Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I, too, welcome the Bill, despite what I said at Second Reading, to which I shall return from time to time. Let me add to what the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, said. For those of us who have sat through previous children’s legislation, where two or three people met and hoped that someone almighty was with us, it is wonderful to see so many people taking an interest. No one who has been involved with social work for as long as I have can disagree with the tenor of any of these amendments. Clearly, the content is crucial. However, I question whether they need to be in legislation. On how the amendments would be incorporated, it would be interesting to hear whether the guidance and workforce planning going on answers some of the issues. We should remember that Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 already places a duty on local authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. Within that duty, they are able to provide most things described in the amendments. The problem with Section 17 is the phrase, ““who are in need”” and the way in which local authorities have closely and tightly defined children in need to the exclusion of vast rafts of children who have needs that are not being met. Therefore, unless we get that clear, none of these amendments will improve the lot of children. We simply will be repeating previous legislation and not taking it forward. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said, good prevention is good practice. We have heard the Government saying that about health services recently. We hope that they will pay the same attention to children as they have paid to adults in preventive health services. But all that depends on resources, skills and training, rather than legislation. Family group conferencing is a very good preventive measure, but we must be extremely careful if we include it in legislation. It is equally important sometimes to provide in-depth, psychiatric and therapeutic help. It might be equally important to provide a washing machine to prevent children coming into local authority care of one form or another.