Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

In other words, the Secretary of State does not know whether there will be a target for the number of children taken into care. Presumably, he also does not know whether there will be a target for the number of children who have avoided being taken into care because of the preventive work done with the families. Will there be a target for how quickly a child deemed to be at risk is assigned a dedicated social worker? He does not know that either. We are being expected to impose a series of new targets, the number and nature of which we do not know. It appears to me that such new targets can only add to the bureaucracy of the child protection system. We do not know whether those new targets will produce a qualitative improvement or just another quantitative addition to the legislation, paperwork and bureaucracy that already tie up too many social workers and keep them from their real job.