Care Review: Government’s pilot plan unlikely to bring change, peer warns

In a debate around ministers’ response to a report by the Children and Families Act 2014 committee, entitled An inadequate example of implementation, Baroness Tyler of Enfield said they had placed a strong focus on their new children’s social care implementation strategy as way to meet recommendations made by peers who described the implementation of the 2014 Act as a “missed opportunity”.

In the government’s response to the Care Review, Stable Homes Built On Love, the Department for Education put forward plans for a £200m pilot to “fix” children’s social care until 2025 before rolling-out longer term initiatives.

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However, Tyler reminded peers that the government’s funding is significantly lower than the £2.6bn Care Review chair Josh MacAlister called for in his final report published in May last year.

“Yet more than a year later we seem little further forward on this reform and the government are currently set to spend an additional £1 billion on children’s social care over 10 years.

“I conclude by urging the government to reconsider the scope for further investment at the next spending review. We must not allow another eight years to pass before making the improvements that are so desperately needed.” she said.

In response to her statement, Baroness Barran, parliamentary under-secretary of state for education, replied: “We believe that getting a balance between testing robustly and going as fast as we can - without going too fast - is the right approach.”

Lords also questioned the speed of the implementation of reforms to services for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

Tyler noted that the Children and Families Act 2014 “was intended to reduce the fight families faced to get the support their children need and to deliver integrated support across education, health and social care” but added “the reality of implementation has not matched the ambitions of the legislation”.

Commenting on the debate, Christine Lenehan, director of the Council for Disabled Children at the National Children’s Bureau, said: “When this act was made law, disabled children and their families had high hopes for a better system of support, delivered more swiftly and targeted more effectively. Nearly a decade on, they are still waiting for these aspirations to be realised. The Children and Families Act was supposed to bring about the most significant reforms to child welfare this century but too often its implementation has been unambitious and poorly resourced. Disabled children and young people deserve better.”

Tyler also highlighted seven changes in children’s minister since the launch of the government’s SEND and Alternative Provision (AP) Review in 2019 and called for an update on plans put forward in its improvement plan published in March.

The plan puts forward proposals to improve access to mainsteam education for children with SEND, digitise education, health and care plans and introduce national standards for SEND and AP.

Baran said: “We have secured funding since then to design and test the proposals set out in the improvement plan and have identified local authorities in every region that will test many of the measures. They will start their work this autumn.”