The Children and Social Work Act, which quietly became law as Westminster was winding down for the general election, ended up a far more consensual piece of legislation than had seemed likely during much of its year-long passage.
Debate ended up focusing on two issues that had not even featured until late in the parliamentary process: compulsory relationship and sex education in schools, and help for refugee children.
The act, which applies mainly to England and includes a wide range of measures, will be seen more broadly as an attempt to give greater clarity to the role of councils as “corporate parents” of children and young people in care, and care leavers, as well as to what councils and other agencies should do in safeguarding cases.
It also provides for the establishment of a new regulator for social work, Social Work England (SWE), which is expected to take shape in 2018.
Alison Michalska, president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, says the act has much to commend it. “There remain some unanswered questions and points of detail, which will be sorted out in regulations, but overall we welcome it. It’s fair to say there were little bumps along the way, however.”
The main bump was over initial attempts by ministers to insert “opt-out clauses” in the legislation to give favoured councils exemption from children’s social care laws, supposedly in order to encourage innovation. After much controversy, the plan was dropped.
While it may be premature to conclude that the retreat signalled a fresh start for the often strained relations between the Department for Education (DfE) and the social work establishment, it certainly set aside an issue that threatened to make them much worse.
Michalska, who makes a point of referencing Indra Morris, who joined the DfE in January as director general for social care, says there has been “a sea-change recently in the way we have had discussions about things and in how [the department] has taken earlier soundings from us on what decisions will be made for the future”.
Even the British Association of Social Workers (BASW), an arch critic of the DfE’s influence, concedes there are “a number of positives” in the act, including the dropping of another earlier proposal to make SWE an executive arm of government, under direct control of the secretary of state.
Under the revised terms in the statute, SWE will be a non-departmental public body, or quango, with the same status as social work regulators in the rest of the UK. Ministers will, however, still be able to set post-qualifying improvement standards for social workers.
BASW says it broadly welcomes the act’s moves to clarify the rights and services that children and young people, as well as those who care for them, can expect – although it warns that these will be “token gestures” without adequate funding to back them up.
The measures include:
- Providing extra support in schools for children in care.
- Requiring councils to provide personal advisers to all care leavers up to age 25.
- Ensuring children’s long-term needs are prioritised by courts considering adoption or other placement options.
- Strengthening local multi-agency coordination in safeguarding cases.
- Improving national arrangements for the analysis of serious incidents.
The children’s minister, Edward Timpson, said in parliament that the act was “an important step forward” for vulnerable children. “It defines what good corporate parenting looks like and secures the involvement of the whole council in looking out for children in care or leaving care.”
At the third and last reading of the legislation in the Commons, MPs queued to debate the placing of relationship and sex education on a statutory footing, which ministers introduced successfully into the bill at a late stage, and a failed attempt by Labour to require councils to report annually on their capacity to take children into care, including refugee children.
Labour’s veteran Frank Field said he had never seen the Commons so crowded to discuss amendments to a bill.
The Conservatives’ Tim Loughton, a former children’s minister, said the skewing of focus was in many respects a shame because it drew attention from the “really important meat” of the legislation – the improvement of support for vulnerable children, particularly those in care.
“Successive governments have strived to do much, and have achieved much, for those children,” Loughton said. “But we still need to do much more.”
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