Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I have kept my powder dry up to this point, if not my paper handkerchiefs. I enthusiastically welcome this Bill and wish this very large Committee a happy new year. Members of the Committee will have noticed that we on these Benches have tabled quite a large number of amendments, which fall into two groups. Some are probing and others are what I like to think of as Oliver Twist amendments; in other words, ““Thank you very much. That’s very nice, but can we please have some more?””. These are probing amendments to Clause 1 stand part and all the clauses in Part 1. Obviously, without Clause 1 none of the others is any use. We have tabled these amendments, not because we have any problem in principle with this idea, but because we do not believe that the proposed arrangements will necessarily provide a solution to the problems identified with the current arrangements for caring for looked-after children. Neither do we believe that the proposals or the arrangements for the pilots have been thoroughly thought through by the Government. Finally, we have great concerns about the knock-on effects of these proposed arrangements on the existing local authority provision and the workforce. Of course, underpinning all our concerns is our worry about the outcomes and welfare of children in care. That is what matters most. It is really immaterial how their care is provided as long as it is of high quality and gives them the best possible second chance in life—their first chance having gone horribly wrong or they would not be in care in the first place. It seems to me that the proposals in Part 1 are made in response to three problems: first, the lack of stability and quality of relationships between the child and the social workers; secondly, the frustration of the social workers that they cannot give the quality of care they would like because of an increasingly bureaucratic and managerial style of structure and lack of resources, leading to high caseloads, et cetera; and, thirdly, the difficulties of local authorities due to the high turnover of social workers, which, according to the paper, Consistent Care Matters, by Professor Julian Le Grand and his working party, is around 12 per cent on average, with places like London having it as high as 15 per cent. We now have to ask whether the proposals for private social work practices will solve these problems or whether paying more attention to the existing structures would do it better. To give him his due, Professor Le Grand does not claim that social work practices are the answer to everything. However, his paper and his recommendations raise a number of serious issues. First, there is a fundamental problem with his comparison of social work practices with GP practices. Primary health care, like education, is the universal service. GP practices serve the whole community with non-acute services, while acute cases are referred to specialists and hospitals. The 60,000 children in care represent 0.001 per cent of the population and are the most needy, most acute cases. Given that GP practices have great difficulty in providing 24/7 cover to their patients, my first question for the Minister is how does he think that groups of six to 10 people, not all of whom will be registered social workers, will be able to provide 24/7 care to their child clients? Our worry is that, given this difficulty, those practices will only contract for the easier end of the spectrum and will leave the most difficult cases to the local authority social services departments. If that were to happen, it would be easy to see how, eventually, the social work practices would be able to cream off the best social workers locally. Clause 2(5) says that the local authority must secure that the functions are carried out by, or supervised by, a GSCC-registered social worker. Can the Minister confirm that only registered social workers in the social work practices will carry out those functions which would be carried out only by registered social workers in the local authority? On resources, given recommendation 11 in Professor Le Grand’s paper that these groups are given pump-priming funding, it is clear that they will not be working on a level playing field with the local authority department. Would the Minister consider that a fairer way of making a real comparison between a new social work practice and a local authority department would be to give the local authority department the same sort of pump-priming funding to enable it to address some of the problems that I outlined earlier? Will this difference in funding be taken into account in the evaluation of the pilots? One of the problems that I mentioned earlier is the stability of staffing and the continuity of the relationship between the social worker and the child. Could the Minister explain how that matter is likely to be improved by contracting out services? Surely the monitoring and contractual arrangements between the authority and the social work practice will hive off funding from the coalface that could have been spent on ensuring greater continuity? It is also difficult to see how these new arrangements are going to ““reduce bureaucracy””, as has been claimed. Indeed, it looks to me as if it will be increased. Moving on to other issues relating to the pilots, I am concerned about the supervision of the social work practices during the pilot period. According to Clause 6(1)(b)(i), Ofsted’s supervision of providers of social work does not kick in until after the end of the pilot period. Who will be registering and inspecting these bodies during the pilot period? How will the Government receive independent advice about whether the pilots are working well and whether the evaluation before any rollout is considered will be independent? Professor Le Grand’s working party recommended that the contract between the local authority and the social work practice should be outcome-based. Presumably the assessment of the success or otherwise of the arrangements will also be based on outcomes. In that case, it is essential that we compare apples with apples and not apples with pears. In other words, how will the Government ensure that comparisons are really being made between two organisations with exactly comparable client caseloads and resources? It is interesting that recommendation 3 of the working party was that information should be gathered about the real full costs of providing local authority children’s services to help inform the setting of the budgets for the new social work practices. It is surprising to me that the real costs of such services are not already known to the Government. Many local authorities that are determined to provide a good, high-quality service have to top up what they receive from the Government from their own resources to do so. The working group recommends that there should be an evaluation strategy for assessing the impact of social work practice pilots. It stated that this should include comparisons with control groups of the average and the best authorities. If the Government accept that recommendation, will the Minister undertake to make use of the information so gathered about the characteristics of the best local authorities and put the same effort into disseminating best practice among those public authorities as they are now proposing to put into the new contracting-out arrangements? In this regard, I made particular note of recommendation 2 of the working group report, which calls for greater attention in the social work training curriculum to the importance of stability and continuity in services for children and their implication for social workers’ professional development. Will the Government pick up this recommendation in relation to all social workers, wherever they are employed? The overarching concern is that the proposals fit in with the Every Child Matters agenda and the delivery of integrated services. There seems to me to be a disconnect between the Government’s recent activities in this regard and the current proposals. The establishment of the children’s services authority and the appointment of a director of children's services and a lead member on the councils was a direct and appropriate response to the report of the noble Lord, Lord Laming. Indeed, within the past six months we have had the setting up of the Department for Children, Schools and Families in order further to integrate all matters relating to children. Against these developments, which we on this side of the Committee support, the contracting out of social work practice appears to be going into reverse. I hope that the Minister can allay some of our concerns in his reply and convince us that the power to set up these pilots will indeed advance the cause of better care for our most vulnerable children.