Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 9: 9: Clause 6, page 5, line 1, leave out ““five”” and insert ““three”” The noble Baroness said: I will speak also to Amendments Nos. 10, 11 and 12. The Bill enables, through Clause 6, the piloting of arrangements for the new social work practices for a period of up to five years, with the intention to pilot the arrangements in a number of local authorities. It does not offer the opportunity for any other models for new arrangements of social workers to receive similar legislative backing. As has already been indicated on these Benches, we have some scepticism as to whether the establishment of private social work practices will address the issues that the Government are concerned about, such as the need to free up social workers from bureaucracy to focus on direct work with children. Instead, we are concerned that they might have a negative impact on partnership working and on the journey of the child through the care system, while at the same time failing to improve the recruitment and retention of social workers. Importantly, the option of social work practices is not the only way to ensure that the Government’s aims are met. Other pilots to address some of those aims are underway. For example, the Children’s Workforce Development Council is currently seeking bids to trial new arrangements for social workers in 18 local authorities. The new trials are intended to remodel social work teams to improve the recruitment and retention of social workers and other social care staff, to involve more early intervention work and to tackle bureaucracy. It is also worth bearing in mind that the trials are going on alongside other developments in the education and care sectors that are seeking, through counsellors and mentors, to provide children with longer-term, stable support and help from adults outside the home. It may be that these experiments also prove to be an alternative to the social work practice model. The amendments proposed for this part of the Bill aim to ensure that the move from piloting to social work practices and making the model permanent is not seen as the necessary outcome. We propose two mechanisms through this group of amendments. First, Amendments Nos. 9, 10 and 11 would shorten the length of time in which local authorities are given the opportunity to pilot the social work practices. This is aimed at ensuring that it is not seen as the only model of delivery for the provision of care for looked-after children and that other potential models are also given adequate opportunity to be trialled by local authorities. It is intended as a probing amendment to gain further understanding of the extent to which the Government are committed to the pilots and whether they are genuine pilots or whether the Government are open to running other schemes simultaneously. Amendment No. 12 is more substantive. The aim is to ensure that a rigorous evaluation of the pilots of social work practices takes place before the model becomes permanent. The assurance given on Second Reading, that the results of the pilots would be published and that by implication they would be given no further rollout until after publication and consideration of the results, is reassuring. The Minister a short while back again reassured us that the pilots would not be rolled out until the evaluation was complete. That does not detract from the fact that the criteria for judging the success or otherwise of the pilots must be rigorous. They will need to be judged in terms of the required improvements in services offered to children in care, their broader impact on the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of children’s social services and the general delivery of personal social services. That is why in proposed new subsection (8) we are asking that they be judged against the delivery of the Every Child Matters agenda, the local authority’s responsibilities as a corporate parent, the impact on local authority resources and the general stability of the care system, as well as the specific impacts on the children in care services and the recruitment and retention of social workers. Finally, proposed new subsection (7) puts in the Bill the Minister’s pledge that the social work practice pilots would not be rolled out more generally until the evaluations have been completed and considered by Parliament. I find myself really rather unclear on what triggers Clause 4. As we discussed earlier, Clause 4 effectively ends the period of piloting and introduces social work practices, as suggested in Clause 1(1). Looking at Clause 6, the piloting period begins on the date when Clause 1(1) comes into force and ends on the earlier of the two: the date when Clause 4 comes into force or the end of the period of five years, beginning with the date on which the Act is passed. I read that to say that, unless Clause 4 is brought into force, there is a five-year pilot and after five years the whole thing falls. I am not clear on Clause 6(2): "““An order bringing section 1 into force may do so by reference to particular local authorities or local authorities of a particular description””." I take it that that means you could roll out the pilots more generally in either a particular local authority or a group of local authorities. Someone has to declare the day on which Clause 4 comes into force. I am not clear from the Bill what triggers that. Can the Minister clarify that? The aim of Amendment No. 7 would be that an order from the Secretary of State bringing Clause 4 into force would not be made until an evaluation of the pilots had been completed. We are clear in our minds that this is what we would like, but I am not clear what would trigger Clause 4. I beg to move.