Bill signals promising times for children's wellbeing
Keith Towler
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Children need our special care and protection, and a central focus of my role is ensuring that legislation, policy and practice recognises this. The National Assembly for Wales voted in favour of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Bill in March, and is now awaiting royal assent. It aims to facilitate the implementation of the Welsh government's social services policies and to consolidate and clarify social care law in Wales within a specifically Welsh legal framework.
The bill, introduced by assembly member and deputy minister for social services Gwenda Thomas, will provide greater consistency and clarity to people who use social services, their carers, local authority staff and their partner organisations, along with the courts and the judiciary.
This has to be one of the biggest and most complex pieces of legislation to go through the National Assembly for Wales. After a lengthy process and some tough scrutiny, it was particularly pleasing to see the due regard to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child adopted in the final bill.
The UN Convention centres on the particular vulnerabilities of children, which should always be reflected in legislation and policy. So I will be keeping a close eye on the way in which the new safeguards put in place, in terms of regulation, guidance and the eligibility criteria, are implemented at the grassroots level in Wales. We need to ensure that we provide the same offer to children and young people as we do for adults.
This age-inclusive bill sets out a broad framework for the sustainable social services of the future. The fact that advocacy has been included on the face of the bill is a tremendous step forward. However, I know that the ongoing work my team and I are engaged in has shown us there is still a long way to go to ensure those who have a statutory entitlement to advocacy actually access independent professional advocacy services. Having said that, I am more optimistic now than ever and convinced that through working together, we can get things right.
Proven achievements
The scrutiny of the Social Services and Well-being Bill has proven that through collaboration and working together, anything can be achieved. A fantastic example of this was the inspirational work undertaken by a group of young people who formed the "Chance to Stay" campaign in order to change the law so that looked-after children in Wales could stay in foster care until they are 21.
They did this through using social media and modern communications to let their assembly members know how they felt. They also did things the old-fashioned way in getting face-to-face with their politicians. Sharing the difficult realities that looked-after children go through, and setting out the reasons why they should have the chance to stay, wasn't easy.
Probably the most inspiring aspect of this campaign was that many of these young people's opportunities to extend their own stay in foster care had passed by, and the changes agreed within the bill won't affect their own situations. However, they were determined to make things better for future generations of looked-after children in Wales and they quite rightly deserve the highest praise afforded to them.
These are exciting times and I am really looking forward to seeing the bill receive royal assent.
Keith Towler is children's commissioner for Wales