Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for those remarks, but before I conclude I should like to deal with two other questions raised by the noble Baroness. First, she asked whether functions currently carried out by social workers in local authorities would still be carried out by social workers in social work practices. That would be the case. We intend the situation to be broadly comparable. Local authorities’ social work functions can be carried out at the moment by or under the supervision of registered social workers. The same regime will apply in respect of social work practices. The noble Baroness also asked a specific question about social work practices providing an out-of-hours service for children in care. There is no question of children supported by social work practices not having access to out-of-hours support, whether from the social work practice or from the local authority. However, we see no reason why social work practices would not devise creative ways of providing out-of hours services to the children they support in a way that delivers consistency and stability. For example, social work practices could arrange for their social workers to take turns to be on call or pay their staff a premium for working out of hours. On that basis I hope that the Committee will think it sensible to allow the pilots to proceed. As I have said, I will make available copies of the report of Professor Le Grand’s committee, which addresses many of the specific points that were raised in the debate.