Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Commons Reasons and Amendments

Motion A

That this House do not insist on its Amendment 2, to which the Commons have disagreed for their Reason 2A.

2A: Because the Commons consider the Amendment to be unnecessary in light of existing statutory guidance about bringing a child protection plan to an end and steps already being taken to strengthen multi-agency decision making relating to child protection.

My Lords, in moving Motion A, I shall speak also to Motions B, K and K1. In this group we will be debating amendments made in this House relating to child protection plans, multi-agency child protection teams and local authority consent for children not in school. For each, I will set out the rationale for why the Government cannot accept these amendments.

I will speak first to Motion A relating to Amendment 2, originally tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, regarding decisions to end child protection plans for under-fives when care proceedings are initiated or a care or supervision order is granted. When care proceedings begin, the child protection plan should not automatically be discharged. Statutory guidance is clear that a multi-agency meeting should take place to make this decision.

The Ofsted inspection framework reflects this statutory guidance and includes a focus on child protection. However, I note the noble Baroness’s concerns about children losing support at key transition points, potentially making them more vulnerable. This is why we will strengthen statutory guidance to make sure that the reason for the decision and any ongoing support is recorded.

We expect expert practitioners in multi-agency child protection teams to make decisions about plans ending. These teams bring fresh child protection expertise to concerns and will know the circumstances of the child well, so they are best placed to make these important decisions. While senior and experienced directors of children’s services should get involved only when needed, this is already provided for in the statutory framework.

Motion B relates to Amendment 5, also in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, requiring that the Secretary of State delay an evaluation of the families first for children pathfinder in Parliament before the multi-agency child protection team measures come into force.

Effective multi-agency child protection practice, which prevents tragedies and saves lives, needs to happen now. Delay is unacceptable. The Government will set out implementation plans covering the next phase of children’s social care reform following Royal Assent, including information about the planned pathfinder evaluation.

This summer, we expect to publish interim findings that are informing national rollout. Clause 3 also includes powers to make regulations about the functions of multi-agency child protection teams. The regulations will be subject to consultation and parliamentary scrutiny and will reflect learning from the pathfinders and national reform rollout. Regulations are not expected to come into effect until 2027, but the system is rightly changing now and we must not hinder this.

I turn finally to Motion K, relating to Amendment 44, and Motion K1, relating to Amendment 44B in lieu, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. The amendment in lieu would require parents to obtain permission from their local authority before withdrawing their child from school for home education if their child is currently, or has ever been, the subject of care or supervision order proceedings, unless the child has since been adopted. We share the noble Baroness’s commitment to ensuring that every child is safe. However, we remain unconvinced about extending the consent requirement further. Children who are the subject of such proceedings would almost always fall within existing protections, either through a child protection plan triggering the Government’s proposed consent measure or as a looked-after child whose education is already determined by the local authority through their care plan.

My Lords, I will speak briefly to this group of amendments. I thank the Minister in her absence for the meetings we have had away from your Lordships’ Chamber. Clearly, protecting our young people is close to all our hearts and is something that we will keep a watching brief on. We have looked at the Government’s proposals. Early on, when I arrived at your Lordships’ House, I worked with the Children’s Commissioner and a briefing was sent to all noble Lords in June last year about something I was trying to bring forward on Report to try to make young people’s lives better. On that occasion, I failed to convince noble Lords on both the main two Benches and, as we live in a democracy, I chose not to pursue that.

I wish the Government well with their intentions. Clearly, as the opposition here—the smaller opposition—our duty will be to continue to hold the Government to account on the reassurances they have given us in briefings and, more importantly, on what they have written to us both from your Lordships’ House and the other place. These Benches are not minded to oppose what the Government are proposing, but we are putting them on notice that we will continue to watch the progress and we wish this Bill well.

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Motion K1 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. I thank the Bill team and the Minister for our very useful meeting yesterday, and, as ever, I must declare my interest as a state school teacher.

