Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

If the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, will forgive me, I shall deal with the custody issues when we come to the relevant amendments. I am sorry that I was not able to deal with those points at Second Reading. It was simply because I was trying to keep my winding-up remarks within half an hour. I shall deal with those issues fully at the appropriate stage in Committee. In respect of the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, on TUPE, whether or not social workers with existing contracts transfer will depend entirely on decisions by the local authority. They may transfer if that is a decision that a local authority takes, but a local authority could wish to see a social work practice be developed without staff transferring. But where staff do transfer, TUPE will apply. The noble Baroness’s suggestion in respect of the Working Together guidance is good. We will look at that further and I will respond before Report on whether we should make changes in the spirit that she suggested. We entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, that social work practices must build close and effective relationships with other services. The noble Baroness said that the intended effect of her amendment is to require providers of social work services to participate in children’s trust arrangements made under Section 10 of the Children Act 2004. We agreed that providers of social work services will need to be part of a multi-agency framework, but we do not believe that it is appropriate to elevate the provider to the status of a relevant partner for the purposes of Section10 of the Children Act 2004. The involvement of providers of social work services in multi-agency working can be provided for in other ways. On this occasion, as in so many others, my noble friend Lord Judd has entirely anticipated my response. We believe that the entirely laudable objectives can be secured without further provisions in legislation. But I shall give him the response that I always give: I shall study his remarks to see whether there are further changes that we should consider. The duty of Section 10 of the Children Act 2004 to co-operate with children’s trust-style arrangements is intended to operate at a strategic level. This means that the duty applies to strategy level bodies, such as the police, health, YOTs, and the Learning and Skills Council, which are involved in assessing need, developing overarching plans and commissioning services. Social work practices will be delivery-focused bodies, whose work will need to be informed by priorities set by the children’s trust arrangements. They will also need to report into children’s trust arrangements in relation to delivery and on specific policy issues. Section 10(1)(c) of the Children Act 2004 already allows local authorities to include, "““such other persons or bodies as the local authority considers appropriate””," in children’s trust arrangements. In some areas, a representative of the social work practice may be asked to attend key partnership meetings for this purpose, while in others, they may be represented by the local authority. Social work practices will need good working relationships with other agencies at individual child level. They will need to build a rapport with teachers, health professionals and others involved in the lives of the children they support which is consistent with their role of lead professional. Working closely with other agencies is not the only way that social work practices can ensure that the whole range of children’s needs are being met. Social work practices may offer most benefit through engaging multi-disciplinary teams to support children, including therapists and learning mentors alongside social workers and social work assistants. The task is to promote relationships that reinforce the development of strong multi-disciplinary relationships. As, over the next six months, we develop a model contract for local authorities to use when contracting with social work practices, we will include provisions to require effective multi-agency working. We will make it clear in statutory guidance to local authorities, issued under Section 7 of the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970 on the making of arrangements under Part 1 of this Bill, that they should use the contract to ensure that social work practices work within a multi-agency, multi-disciplinary framework. I hope, on that basis, that the noble Baroness will be reassured.