Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I respect and sympathise with the principles behind the amendment. It is obvious that the element of continuity is of priceless worth in relation to the children whom we are discussing. Their lives have been so bedevilled by upheavals already and all manner of turmoil that they require greater continuity than the ordinary child might. That continuity must be at all levels in so far as that can be achieved: there should be judicial continuity with regard to the judges who supervise a particular case; there should be continuity of residence, in so far as that can possibly be achieved; and there should most certainly be continuity in the social workers charged with caring for and befriending those children. Having said that, I believe that there is another side to the coin, although it does not defeat anything that has been said or any aspiration that has been exhibited in relation to the amendment. I refer to the question of resources. I spoke in Committee last week about poor counties—the ones that I dealt with when I sat as a judge in north Wales. I am thinking of the four or five counties stretching from Anglesey all the way across to Flintshire. Their problems are very much the same: they have small teams of social workers and if one social worker is ill, another is away on a course and another has left employment for, perhaps, another local authority, while a fourth is on maternity leave, there is a limit to how much they can shake the pack. I have no doubt that in most cases they are racking their brains for how they can achieve as much continuity as is humanly possible in the difficulties of that case. Without hazarding a guess as to what exactly might be done or what the fine point of balance might be, will the Minister consider the advantages of making the principle of continuity even clearer by perhaps mentioning it in the Bill as well as considering the danger of adding an unnecessary wheel to the coach and making life more difficult for local authorities in this regard? If the review is a fairly cursory one, it hardly justifies a specific statutory precept. On the other hand, if it is deep-seated and deeply penetrative, it may bring about the very bureaucratic burden that local authorities are already not in a position to deal with.