When we talked to the Bill team yesterday, I thought that they almost seemed to use the language of this amendment. As we have heard, the Sara Sharif review says that the overview is at fault, not the system; but this amendment seems the very way of tightening oversight without, as has been mentioned, penalising adoptive parents and children, where the concern was about a previous iteration of their life. This seems to be the crux of the amendment. The Minister actually said the Bill says that “almost all” children fall within the Bill. I think this tightens it up, so hopefully all children will fall within the purview of this Bill.

Moreover, it seems to me that, in the Bill as it stands, the local authority could not require a child who left local authority care and returned to their family, say, three years ago, to attend school, while they could for a child who came off child protection three years ago. I do not understand that at all. At the moment, I am not clear about the Bill as it stands. I think Motion K1 makes it much clearer, and I implore the Government to accept this.

My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, has just said. As a family judge, I had a number of cases where children had been on protection orders—and, in particular, supervision orders—and I vividly recall an appalling case in Liverpool where there was a continuing supervision order that was utterly disregarded. I called the Director of Social Services to explain it, and she was absolutely thinking that it did not really matter; so everything that can be done to put added pressure on making sure that children who are home educated are kept under proper supervision by local authorities seems to me to be absolutely crucial.

My Lords, I will confine myself briefly to supporting Motion B. It is commonly agreed now that the pilots of the pathfinder model in selected family courts have been a success and represent the way ahead. This model has been shown to reduce delays significantly and has forced the focus on to making things better for the child concerned, rather than on the parents’ disputes and confrontations. That model has developed sufficiently well, in that the delay in moving it on into the mainstream should really now be avoided. It means that the very recently announced expansion into child-focused courts will be welcome.

My Lords, I will o speak to Motion K1, tabled by my noble friend Lady Barran. The Government are rightly acting to give local authorities the power to prevent children subject to a child protection plan being withdrawn from school. However, the scope of the Bill is clearly too limited, even with the amendment to give effect to a backward extension of five years for child protection plans.

I will briefly remind noble Lords of the characteristics of the children we are talking about. Clearly, they have all experienced abuse or neglect, but even apart from this we are talking about an exceptionally vulnerable group. Nearly three-quarters of children in care have special educational needs—often conditions they were born with that can make them particularly challenging to bring up and to educate—and often complicated physical or behavioural needs as well. Alongside that, these are children of parents whose ability to care for and protect their own children has already been shown to be inadequate, at least for a time. Even after a care order or child protection plan has been discharged, these are, in the main, children with serious challenges and complicated needs, whose parents have limited capacity. They are very often fragile families needing a lot of support and with a strong likelihood of further social care intervention being needed in future.

Therefore, there should be local authority consideration of proposals to home-educate any child who has been in care, had a supervision order or is under a child protection plan: first, to make sure that the child will actually get the education and support they need at home; and, secondly, to make sure that the child can safely be removed from view. Once a child is home-schooled, it may not be seen by any adult from outside the family for years. That may have been exactly the thing that was keeping that fragile family in balance.

The letter sent to Peers yesterday rejecting the Lords amendment bizarrely referred to the current proposal as protecting children from stigma. But there is no stigma in attending a state school, so to deny local authorities the ability to review elective home education in these cases seems worryingly self-denying. I therefore believe that the logic of my noble friend’s Motion is powerful and should be accepted.

My Lords, I am pleased to see that, in Motion K1, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, has reduced the issue to being about only Section 31 and that she has provided a carve-out, as it were, for adoption. Imagine if you adopted a two year-old who had been in care and, 10 years later, you have to jump through another bureaucratic hoop, so I am very pleased to see that. I am sorry that the Government do not have that provision within their current approach.

When I raised this in an amendment—I think it was on Report—the Minister told me that in such a case, it would be a pure formality: that, in relation to an adopted child, the local authority would simply pass it through. In your Lordships’ House, we all know that what is a formality for the local authority can be a real worry and threat for the individuals involved. It is a threat of people passing judgment on them, and that is a really important point. However, this is not the only example of people who will be inappropriately caught within this amendment and within the Government’s current approach.

