Independent Review of Children’s Social Care

Lord Wood of Anfield Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)]

I also thank my noble friend Lord Watson for this debate and for giving us a chance to refocus our attention on one of the most vital reviews commissioned by any recent Government. It is the kind of report that, if you read it in one sitting, as I did, lives with you for a long time.

The review is vital for lots of reasons. First, it goes to the heart of the Gandhi test—maybe it should be called the Watson-Gandhi test, seeing as my noble friend also mentioned it—which states:

“The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.”


We have failed this test for tens of thousands of children for many years.

Secondly, the report reveals not just a catalogue of problems but a genuine systemic crisis from top to bottom, from the handling of individual cases to the strategic management of the system and from private care providers to consistency across local authorities.

Thirdly, the review is vital because we know that unless there is a restoration of the functioning of the system as a whole, this problem will get worse in the coming years, as my noble friend Lady Morris said. The report estimates a nearly 20% increase in the number of children entering the system in the next decade and a worsening of outcomes for those children. Crucially, it explains the false economies of thinking that sorting these problems out now is too expensive when, in fact, the current system is on course to cost more than £15 billion a year in a few years—a 50% increase on the current costs.

The review is full of detailed recommendations, but I want to focus attention on three genuinely systemic aspects that the MacAlister review discusses. I ask this directly: are the Government committed to implementing and endorsing those big but systemic aspects of change that are called for?

The first aspect is around a theme that recurs throughout the report: if the children’s care system is to shift away from expensive and ineffectual crisis intervention, there must be multiagency and multidisciplinary work throughout the service. This is the idea at the heart of the proposal, which has been discussed by many noble Lords, for a single category of family help for different kinds of cases to reduce fragmentation, reduce the number of handovers in the system and enable families to get early, integrated support.

A similar model of multidisciplinary team working is envisaged in the section on child protection, with the idea of a bespoke child protection safety plan. The review demands that when children emerge from the care system and face the challenge of establishing their own independence as adults, public services, employers and educational providers share a joint mission to act as what it calls “corporate parents” for looked-after children.

We all know from our experience in politics and government that among the hardest things to deliver is a reform that crosses departmental boundaries and binds in organisations with a common agenda that report to different Ministers, let alone requiring them to work together in a genuine way. Similarly, it is incredibly hard for Whitehall to countenance any reform that pools money, knowledge and professionals in local community institutions and genuinely allows them to make on-the-ground decisions tailored to the needs of individual children. That model of accountability is considered risky in a Whitehall system in which departments are directly called to account for their particular slice of a more complex outcome. Anyone who reads the review knows that this call for change is not an optional extra but absolutely at the heart of saving the system from further collapse. Beyond exhortation, what will the Government do practically to make this multiagency preventive focus a reality?

Secondly, aside from the heartbreaking stories of individual children failed by the system, I found the most moving sections—which have been referred to by noble friends and colleagues here—to be on the networks of informal care provided by grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers and sisters. The report brings out a shameful contrast between, on the one hand, the extraordinary caring role played by these extended family networks—often very informally, and provided by people who themselves face huge, complex challenges—and, on the other, a system of rules and funding that ignores these networks, makes decisions without them and often in spite of them, does not provide funding or other kinds of legal protection for them, and often forces them into decisions such as becoming foster carers to receive financial support from the local authority.

Again, the child-first rationale is easy to applaud, but we all know that it is very hard for Whitehall to genuinely prioritise this kind of approach, coming as it does with the risk of different solutions for different kinds of children, outcome variations, the requirement for significant financial flexibility, et cetera. But making the money follow the logic of supporting the most trusted networks of care is absolutely at the heart of the report. Will the Government take the risk across departments of introducing the measures that the MacAlister review recommends in this report?

Lastly, the review is unambiguous about reforming the overall governance of the system. For all the amazing work done by many individuals in the system, as a whole it is not one in which securing these loving relationships is the priority. It is a system in which many providers of care are making profits out of their services, and outcomes for children vary not because of local decisions made in the interests of children but because of sheer randomness in the application of existing duties and programmes across different areas. This lack of strategic coherence goes all the way up to national government. As MacAlister says:

“There is currently a lack of national direction about the purpose of children’s social care and national government involvement is uneven.”


That is a pretty damning sentence.

Addressing this problem of strategic grip and securing unambiguous strategic authority is a priority. This means taking seriously issues such as revising the funding formula for children’s social care so that resources go more effectively to where they are needed, changing the metrics used in inspections, and lots more besides. At the heart of this is the innovation that the MacAlister review talks about—these new regional care co-operatives—to make local authorities inescapably responsible for care provision, fostering and commissioning activities. This issue was also touched on by the CMA review, which has been discussed. Will these regional care co-operatives form part of the Government’s response?

I have one last very quick point. The report shows that there is a very big difference between saying that lots of things are failing in children’s social care and saying that the system of provision is in need of overhaul. That is quite a big difference, and I hope that the Government’s response does not become the former rather than the latter.

Are the Government going to provide a loud, bright signal of intent that they are serious about changing this system and having collaborative working across departments, and between levels of government, at the heart of a new system? It is the hardest thing of all for any Government to introduce, but it is the most vital thing if you have read this report and take its impetus seriously.