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Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, Second Reading, House of Commons, 8 January 2025

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Key messages

  • Proposals to improve support for care leavers are welcome [Clause 7], but we must learn from previous experience and ensure these duties are appropriately funded so that all care leavers receive the support they need and deserve to thrive. Furthermore, we call for the Bill to include a measure to extend corporate parenting duties to government departments and relevant public bodies to further support care leavers, as committed to in the recent Department for Education (DfE) policy paper, Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive.
  • We support the model for Regional Care Cooperatives being trialled in Greater Manchester and the South East, focussing on strategic planning and specialist provision. We want to ensure that powers in this Bill enable us to learn lessons from what works in the pathfinders, and enable local flexibility and keeping decision-making as close to children as possible. We would like to see more clarity as to the circumstances in which councils can be directed to form or terminate regional arrangements [Clause 9]. 
  • We are disappointed that the Bill does not include powers for Ofsted to be able to inspect multi-academy trusts. We have raised for some time concerns around a lack of accountability and this Bill provides a clear opportunity to address this issue. 
  • We are also disappointed to see that the education system will not be made a statutory safeguarding partner. Education has an essential role to play in local safeguarding arrangements, and while we support measures to increase the role of educators in local safeguarding arrangements [Clause 2], we would like to see these go further. We would like to see education as a statutory safeguarding partner and powers to compel education settings to participate in local multi-agency safeguarding work where they do not engage. 
  • We support measures around elective home education [Clauses 25-26] but would like to see these go further, giving councils the power resources to speak to children directly and check that they are safe and being taught a suitable education.

Background

Supporting children in need 

  • We support a new requirement on councils to offer all parents of children who are at risk of entering the care system the change to attend family-group decision making with the aim of keeping children with their families where safe and appropriate [Clause 1]. The LGA has previously called for funding to roll out family-group decision making to all councils, with strong evidence for the effectiveness of Family Group Conferencing (a specific model for FGDM) in particular. This new duty will support improved outcomes for children and families but must be fully funded to enable councils to implement this effectively. 
     
  • Every (upper tier) local authority area will have a duty to establish a multi-agency child protection unit [Clause 3]. These are integrated local authority-led teams staffed with multi-agency, experienced child protection practitioners. We recognise the potential value in this approach, though have concerns around resourcing - both financial and staff - across all partners and urge the Government to enable councils to be flexible in how they design these units to ensure that they can build on local strengths. Additional funding will be needed to implement this duty, recognising the need to design and adapt to new ways of working. There must also be clear accountability for all partners in relation to their roles in these teams, ensuring that sole responsibility does not lie with councils for their creation and success. 
     
  • The introduction of a Single Unique Identifier (SUI) [Clause 4] to enable better join up of relevant data for children is helpful, as is a duty on certain partners to share information relevant to safeguarding or promoting the welfare of a child [Clause 4]. Information sharing is highlighted frequently as a factor where children have not been kept safe and we must work together to address this. However, we are clear that the SUI will not be a ‘magic bullet’ for information sharing and must be supported by wider action including investment in systems, administrative support and clear guidance.
     
  • The Bill includes a measure to extend the role of the virtual school head to all children in need and in formal kinship arrangements [Clause 6]. While it is positive to ensure dedicated action to support the educational achievement of all children in contact with children’s social care, it must be appropriately resourced via new burdens funding, and we must ensure that all schools play their part in supporting these children via a fully inclusive education system.

Supporting children in care and care leavers 

  • Proposals to place a duty on councils to provide staying close support to all care leavers under the age of 25 [Clause 7] are positive but must be adequately funded. We know that the Staying Put duty was significantly underfunded, leading to challenges for some care leavers to access this; we must learn from this and ensure that this duty is fully funded to enable every care leaver to get the help they need. Furthermore, we call for the Bill to include a measure to extend corporate parenting duties to government departments and relevant public bodies to further support care leavers, as committed to in the recent DfE policy paper, Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive.
     
  • The Bill allows for groups of councils to set up Regional Care Cooperatives (RCCs) [Clause 9], learning from the experience of current pathfinders. We are supportive of the RCCs currently being trialled – that is, with a clear focus on strategic planning and specialist provision. However, we have concerns about “mission creep” and the risk of councils’ responsibilities for commissioning good local provision for most children being removed and incorporated into regional arrangements, moving decision-making further from children. We would like to see more clarity as to the circumstances in which councils can be directed to form or terminate regional arrangements. Any direction to establish an RCC must be accompanied by sufficient new burdens funding. 
     
  • The Bill contains several helpful measures with regard to the ‘market’ for placements for children in care, including a financial oversight scheme [Clause 13] and new powers for Ofsted in relation to provider groups [Clause 11]. The LGA has long called for action to tackle profiteering from placements for children in care [Clause 14]. We support work to address the causes of profiteering currently being undertaken by the Government; we recognise the value of a mixed market of provision and are keen to work with all providers to ensure that children receive the best possible care in the loving homes that meet their needs, at a fair cost that enables continued investment in care and support for all children.
     
  • The Bill proposes to give powers to issue civil penalties against providers of unregistered settings, in particular for those who persistently refuse to register [Clause 12]. We agree that children should never be placed in unsuitable settings and as such support the ambition within this power. However this power is likely to further increase costs to councils and contract the availability of placements, as happened with the introduction of the ban on placing under 16s in unregulated provision. It must therefore be introduced alongside concerted work to expand the sufficiency of placements; councils are currently only placing in unregistered provision due to a shortfall in placements.

Education

  • We had anticipated powers within this Bill for Ofsted to be able to inspect multi-academy trusts, as committed to within the Government’s election manifesto, however these are currently missing. We have raised for some time concerns around a lack of accountability for multi-academy trusts and believe this Bill offers a clear opportunity to address this issue. The ability of the inspectorate to inspect groups of providers would allow for Ofsted to take an umbrella view across a whole provider network (as is the plan for larger providers of placements for children in care elsewhere in this Bill), enabling them to bring evidence together to consider concerns and issues of failure that are not isolated to one service and more systemic. Without this oversight, there is a risk patterns of concern and indeed scale may not be identified. 
     
  • We are disappointed to see that the education system will not be made a statutory safeguarding partner. Education has an essential role to play in local safeguarding arrangements, and while we support measures to increase the role of educators in local safeguarding arrangements [Clause 2], we would like to see these go further, and we are concerned that there is no mention of powers to compel education settings to participate in local multi-agency safeguarding work where they do not engage. 
     
  • The Bill contains several measures around elective home education. We recognise that the vast majority of those who home-school their children are doing an excellent job, however we also know that home-schooling has been a factor in a number of cases where children have come to serious harm. Measures in the Bill around “children not in school” register [Clauses 25-26] are welcome, however we continue to call for powers and resources for councils to speak to children directly, to check that they are safe and being taught a suitable education. Similarly, requiring parents to obtain the consent of the council to home educate if their child is subject to a child protection investigation or under a child protection plan [Clause 24] is helpful, but will only apply where councils already have contact with a child and their family. Councils can better protect all children if they have powers to see all children where they are being home educated.
     
  • The Bill brings forward a range of measures in relation to education that are long-standing asks of the LGA including limits on branded items in school uniform [Clause 23], tackling illegal schools [Clauses 31-38], removing the forced conversion to academies of schools in a category causing concern [Clause 44], placing a duty on all schools to work with councils on place planning and admissions [Clauses 47-49] and enabling councils to open any type of school needed locally [Clause 51].

Contact

Zahraa Shaikh
Public Affairs Support Officer 

Phone: 020 3838 4861 
Mobile: 7591353623 
Email: [email protected]