Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 16: 16: Before Clause 7, insert the following new Clause— ““Reviews for social worker turnover A local authority must conduct a review of a child’s experience of care if, during a child’s time in care, he or she has been looked after by three or more different social workers during the course of one single year.”” The noble Baroness said: The amendment was inspired by the Minister’s speech at Second Reading. He noted that some children see as many as 30 different social workers and go through nine or 10 care placements within a few years. The amendment places a cap on the number of social workers who may look after a child in a year. If the child has more than three social workers, the local authority is obliged to review the situation. This amendment would create a mechanism by which a disproportionately high rate of turnover could be checked, investigated and, I hope, stopped. The rate of turnover might be perfectly explicable, but it might be a symptom of a yet unidentified problem with a child or, indeed, the local authority’s provision of service. [The Sitting was suspended for a Division in the House from 3.51 to 4.01 pm.]