Children and Social Work Bill: main measures, key questions

The Children and Social Work Bill, unveiled in the Queen’s Speech last month, contains a range of proposals relating to how the state protects and cares for children and young people.

Leading social care experts outline their views on what different elements of the legislation mean, and whether they go far enough.

CARE LEAVERS

Sam Royston, director of policy and research, The Children’s Society

What is the legislation designed to do?

Particularly welcome are plans to provide personal advisers to care leavers up to the age of 25 and a requirement on local authorities to develop covenants setting out the services and support to which care leavers in their area are entitled.

Why is the legislation necessary?

Care leavers are particularly vulnerable, but too often they are not getting the support that they need in order to thrive in independent life. Compared to children who have grown up in families, children who have been in care achieve lower levels of education and suffer higher rates of unemployment and homelessness as adults.

Alarmingly, a third of young people become homeless within the first two years of leaving care.

Any potential issues or unanswered questions?

Care leavers need more support to prevent them falling into debt by making sure they have sufficient income to sustain themselves either through an apprenticeship, employment, further education and entitlements to key benefits. Better financial education is needed to ensure they can effectively manage their money.

More also needs to be done to improve their accommodation. That means safe, high-quality accommodation.

Care leavers must get priority and consistent access to mental health support if they need it to tackle the significant disadvantages they face.

LOCAL AUTHORITIES

Andy Elvin, chief executive, The Adolescent and Children’s Trust

What is the legislation designed to do?

The proposals say that children’s services will be exempted from legal duties in order to test new ways of working. This is, probably, a deliberately vague statement to allow for innovation.

It allows the Department for Education to work with local authorities and other stakeholders to examine how children’s outcomes may be improved by allowing some flexibility around reporting, monitoring and other statutory duties.

Why is the legislation necessary?

The additional flexibilities may be necessary as there is currently an industry of oversight and regulation around children’s social care. For example, charitable fostering agencies are overseen by Ofsted, but also through inspections by local authorities who utilise our services.

Different authorities often have opposing demands as to our approach and regularly duplicate work Ofsted has already done.

For many of our young people, their primary support comes, quite properly, through their foster carer. They would like to see roles and responsibilities delegated to the foster carer as that is the person they look to for support.

Any potential issues or unanswered questions?

Exempting children’s services from some legal duties must be in the best interests of children, improve outcomes and not raise any safeguarding issues for the child.

That is why any exemptions or opt outs must be carefully planned and unintended consequences considered.

There has been some initial negative reaction from the sector about these proposals. This may be because the link to academy style powers leads people to think that somehow this will lead to the separation of child protection work from local authorities.

However, there is no evidence whatsoever that there is a realistic alternative to child protection services being provided by local authorities, or trusts and community interest companies that answer directly to their local authority or a government appointed commissioner.

ADOPTION

John Simmonds, director of policy, research and development, CoramBAAF

What is the legislation designed to do?

Clause 8 of the bill is intended to clarify the issues that must be addressed in the local authority’s permanence plan for the child.

Clause 9 amends the Adoption and Children Act 2002 so it now includes prospective adopters within the definition of “relationships”, not just legal relationships as they currently apply to parents.

Why is this necessary?

The number of children with adoption as their permanence plan has fallen by 50 per cent since 2013 as a result of two legal rulings on adoption cases.

The consequences of the Re B and Re B-S judgments have been to remind and re-focus local authorities and the courts when legally severing the child’s relationship with their birth parents through adoption.

What has been forcibly stressed is the quality of the evidence to satisfy the court that adoption is “the only child centred option” needs to be robust.

The amendment to section 31 of the Children Act 1989 requires permanency plans to address the impact on the child of any abuse and neglect they may have experienced, their future needs and the ways in which the child’s plan will address ‘developmental recovery’ through the proposed placement.

The new clause is expected to raise the bar especially when considering family and friends as carers, and may then establish the advantages of adoption as the best recovery option.

Any potential issues or unanswered questions?

The amendment is intended to address the painful impact on children already placed for adoption, but not yet adopted, whose birth parents apply for and are granted leave to oppose the adoption order.

The potential for disrupting these hard-won new relationships is hugely significant and the amendment will provide a route to taking the impact of this into consideration in any appeal.

SAFEGUARDING

David N Jones, chair, the Association of Independent Local Safeguarding Children Board Chairs

What is the legislation designed to do?

The bill introduces a new, centralised system for reviewing serious incidents, which will be overseen by a new independent panel. A minority of cases will be designated as “serious or complex” which “raise issues of national importance”. The majority will be local learning reviews.

Why is it necessary?

Previous government guidance and inspection have resulted in a cumbersome system, often feeling more like a ritual than a learning process.

The government-backed proposals state: “All too often we see the same mistakes repeated across serious case reviews. These new arrangements mark a new approach, which will be better able to extract genuine, high impact learning and clear proposals for doing things better.”

Any potential issues or unanswered questions?

There are many, for example: how will the new panel review and allocate 250 plus cases a year, what resource is needed to do this, and will there be local consultation?

Also, will the new arrangements help us better understand the complex reasons how the abuse of some children can remain “hidden from view” of those outside the family; why professional judgments are made not to follow-up concerns in some cases; how services can be more effective in preventing serious harm; and how the legal rights of parents should be balanced against the safety of the child?

SOCIAL WORKERS

Ruth Allen, chief executive, British Association of Social Workers (BASW)

What is the legislation designed to do?

The juxtaposition of “children” and “social work” in the content of the proposed legislation suggests the government sees social work almost exclusively through the lens of children’s services.

We know the Department of Health has its own ambitious agenda for social work and has worked with the DfE to ensure the bill’s proposals for social work regulation are for the whole profession. But social workers coming from adults, mental health, criminal justice or from across the voluntary sector (about 80 per cent of social workers) are wondering how much their professional requirements and expectations were in mind in the drafting of this bill.

Why is it necessary?

We need to have serious and productive discussions about the government’s reform agenda – particularly in children’s services – and also, proactively, our own ambitions for change and development. BASW hopes to have honest and open conversations with government about our views and how they relate to the government’s agenda.

We also want to see an end to unsubstantiated criticism of social workers and their professionalism in the media which harms morale and ultimately harms services.

There is a lot of discussion in social care about “co-production” as a key concept in the development of public services, when services work together with people who use services and carers to harness the expertise of all. We need a similar approach between government and all professionals including social workers, and BASW as their representative body. We welcome all opportunities to meet with ministers to start these discussions.

Any potential issues or unanswered questions?

The biggest implication in the bill for social workers lies with proposals to take social work out of independent regulation. The “Secretary of State” would appoint and oversee a whole-profession specialist regulator.

Maybe it is just a technicality of legal drafting, but this singular descriptor raises the question: does this mean the Secretary of State for Education or for Health?

There are legal, practical and professional issues with this, not least the loss of the important principle of professional practice being subject to cross-party scrutiny, exercised through an independent regulator.

KEY BILL PROPOSALS

• Creates a “Care LeaversCovenant”, setting out the support care leavers are entitled to from councils
• Introduces a new system of regulating social workers
• Changes the factors courts and practitioners consider when making decision on adoptions
• Allows councils to apply to be exempt from some children’s social care legislation
• Establishes a panel to identify serious child safeguarding cases that require review