‘Inadequate implementation’ of the Children and Families Act 2014 failing children, peers find

They say the act, which aims to give greater protection to vulnerable children, young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and improve support for separating families, “should have been a landmark piece of legislation”.

Instead, it is “largely a missed opportunity to improve the lives of children and young people”, according to peers.

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They want to see improved data collection to measure the act’s impact and better partnerships “at all levels” as currently the act “has contributed to children and their families feeling let down by the system”.

The criticisms have been made in a report published by a House of Lords committee set up to scrutinise the act and assess whether it is fit for purpose.

We've published our report "Children and Families Act 2014: A failure of implementation" today: https://t.co/1UBiKhg4eR

🖥️ Watch below for a summary of our key findings and recommendations pic.twitter.com/8gHy1XJ8zG

— House of Lords Children and Families Act Committee (@HLChildrenAct) December 6, 2022

“Too much of the legislation has sat on the shelf and languished as a result of a lack of implementation and inadequate scrutiny,” said peers.

“All this has been allowed to occur while children and young people continue to suffer through public service failures including poor SEND services, increasing mental health referrals waitlists and creeping delays in family courts.”

The government is being urged to build “robust systems for monitoring and assessing” the act.

Other recommendations include tackling the “unacceptable ethnic and racial disparities in the adoption system” by setting up a taskforce that is accountable to the Education Secretary and focused on improving outcomes.

“Ever growing delays” in public family law cases, that date back to before the Covid-19 pandemic, need to be addressed, peers add.

An “impartial advice website” for separating couples also needs to be produced as well as making flexible working for parents “a day one right to request”.

Committee chair Baroness Tyler of Enfield added: “Throughout our inquiry, we have sought to hear directly from children, young people and their families and we are grateful for their time and insight, as they shared with us the challenges they face and how they feel let down by the very systems designed to support them.

“The welfare of children and young people should be the government's paramount concern when developing policies in this area. We urge them not to allow another eight years to pass before they make the improvements which are so demonstrably necessary.” 

Association of Directors of Children’s Services president Steve Crocker said the report “underlines many of the challenges we’ve been raising for some time”.

“Often the sufficiency of funding is an issue but there are also difficulties in having the right data or levers to understand what needs to happen and influence others,” he said.

“The 2014 act aimed to improve services for and the lives of vulnerable children. Some of the reforms included here are having a real and tangible impact, such as the role of the virtual school head in supporting the education of children in care. 

“Other reforms included in the act have progressed less well or have not had the desired impact for a whole host of reasons, including those relating to special educational, needs and disabilities."

Mental health concerns

Lords are also critical of a lack of consideration for the mental health needs of children, which they say is “notably absent from the act”.

They note that latest evidence shows mental disorders among young people have increased over the last four years, with one in six children aged six to 16 having a probable mental health disorder over this period, compared with the previous rate of one in nine.

Child and adolescent mental health services “are in crisis”, which is a “grave threat both to the success of individual provisions of the act and its overarching aim of enhancing the lives of children and their families”.

Lords criticise the government for “allowing services to deteriorate to this level” and said ministers have “not grasped the important and severity of this problem”.

Crocker backs the Lords focus on the mental health needs of children in their report, adding: "The current system is not working for children, and it threatens to overwhelm the social care system.”