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Kennett Fox, Clerk to the Children, Schools & Families Select Committee HOUSE OF COMMONS, CHILDREN, SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES SELECT COMMITTEE LOOKED-AFTER CHILDREN
Third Report of Session 2008–09
Every select committee chooses its own way of working but most aim for a mix, ranging from extended inquiries surveying an area in depth to shorter, sharper investigations with, perhaps, only one session of oral evidence when the committee wants to respond quickly to events. The Children, Schools and Families Committee’s inquiry into looked-after children is a good example of a full inquiry, lasting 18 months and culminating in a comprehensive and thoughtful report.
The trigger for the inquiry was in fact the series of changes in machinery of government made by the incoming prime minister in June 2007. The Department for Education and Skills was swept away and the new Department for Children, Schools and Families was created, bringing together responsibility for policy on education and on children’s welfare and development outside school. The remits of the Commons departmentally related select committees normally mirror those of the government departments which they shadow, so in due course the Education and Skills Committee was wound up and a new committee was formed. The membership increased from 11 to 14, with the chairman and some members being re-appointed.
Conscious of its expanded remit, the committee took an early decision to hold a substantial inquiry into an aspect of children’s services. Not since 1998 had a Commons select committee examined in detail the plight of some of the most vulnerable children — those looked after by local authorities. Meanwhile, the government had been active in re-evaluating relevant policy through the Care Matters Green and White Papers, published in October 2006 and June 2007 respectively. So the committee announced a two-stage inquiry into looked-after children in December 2007. As a first step, the committee called for evidence on the Children and Young Persons Bill which was then before the House of Lords and which aimed to put in place a new statutory framework for the care of children. The second stage of the inquiry set out to look at provision more widely in the context of the ‘Care Matters: Time for Change’ White Paper, and it specifically asked for views on:
- Corporate parenting
- Family and parenting support
- Care placements
- Education
- Health and well-being
- Transition to adulthood, and
- The role of the practitioner (including training and workforce development).
Ten evidence sessions were held between March and October 2008. Some were designed to range across the full extent of the territory with key witnesses (such as the children’s rights director); others were themed to look in detail at particular areas, such as family support, fostering, residential care, interaction with the youth justice system and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. The committee did not rely solely on formal written and oral evidence: members visited the NCH Phoenix Project in the London Borough of Merton to see how one local authority uses family support teams to try to keep children identified as being at risk from entering care, as well as Hampshire County Council, to see a local authority perspective. In June 2008, the committee travelled to Denmark, where a much higher proportion of children in care are placed in residential care. Unusually, the committee also held informal discussions with key groups: foster carers and young people who were in, or had been in, care.
As is the committee’s usual practice, an evidence session was arranged with the relevant minister — Baroness Morgan of Drefelin — to bring the evidence-taking stage of the inquiry to a close. At this point, however, events overtook the inquiry, as the details of the trial of those accused of abuse leading to the death of Baby Peter became public. Although Baby Peter was not a child formally under the care of the local authority, the committee took the view that his case raised serious questions about the thresholds for entry into care and it extended its inquiry to look briefly at the process by which children known to social services are assessed with a view to seeking care orders.
The report itself was widely welcomed and recognised as a thorough and carefully considered piece of work. The Times published a leader describing the report as “an unmerciful dissection of the whole care system” and concluded that the committee’s visit to Copenhagen to visit children's homes “was a case of taxpayers' money well spent”. The report’s main findings are outlined below:
Building a care system founded on good relationships
The greatest gains in reforming our care system are to be made in identifying and removing whatever barriers are obstructing the development of good personal relationships and putting in place all possible means of supporting such relationships where they occur.
Relationships between children’s services and families
It is imperative that constructive relationships between children’s services and the family are established at the outset, maintained while the child is in care and continued when they return home.
Relationships between social workers and looked-after children
A new impetus is needed for children’s social-work recruitment, particularly in the light of diminishing public confidence in the profession.
Relationships between the child and their carer
Foster-care approval processes should be reviewed to ensure that they are capable of identifying and assessing the most important personal qualities.
