Independent Review of Children’s Social Care

Statement

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Monday 23 May.

“With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a Statement on how the Government are responding to the independent review of children’s social care and the Competition and Markets Authority’s children’s social care report.

This Government believe in a country where all children are given an equal chance to fulfil their potential, but sadly we are not there yet. That is why we made our manifesto commitment to launch the independent review of children’s social care in March 2021; its report was published today. The review was commissioned to take a fundamental look at the children’s social care system, and to gain an understanding of how we must transform it to better support the most vulnerable children and families. I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to Josh MacAlister and his team for this comprehensive review, as well as thanking the children, the experts by experience board, and the care leavers, families and carers who shared their experiences of the current system and their aspirations for a future one.

The review is bold and broad, calling for a reset of the system so that it acts decisively in response to abuse, provides more help for families in crisis, and ensures that those in care have lifelong loving relationships and homes. I look forward to working with the sector, those with first-hand experience and colleagues in all parts of the House to inform an ambitious and detailed government response and implementation strategy, to be published before the end of 2022. To get us there, I have three main priorities. The first is to improve the child protection system, so that it keeps children safe from harm as effectively as possible; the second is to support families to care for their children, so that they can have safe, loving and happy childhoods which set them up for fulfilling lives; and the third is to ensure that there are the right placements for children in the right places, so that those who cannot stay with their parents grow up in safe, stable and loving homes.

To enable me to respond effectively and without delay, I will establish a national implementation board consisting of people with experience of leading transformational change, to challenge the system to achieve the full extent of our ambitions for children. The board will also include people with their own experience of the care system, to remind us of the promise of delivery and the cost of delay.

I want to be straight about this: too many vulnerable children have been let down by the system. We cannot level up if we cannot make progress on children’s social care reform. However, we are striving to change that. Our work to improve the life chances of children is already well under way, and is aligned with the key themes of the review and the CMA report. On 2 April, we backed the Supporting Families programme with £695 million, which means that 300,000 of the most vulnerable families will be supported to provide the safe and loving homes that their children need in order to thrive.

We welcome the review’s recognition of this programme as an excellent model of family intervention, and today, with the review as our road map, we are going further. We will work with the sector to develop a national children’s social care framework, which will set a clear direction for the system and point everyone to the best available evidence for how to support children and families. We will set out more detail later this year.

I pay tribute to every single social worker who is striving to offer life-changing support to children and families day in, day out. Providing more decisive child protection relies on the knowledge and skills of these social workers, which is why I support the principle of the review’s proposed early-career framework. We will set out robust plans to refocus the support that social workers receive early on, with a particular focus on child protection, given the challenging nature of this work.

We will also take action to drive forward the review’s three data and digital priority areas, ensuring that local government and partners are in the driving seat of reform. Following the review’s recommendation for a data and technology task force, we will introduce a new digital and data solutions fund to help local authorities to improve delivery for children and families through technology. More detail will follow later this year on joining up data from across the public sector so that we can increase transparency, both between safeguarding partners and the wider public.

Recognising the urgency of action in placement sufficiency, we will prioritise working with local authorities to recruit more foster carers. This will include pathfinder local recruitment campaigns that build towards a national programme, to help to ensure that children have access to the right placements at the right time. As the review recommends, we will focus on providing more support throughout the application process to improve the conversion rate from expressions of interest to approved foster carers.

Delivering change for vulnerable children is my absolute priority and, as suggested by the review, I will return to the House on the anniversary of its publication to update colleagues on progress made.

This Statement also provides an opportunity to welcome the recommendations set out in the Competition and Markets Authority report into the children’s social care market, which was published in March. As an initial response, I have asked my department to conduct thorough research into the children’s homes workforce, engaging with the sector and with experts to improve oversight of the market.

Sadly, we know that too many children are still not being protected from harm quickly enough. This is unacceptable. On Thursday, the child safeguarding practice review panel will set out lessons learned from the heartbreaking deaths of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson, and the Secretary of State for Education will come to this House to outline the Government’s initial response to these tragic cases. For too long, children’s social care has not received the focus it so desperately needs and deserves. I am determined to work with colleagues across the House and with local authorities across our country to deliver once-in-a-generation reform so that the system provides high-quality help at the right time, with tangible outcomes. For every child who needs our protection, we must reform this system. For every family who needs our help and support, we must reform this system. For every child or young person in care who deserves a safe, stable and loving home, we must reform this system. This is a moral imperative, and we must all rise to the challenge. I commend this Statement to the House.”

