Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Clause one: Family group decision making

Currently, the support that family and friends can offer is not consistently explored prior to a child entering the care system. It means there are children in the care system who did not need to be. They could be safely at home with their parents or raised by relatives and friends in kinship care, instead of with strangers.

We strongly welcome the new mandate on local authorities to offer families the opportunity to come up with solutions for their children’s welfare, to avert children entering the care system. This could be a step change in how the state works with, rather than does to, children and their families.

However, we are concerned that the family group decision making offer in the Bill is too ambiguous in the way it is framed. Without strengthening the provisions, we fear in practice it will not deliver the Bill’s ambition, to ensure fair and effective opportunity across the country for children and their families to get the support they need to stay together.

Our recommendation: The Bill should incorporate the proven principles of family group conferences—an internationally recognised, family-led model that effectively and safely keeps children with their families.

We have proposed a number of amendments to achieve this. See our briefing for the House of Lords for further details

Clauses two and three: Child protection and safeguarding

Family Rights Group supports steps to strengthen multi agency working to protect children, building on the findings of recent reviews including the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.

The benefits of relationship-based practice are well established, including securing trust between families and professionals, helping families get the support they need to prevent problems escalating and in identifying and addressing concerns. It remains unclear how the Government’s child protection reforms, however, will align with their parallel aims to work in partnership with children and families.

Specifically, we have concerns about the creation of a lead child protection practitioner, who will co-work Family Help cases when there is a safeguarding concern about a child, with a Family Help worker who may also be a social worker. This split of responsibility and change in social worker could damage trust that has already been built with the child and their family, potentially hindering their continued engagement, which is key to effective safeguarding.

We also fear that despite the intent, at a time of severe financial strain on public services, children and families could find themselves having to overcome more bureaucratic barriers to get the help that they need.

Clause 5: Kinship care local offer and definition

For the first time, the Bill will define kinship care in primary legislation and requires councils to publish a local kinship care offer setting out the support they will provide children and families. Both proposals developed by Family Rights Group.

This is a historic step toward recognising and supporting the over 153,000 children in England living in kinship care.

However, the current provisions provide less clarity and potentially greater confusion for children, families, practitioners and agencies:

• They do not adequately address the different types of kinship care arrangements
• Expectations for councils to involve families in shaping and promoting their local offer are minimal.

Our recommendations: We have proposed amendments to: a) include information on legal support and family group decision making in the list of categories the offer should cover, and b) strengthen the expectations for councils to involve families in shaping and promoting their local offer. See our briefing for the House of Lords for further details

Alongside this, the Government must invest in the practical, emotional, and financial support families need.

Clause 6: Promoting educational achievement – Virtual School Heads

There are higher levels of special education needs among kinship children compared to the wider population. Many struggle to secure the support their children need and those with older children are concerned about the cliff edge in support when the children turns 16 and 18.

The Bill extends the statutory responsibilities of the Virtual School Head role to champion the education of children, including children in kinship care. As above, we are concerned about gaps in the definition of kinship care. We also think the full range of responsibilities, including direct support, should be extended to ensure equality of access in support.

Our recommendation: The Government should go further to extend support in schools for children in kinship care including priority school admissions and Pupil Premium Plus. They should also undertake work with families to explore the cliff edge in post-16 and post-18 educational support for young people raised in kinship care including those under special guardianship orders.

Clause 7: Providing Staying Close support to care leavers; Clause 8: Local offer for care leavers

Many children in the care system are living far away from family and friends. Young people leaving care are often alone and isolated, as their professional support network falls away.

The Bill introduces measures to enhance housing and support for care leavers, including the Staying Close initiative. We strongly welcome these measures.

We recommend further emphasis on ensuring young people leaving the care system have loving, lasting relationships they can turn to throughout life.

