Wednesday 25th October 2017 - Education Committee Oral Evidence session with Justine Greening MP, Secretary of State for Education
Q17 Lucy Allan: Secretary of State, we have seen over recent years an increasing number of children and families being sucked into the child protection system, with 70,000-plus children in care and some 400,000 children subject to child protection intervention measures. Senior figures within the sector are expressing real concerns that this is untenable in terms of the economic cost, the social cost and, really importantly, the emotional cost to families and children. We have had piecemeal sector reviews looking at different parts of the care system but we have had nothing that really recognises the severity of this current position that is going to inextricably deteriorate. Scotland has launched a fundamental root and branch review of the care system, looking at legislation, culture, ethos and practice within the sector. Has your Department considered a similar kind of review and, if not, what will you do to tackle this problem head on?
Justine Greening: First of all, you will remember that we passed the Children and Social Work Bill in 2016 and there are a range of outcomes from that that sit alongside a much broader strategy to help make sure that children’s services are high quality. That will mean improving social work practice and there is a range of reform there that is already underway following the Bill passing. We have set clear professional expectations through the chief social worker role that is now in place for the first time. We are making sure that there is stronger training and support. That will sit alongside the introduction of an accreditation and assessment scheme for social workers.
Q18 Lucy Allan: Secretary of State, that is about the quality of social work. I completely understand that and that is what that Bill was designed to achieve. I am talking about the numbers of children and families being sucked into this system when we can all accept that that is not a good thing for society, it is not a good thing for children, it is not a good thing for families. What I am asking is: are we going to do a more comprehensive fundamental root and branch review of how in fact we can do better by these children and reduce the number of children being sucked into child protection and the care system?
Justine Greening: I agree with you, Lucy. What I am saying is we have done that piece of work. “Putting children first”, which was published in July last year, set out some of these steps. We are also going to be putting in place a new regulator, Social Work England. That is what we are doing in relation to the profession itself. In tackling the issues that you have just raised, it is important that we have a high quality social work profession. These people have to take incredibly hard decision every single day. They have probably some of the most challenging roles that anyone can have in our country.
But along with that we are working to enable local authorities that are strong, a bit like with our school system, to work more collaboratively with local authorities that are weaker to help lift up their practice as children’s services departments. There is a fair amount of work with the legislative change and the regulatory architecture within which children and social work happens. There is a significant amount of work with children’s social workers themselves to lift that quality overall and then the work of organisations and local authorities to make sure that we can act where we do see failure happening.
The final point to make is in relation to Ofsted where the inspection regime will shift to be a more frequent one that will mean we can pick up failure earlier. In doing so, we can work with local authorities that are at risk before they end up being in a position where they get an inadequate rating.
Q19 Lucy Allan: Do you accept, though, that we cannot continue on this upward trajectory of families being brought into the system? However good it is, we cannot continue to have increasing numbers of children being taken into care. It is simply untenable to have this relentless increase.
Justine Greening: It is certainly not an increase that any of us want to see and what we need to do is have a system in place, the right processes, high quality people in children’s social work so that we are able to work with families earlier in order for that not to happen. But as I think we all recognise, there will be some children who absolutely do need to be moved out of the situation that they find themselves in at home and that is the best thing for them. In relation to the circumstances where early intervention can make a difference then absolutely. That is why it is so important to see this work pushed forward. It is not easy, there is no doubt about that, but it sits together as an overall strategy.