My Lords, Amendment 99B seeks to place a duty on local authorities to,
“put in place early intervention strategies to prevent children and young people in their area who are on the Troubled Families Programme going into care, which may include providing those children with specific support”.
We expect local authorities to have early intervention strategies to prevent children and young people going into care irrespective of whether those children are part of the troubled families programme. Our statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children 2015, is clear that providing early help is more effective in promoting the welfare of children than reacting later in their lives, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has said.
The existing legislation in Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 imposes a general duty on local authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in need in their area, and so far as is consistent with that duty, to promote the upbringing of children by their families. This is achieved by providing a range and level of services appropriate to those children’s needs. Services are provided to children and their families and should help families to make sustained change in their lives so that children are safe and can remain living with their parents. Such services can include accommodation, assistance in kind or cash.
The working together guidance provides that local authorities and their partners should develop and publish local protocols for their assessment of children’s needs and how any social care assessment should be informed by other specialist assessments. The purpose of an assessment is to provide support for children and families to address their specific needs. Our troubled families programme, which has been very effective, is one such intervention that can support families to work together and with other agencies, including children’s social care, to help improve outcomes for children. Where levels of risk of harm remain high for children and their needs cannot be met from within their families, it is right that steps are taken for children to be taken into care. In other cases, intensive support combined with challenge may allow children to remain safely with their families. The recently published document, Putting Children First: Delivering our Vision for Excellent Children’s Social Care, highlights how the Government will work to effectively reduce the needs and risks for a specific group of,
“children right on the edge or just within social care”.
We will use our innovation programme to test and develop national understanding, and over time use the new What Works centre to bring together learning and spread best practice. In view of the existing duty in primary legislation to provide services and support for children who are in need, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel reassured enough to withdraw her amendment.