Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

My Lords, we very much support the Government in their initiative on social work practices to see, as the Minister said on Second Reading, whether giving social workers more freedom and flexibility will enable them to deliver a more personalised service and create more continuity for children in care. That is what we are all seeking and we have to give these new social work practices a chance. I sympathise with the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, because it is always good to free up thinking and encourage new initiatives. But it would be difficult to evaluate one-off pilots and the cost would be open-ended. However, I hope that any successful initiatives in local authorities would be shared through good practice. What mechanisms are there to disseminate good practice? I understand that the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and others, are concerned that arrangements between private providers and local authorities are effective and do not adversely affect other aspects of local authority care provision. That is an understandable concern, but we believe that the pilot schemes already have mechanisms for thorough scrutiny and that duplicating this research would be an unnecessary expense. Will the assessment of the pilots take into account their impact on other services?