Lifelong Links is an innovative approach, developed by Family Rights Group, to support children in care and care leavers to have positive, loving relationships during their time in care and into adulthood. Research shows Lifelong Links improves children’s sense of identity, the stability of their living arrangements, their emotional health and wellbeing, and reduces homelessness. It also saves local authorities money.

Our recommendation: All children in care and care leavers should be offered Lifelong Links, so they are supported to have relationships with those who love and care about them. This should be set out in regulations and guidance. We have worked with Lord Farmer to table an amendment to ensure the care leaver local offer provides information on how the local authority promotes building and strengthening relationships. See our Lords Committee Briefing

Too often the care system breaks rather than builds relationships for children in care, including often with siblings, grandparents, others who care about the child.

Research by the Children’s Commissioner for England found that an estimated 37% of children with a sibling – that is 20,000 children – are separated from a sibling when placed in care. The report highlighted how siblings are not always supported to stay in touch.

This is reinforced by our experience from the findings of Lifelong Links approach, in which children often speak of their desperate wish to see their brother or sister.

The measures in the Bill could go further by providing all children in the care system with the same right to reasonable contact with their brothers and sisters, as they currently have in law as they have with their parents.

Our recommendation: We have proposed amendments to achieve this, alongside creating a new duty on local authorities to promote the child’s family and social relationships in ways which are consistent with the child’s welfare. See our Lords Committee Briefing for further details

Clause 11 of the Bill seeks to address the issue, over recent years, of children being deprived of their liberty outside of the statutory route, in inappropriate and unsuitable accommodation.

Children’s services departments will now be able to apply for an order to deprive a child of their liberty in “relevant accommodation”.

This is described as accommodation provided for the purposes of care and treatment of children but that is also deemed capable of being used to deprive a child of their liberty.

We welcome moves to address this important issue but note the following:

First, the success of these changes hinges on the accompanying regulatory framework. Details about what constitutes “relevant accommodation,” its standards, and Ofsted registration requirements remain unclear.

Second, the proposals neglect the critical issue of maintaining children’s relationships with family and friends. Many children in such placements face isolation, living far from home with limited contact.

Finally, families’ access to justice remains a challenge. Current legal aid provision when children are deprived of their liberty often leaves parents unrepresented. We have called for legal aid provision to be in line with that which is available to parents and children in care proceedings. This will help families understand what applications may be made and the processes involved.

Amendments have been tabled on some of these elements. See more in our latest Bill briefing.

Our key questions:

• When will the regulations be brought forward and what matters will they address?
• Is it intended that the regulatory scheme applicable to ‘relevant accommodation’ arrangements will mirror the secure accommodation regulatory scheme?
• How will this kind of accommodation be different from a children’s home?
• Will these settings be registered with, and inspected by, Ofsted?
• What falls in scope of ‘treatment’?
• What makes accommodation “capable” of being used to deprive a child of their liberty? 
• What provision will be made in regulations to ensure that children in ‘relevant accommodation’ are supported to maintain relationships with those important to them?
• When will full details of the legal aid regime applicable to families and children, when an application under this route is contemplated or made, be available?
• What consultation has taken place prior to these significant changes being brought through? 

See more analysis by our legal adviser, Frances Edwards, here.

The number of children entering care each year remains at a record high, and a significant number of these children are removed from parents who have previously had a child a removed into care. Without support after a child is removed, parents can become stuck in a harmful cycle of recurrent removals as they are left struggling to cope with the existing difficulties that resulted in the child removal, while facing the additional trauma, grief and stigma of losing a child.

We know that this cycle of repeat removals can be prevented. Evidence shows that with the right support following child removal, parents can stabilise, overcome trauma and sustain lasting, positive change for them and their families, which in turn reduces the number of children entering care and makes significant savings to the public purse.

Family Rights Group has worked with the charity Pause on an amendment to ensure that local authorities offer evidence based support to reduce the risk of a baby being removed from a mother who has already had a child or children removed from her care. See more in our latest Bill briefing.