools is hardly acknowledged. I am also unclear quite how schools are to be embedded into the new plan. The strategy recommends that schools should be made a statutory safeguarding partner and contribute to the strategic and operating delivery of multiagency working. It also recommends that they have a greater role in supporting and protecting vulnerable children without making clear how or what budget will be provided for the extra training, and necessary staff, that will inevitably be needed for the extra responsibility alongside their main job, which is usually to teach.
The strategy is called Stable Homes, Built on Love. Might it not be better to aim for stable lives, built on love?
A major part of the problem is that if any system should be solely in the public domain, it is surely a system that is responsible for bringing up, educating, housing and, indeed, parenting young people, who are our fellow citizens and future participants, we hope, in our society. However, I am afraid that we have seen fit to allow the profit motive—often a good thing in society—to play a leading part in this precious, vital and difficult area. One of our prime witnesses, John Pearce, a vice-president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, said this in paragraph 121 about regional proposals, but it applies to my point just as much:
“With about 80% of the residential care provision currently sitting with independent providers, many of which are backed by private equity, the suggestion that in the North East the 12 authorities coming together are going to have more influence over a substantial provider backed by a state investment fund than an individual local authority, and that that is going to change the dynamic, is flawed”.
That is an understatement. This area needs drastic, fundamental, urgent and radical reform so that, instead of the near conspiracy of silence that has existed, we can be proud of how we help our most vulnerable children. It is time to act.
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