My Lords, I thank Josh MacAlister and his team for their hard work and commitment on this piece of work. We must recognise the commitment of the social workers, support workers, foster carers, children’s home staff, youth workers and everyone else who devotes their lives to providing safety and stability to children who are in need or whose own families are unable to care for them. We on these Benches welcome the review’s conclusion: a total reset of children’s social care is now needed.

I remember serving as lead member for children’s services in Darlington and spending time with our looked-after children, visiting our children’s homes and, back in 2007, having a very strong sense that these children are a priority for local agencies and that their futures are our responsibility as corporate parents. I do not think there has ever been a golden age for us to look back at, but it is unarguable that pressures have grown and services have come under more and more strain over the last decade.

MacAlister’s conclusions must make us all wake up to what has been going on in every community up and down the country. Looked-after children are our children, and we are failing them. Over the last 12 years, we have seen the number of children living in poverty rise to 4.3 million. We have also seen the number of looked-after children increase continually, up by a quarter since 2010. The number of Section 47 inquiries, where a local authority has cause to suspect that a child is in need, has gone up by 78% since 2011. Half of all children’s services departments have been rated inadequate or requiring improvement. At the same time, vacancy and turnover rates for children’s social workers are increasing and outcomes for care-experienced children and young people are worsening.

There are many reasons for this, of course, but we have to ask ourselves how, against this backdrop of failure, the 10 biggest private providers of children’s homes and private foster care placements made a jaw-dropping £300 million in profit last year. Where have the early intervention and prevention services gone? We warned that the decimation of Sure Start would have deeper, long-lasting impacts that would cost us socially and economically. Other local authority-led services that would have identified problems sooner have faced cuts too.

My Lords, we too very much welcome this review and thank all those involved in presenting it to us. I associate my remarks with all those people involved in working with children and families at all sorts of levels; they do an amazing and fantastic job.

The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care provides an opportunity to unlock potential for recognising that loving relationships and supporting kinship networks lead the way to sustainable and ideal solutions for children in social care. Her Majesty’s Government’s response focuses on providing foster carers and social workers with more support but does not address the supporting of children themselves. This review is a wake-up call to Ministers who, after a series of reviews, must finally address the scale and severity of the challenge to provide adequate support to those who rely on us. The report recommends injecting a minimum of £2.6 billion into the care system over the next four years. Will the Minister reassure us that the Government will commit to this kind of important investment?

The Government’s response so far does not address the discrepancy between care-leavers and the continuing success of the individual throughout their life. Every child, no matter where they live or what their circumstances, deserves a great start in life so that they can have the support, relationships, skills and knowledge needed to succeed. We on these Benches believe in young people being allowed to stay in care until the age of 25, as well as increased financial resources through expanding the bursary for those leaving care from £1,000 to £2,000, access to mentors and support networks. We champion bridging the gap between care and a fulfilling adult life in a way that current government policy does not meaningfully address.

Furthermore, Her Majesty’s Government’s proposed policy places the onus of finding care providers for vulnerable young children on the relevant local authority while underfunding those very same councils. The providers in the private sector are charging exorbitant rates—£4,000 a week—for inadequate care, knowing full well that there is a shortage of care providers. The predictable outcome is that the authority finds care from the lowest bidders, often unregistered providers with no quality assurance of care.

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness and the noble Lord for their remarks. As a Government, we absolutely acknowledge that the children’s social care system needed a fundamental report. That is why we commissioned this independent, broad and bold review. We will be publishing an ambitious and detailed implementation strategy later this year that will deliver for our most vulnerable children. The noble Baroness asked for a timeline on that; we can be clear that the implementation plan will be published before the end of the year.

Obviously, a lot of work is already ongoing within government but, in response to the review, we have been clear about three key priorities that we want to focus on initially: first, to improve the child protection system so that children are safe; secondly, to support families to raise their children so that they thrive; and finally, for those children who need to be placed in local authority or foster care, to have the right placements in the right places and in a timely way. On Monday we announced plans to establish a national implementation board, which will challenge us to achieve the best for our children. One of the strengths of this review, as I am sure all noble Lords will agree, was the incredible contribution from people with lived experience of the care system. We commit to ensuring that their voices are also represented on that national implementation board.

We are prioritising work with local authorities to recruit more foster carers, which we think can make a real difference in the short term, and to support social workers, particularly early in their career, and give them additional focus on child protection given its key role in their work. We are developing a national children’s social care framework, which will set out a clear direction for the system and provide an evidence base for all those working in the sector. Finally, we are introducing a new digital and data solutions fund, which will help local authorities to improve delivery for children and families through technology.