Independent Review of Children’s Social Care

Claire Coutinho Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Claire Coutinho)]

I have been asked to keep my comments relatively brief, so I hope I can do justice to this tremendous debate and set out some of the Government’s vision.

I start by thanking the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) for a moving and passionate speech, which I am becoming used to hearing from her, and my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who has been generous to me with his time and experience, for securing this important debate. I also thank all Members for their contributions. I look around the Chamber and see former Ministers, former care workers, former councillors and the newly elected Chair of the Education Committee. They have a huge amount of experience and compassion, and we heard the very best of the House today. I look forward to working with all of them, and I am overjoyed to see the wealth of enthusiasm for these changes.

I also thank all those who led and contributed to the vital reviews this year, and many Members listed some of them, including Josh MacAlister, Annie Hudson, the rest of the national panel and the Competition and Markets Authority team, as well as the children and young people in care and their families, who contributed and made these reports so powerful. I particularly thank Josh, who many Members mentioned today. He has been rightly praised, and he has worked closely with us since the publication of his review to encourage the depth and breadth of our ambition.

There is a lot that is good about children’s social care, as all the reports have set out this year and, indeed, over a decade, and as Members have shown today. The dedication of social workers, family support workers, directors of children’s services, foster carers, kinship carers and others up and down the country who work determinedly to improve children’s lives deserve our fullest praise. Many children who have been supported by children’s social care go on to lead happy and fulfilling lives. That is a testament not only to their resilience, but to the quality of the help and support they have received when they have needed it.

However, the message from these reports and from the many excellent contributions made today is clear: the system is not delivering well enough, or consistently for the children and families it supports. Less than one month ago, I was given what I believe is the most important job in Government—it is excellent to hear that people who have held it previously agree. No other role provides such a huge opportunity to change children’s lives for the better. That is why, when my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), the then Minister for children and families, came to this House six months ago, this Government committed to taking action from day one, and I am pleased to update the House today on some of our progress.

We have already established a national implementation board and I chaired a meeting of the board last week. Hearing the experiences of the people who are care-experienced on it, as well as the wealth of experience of Josh, our Children’s Commissioner and others, has given me huge confidence in its ability to help us to achieve the full extent of our ambitions for children.

We have also set up a new child protection ministerial group, and launched a data and digital solutions fund. I know that many Members talked about the importance of sharing data to encourage joined-up working. We are working to increase the number of foster care placements. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) has excellent real-world experience in this area and is pushing us to be ambitious. I want to be ambitious in this area too. That is what we are getting on with already.

Many Members have also rightly pressed me on the contents and timing of the delivery of the implementation strategy. I want to assure them that this is the thing that is keeping me up at night. It is a huge priority. I committed to publishing our implementation strategy early in the new year and I look forward to returning to this House to set out our plans in full. I am sure I will see many Members return to scrutinise them.

Today, I can share some of our vision and ambitions for the future system. The Government believe in the power of opportunity, which is why levelling up was at the core of our manifesto in 2019, and it is our belief that the roots of opportunity start with the power and importance of family. With the right support, families are the best means of protecting, nurturing and promoting the interests of children, now and forever. As the care review said:

“We all have a part to play and it starts with love.”

Our ambitions for reform will reaffirm the central role of families in the care system, and put love and stable relationships at the heart of what children’s social care does. Children should grow up in loving, safe and stable families. That is where they can achieve their best. Where that is not possible, it is right that the care system should take swift and decisive action to protect them. But care should also provide that same foundation of love, stability and safety. That is what all children and indeed what all of us need to thrive.

[Jim Shannon]

I asked about the advocates. The figures I have from back home show that only three in 10 children have an advocate. I asked whether it would be possible to look at that process to ensure that every young child has an advocate so that they can plan their way forward in a structured fashion.

[Claire Coutinho]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I will be looking at that carefully. The heart of what we want to do is to make sure that all people have these powerful relationships in their lives. As he ably pointed out, that is what we expect for our friends and families and actually everyone deserves to have those people who will go the extra mile for them.

On our ambitions for this area, first, I come to our ambition for families. Many Members spoke eloquently about the importance of families. They are at the heart of what makes us happy and well, so when families are struggling we should provide rapid and intensive multidisciplinary support at the right time to help to fix the issues. Lots of Members talked about early intervention and I completely agree that that is the core issue here. We want to make sure that our programmes improve early help services from birth to adulthood. We want to build a strong evidence base on what works to support families to turn around difficult situations, and I would particularly like to thank the Children’s Commissioner for part 1 of her recent excellent review of family life. There was a comment from the shadow Minister about our lack of ambition in this area. I gently point her towards our ambitious reforms on domestic abuse and on drug and alcohol addiction, reducing parental conflict. We talk about prevention to make sure that people are not suffering from the kind of trauma that the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) set out movingly. These programmes are both important and exactly the right place to start.