The importance of placement supply
The government should assess at a national level the supply of placements that will be needed to make the Care Matters reforms a reality.
Foster care
While local circumstances and the many different types of foster care will always require some variation, a national framework for fee payments should be developed to include stipulations about 52-week payments or retainers when foster carers do not have placements.
Residential care
The government’s investment in programmes that aim to improve the capacity of foster placements to benefit the most challenging young people is welcomed, with the hope that this will allow residential care to be considered on its merits rather than as a last resort for children who have been especially difficult to place elsewhere.
Local authority commissioning
Reassurances are sought that cost constraints are not compromising children’s access to the most appropriate placement for them and that children’s views are given particular consideration when ‘value for money’ decisions are made about providers.
Consistency and compliance in local authority practice
The quality of experience that children have in care seems to be governed by luck to an utterly unacceptable degree. When implementing the Care Matters reforms, the government is urged to place the highest priority on ensuring that every child gets everything they are entitled to.
Size of the care population and decisions about entry to care
Care for some children, in some circumstances, should be seen as the best available option rather than a last resort.
Local authorities’ accountability to children in care
The government must spell out how local authorities will be held accountable for robust development of their Children in Care Councils and Pledges and the impact these measures have on improving practice.
Extending the scope and rigour of corporate parenting
All children’s trusts should take responsibility for multi-agency corporate parenting training to include managers within adult health and social care services and officers and members of district councils where relevant.
Health and well-being of children in care
Looked-after children must have a higher profile in NHS performance frameworks. Children in care need ‘champions’ in senior strategic positions in the health service, and corporate parenting training should be mandatory for relevant senior NHS officers and board members with relevant responsibilities.
Leaving care
The government’s assertion that it should become exceptional for a young person to leave care before they turn 18 is welcomed, with the hope that it will precipitate a culture change in local authorities.
Preventing involvement in the criminal justice system
The government is asked to revisit the Youth Crime Action Plan to address explicitly the state’s responsibility as corporate parent for the disproportionate criminalisation of young people in care.
Looked-after children in custody
Children accommodated under voluntary agreements should retain their looked-after status when entering custody.
Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children
The Department for Children, Schools and Families should assume formal joint responsibility with the Home Office for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.
The performance framework for the care system
Ways of promoting more frequent, informal contact between school inspectors and local authorities should be explored, such as designating a named inspector for each authority who would make regular visits.
The annual ‘stock take’
Children’s views and their satisfaction with the care system should form a crucial part of the evidence used in the stock take. In order that government as a whole can be held to account for its performance, the stock take must involve the Home Office and Ministry of Justice as well as the Department of Health and Department for Communities and Local Government.
Committee inquiries do not come to a complete halt with publication of the report. By convention, the government provides a detailed written response to each select committee report, addressing each conclusion or recommendation. The government’s response to the committee’s report on looked-after children was published on 29 June 2009. While it endorsed most of the sentiments the committee had expressed in the report, it was clear that the government continued to rely on the issuance of more guidance and standards, even though the committee had concluded that guidance and standards were not always consistently applied and enforced. On the plus side, the government agreed to strengthen the framework for support of kinship carers, revise leaving care guidance, develop a toolkit for local authorities on delegating responsibility to foster carers and revise national minimum standards for residential homes to take on board the committee's concern about the requirements for training of residential staff. On the other hand, the government rejected the committee’s recommendations that personal advisers should be available to all care leavers up to the age of 25 and that children looked-after under voluntary agreement should retain their looked-after status in custody.
The report was selected for debate on one of the House’s estimates days. In theory, these are days set aside for the House to debate and authorise the distribution of money from the Exchequer to government departments. In practice, the House uses estimates days to hold debates on select committee reports before formally deciding on the estimates themselves at the end of the debate. In the debate on the committee’s report on 2 July, the chairman presented the report. All three front benches took part, as did committee members and interested backbenchers.
This extract for the Parliamentary Yearbook was prepared by Kenneth Fox, Clerk to the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee. |