I want to give one example, which is known to both the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and the Minister. It is of a young boy who was abused and raped by his father. With the permission of his mother, I will read out or paraphrase a short extract from an email she sent to the Government. At the time when the care plan was created for her son, she said, he

“had made detailed disclosures of serious sexual abuse”

to the mother, to four police officers, to two doctors and a social worker

“yet the police had still not arrested the perpetrator and the family court offered … no protection”.

Under those circumstances, she said, the chair of the initial child protection conference agreed with herself, a doctor, a nurse and a police liaison officer that he should be placed on a care plan

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her comments regarding Motion A and the commitment to strengthen statutory guidance, and for the publication of interim findings in relation to Motion B for the multi-agency child protection teams. To the noble Lord, Lord Meston, I say that there are multiple pathfinders, and the one to which he referred—the one he was worried that my amendment might delay—was a different pathfinder from the one to which my amendment referred. It is easy to be confused with so many paths going on.

I turn to my Motion K1, and again acknowledge that the Government have done the right thing by introducing a new power for local authorities to withhold consent to home-educate a child where there are significant safeguarding concerns. Noble Lords know that we spent time testing the limits of what these concerns might be, in Committee and on Report, to ensure that they are proportionate. That has been informed in part by the tragic death of Sara Sharif, whose father took her out of school.

As we heard, in response to our debates, the Government broadened their initial definition of children who are eligible. Then, on Report, we tested the appetite of the House for a much wider scope, but this was rejected in the other place. Last night we all received a letter from Ministers that covered the response to the Sara Sharif safeguarding practice review. I have read the letter several times. I find it extraordinary that, although I explained to the Minister on Monday that my amendment would simply cover children who had been in the care system, there is no mention of those children or my amendment anywhere in the letter—unless I missed it. Either officials and Ministers do not understand the significance of care proceedings, which I find very hard to believe—particularly of the Minister at the Dispatch Box today—or there is no political will to engage with this subject. I feel uncomfortable saying this in the House but, reading the letter, that is what it feels like. Either way, it is a very unfortunate oversight.

My Lords, I am exceptionally grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. I recognise the commitment and contribution they have all made during the passage of the Bill. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, for not pursuing any of the points further, as he said.

To address the main points raised, as I said in my opening speech, I fully recognise the importance of what the noble Baroness is trying to achieve with Amendment 2 on the discharge of child protection plans. I hope I have provided reassurance that, although the statutory framework already requires robust multi-agency oversight of child protection plans, we will strengthen expectations for reasons to be recorded.

To pick up on the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, children who have previously been on child protection plans may leave their birth parents’ care, as he is fully aware and outlined in his comments, but many continue to receive support to meet their needs and support placement stability, with education being a central consideration in this. It is right, therefore, that these children are included in the consent requirement if they have been on a child protection plan in the last five years, because school can be a protective factor for these children in ensuring that they maintain stability and do not become vulnerable to other types of harm, such as extra-familial harm.

However, that said, we recognise that the child’s new carers will have been through rigorous approval processes already, and we will make clear in statutory guidance that we expect local authorities to make use of the relevant information they already hold on birth parents and adoptive, kinship or foster carers through existing assessment and approval processes to help make the consent decision. In practice, this will mean that, in most cases, the consent process is expedited for these families.

The introduction of multi-agency child protection teams will also be critical in strengthening decision-making. Going further than the amendment, the teams will make robust decisions for every child needing protection regardless of age or where they are in the system.

Extending the consent measures to children who are currently the subject of care or supervision proceedings is unnecessary. Risks to the child are managed through statutory care planning processes. The local authority will be involved with these families, and there should be either a child protection plan or a care plan in place to support the child day to day. These children would almost certainly either be caught by the Government’s proposed consent measure due to a child protection plan or be a looked-after child and, therefore, education provision would be a matter for the local authority to decide.