[Rachael Maskell]

What keeps me awake at night is knowing that poverty levels are rising sharply. It is those pressures on families that often lead children into the care system. Given that the report did not have the remit to look into the intersection between poverty and the challenges that families face, will the Minister ensure that she puts more pressure on her Government to put the protection around families so we do not see children having to go into the care sector?

[Claire Coutinho]

As someone who has been working on the cost of living challenge for the past 18 months, I can say that it has been a priority of this Government, during the pandemic and into the energy crisis, to support the most vulnerable households. That has exactly been our impetus in these times.

Our second ambition is for child protection. The murders of Arthur and Star have sickened us all. The recommendations of the national panel aim to ensure that such terrible incidents are as rare as possible and, when children are at risk of harm, to ensure that we intervene quickly and decisively through a more expert and multi-agency child protection response. The hon. Member for Bath had a question about developing our understanding of sibling sexual abuse. Nothing in this area should be taboo. We are looking at the evidence base via our child sex abuse centre. I am happy to discuss these things further with her.

Local authorities, police and health services are under statutory duties to work together to safeguard children. We will use the recommendations of all the reviews to support them.

Thirdly, on foster care and kinship care, I agree that the John Lewis advert was touching, providing an exciting opportunity for us to talk more about this area. Where children cannot be looked after safely by their parents, we should properly support wider family networks to step up and family-like environments. At the moment, there are practical, financial and cultural barriers to some of this, particularly some of the ethnic disparities that have been mentioned today. But moving in with a relative or people from one’s own community provides a strong chance of achieving the kind of lifelong stability that children need. We need to encourage the system always to look to wider family before care outside the family and to help to equip families to do this where that is in the child’s best interests. Many Members also mentioned adoption. We set out a strategy last year and that will also be an important part of our solution here.

Our fourth ambition is for the care system. Where family is not an option, the care system should provide stable and loving homes. Again, I echo the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who said that it was very sad that some people do not have what other people have: a loving family home. The care review found that supporting children in the care system also needs to be focused on outcomes. That has been widely discussed today and it is absolutely right. My hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) movingly set that out, saying that we must focus on the outcomes. I also pay tribute to John from Plan B who sounds like a thoroughly brilliant man in all the work that he is doing to help people in this regard.

The number of times that children move homes was mentioned in a couple of speeches. Care-experienced people whom I have spoken to in the past couple of weeks talked about children moving 21 times. That is not the kind of situation that we need to set up the relationship that we think are so important for people.

While we are considering all the recommendations to support young people and to get those outcomes that we have been talking about, we have also been working in close partnership with Departments across Government and with Ofsted. What is clear is that the continuing status is not an option, although I gently say to the shadow Minister that the trajectory has been positive and that there has been a huge amount of work from dedicated teams to try to get that good and outstanding level from 36% to 55%, and to reduce the number of local authorities that have been judged to be inadequate. I pay tribute to them for their work. Of course, we must continue. We must not accept any failure in this area, but they have done exceptional work so far.

Our fifth ambition relates to the workforce, which the hon. Member for York Central, who I know has great experience in this area, my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley and my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), who is always so interesting on this issue, all talked about. We must equip the children’s social care system with the people and tools it needs to do a good job of supporting all those who need its help. That means a skilled and empowered workforce, better data and transparency and clear system direction.

We have committed to a national framework for children’s social care and are working to publish a draft of that alongside the implementation strategy. We will also continue to work closely with Ofsted, which plays an important role in the intervention and improvement programme.

Finally, by far the most important factor in achieving success will be the people delivering the vision. I am sure this House will join me in paying tribute to every social worker and all those supporting children, such as workers in children’s homes and foster carers. They are there tirelessly, day in, day out, providing support to children and their families. We will bring forward proposals to support the workforce and foster carers to ensure they have the right skills and strong leadership.

I am proud to be responsible for a system that has been shown to help children to recover from traumatic experiences and often to succeed against the odds, but the children’s social care system cannot do it all. A young person’s success is driven by many different factors and actors. I want other parts of the local council system, the school system, the health service and many others within and outside Government to do all they can to give our children the best possible start in life. Children’s social care cannot do it alone and we cannot do anything at once, but this is a programme for a long-term, once in a generation reform. We will start by laying the foundations for a system that is built on love and the importance of family.