Education Committee
Oral evidence: Children’s Social Care, HC 430
Tuesday 21 January 2025
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 21 January 2025.
Members present: Helen Hayes (Chair); Jess Asato; Mrs Sureena Brackenridge; Manuela Perteghella; Mark Sewards; Dr Marie Tidball.
Questions 353 - 383
Witnesses
I: Anna Edmundson, Head of Policy and Public Affairs, National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC); Lynn Perry MBE, Chief Executive, Barnardo’s; and Claire Throssell MBE, Survivor of Domestic Abuse, Public Speaker, and Ambassador for Women’s Aid and IDAS.
II: Annie Hudson, Chair, Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel; Rob Williams, Senior Policy Adviser, National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT); and Andy Smith, President, Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS).
Written evidence from witnesses:
Witnesses: Anna Edmundson, Lynn Perry MBE and Claire Throssell MBE.
Chair: We begin our public proceedings of the Education Committee. This morning we have an evidence session in our inquiry on children’s social care, which is focusing in particular on child protection. I would say at the start of this session that we will be covering content that is difficult to hear, and I am sure will be distressing for some people. Please take note of that and take care of yourself if you need to during this session.
Before I ask our witnesses to introduce themselves, I am going to ask members of the Committee if there are any declarations of interest that they want to put on record today.
Jess Asato: I would like to declare an interest in that I worked for Barnardo’s prior to being elected to Parliament.
Dr Tidball: I also would like to declare an interest in that Claire Throssell MBE is one of my constituents.
Q353 Chair: Thank you. If there are no other declarations, I will ask our witnesses to introduce themselves this morning, starting with Lynn.
Lynn Perry: Certainly. Thank you. I am Lynn Perry, Chief Executive at Barnardo’s children’s charity.
Claire Throssell: My name is Claire Throssell MBE, and I am an Ambassador for Women’s Aid and IDAS. I am a domestic abuse survivor, public speaker and campaigner.
Anna Edmundson: I am Anna Edmundson from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, NSPCC, and I am the Head of Policy and Public Affairs.
Q354 Chair: Thank you very much. I am going to begin our questioning this morning. Over the last four years, the number of children on child protection plans has fallen overall. Could you comment on what you believe to be the reasons for this fall? Is it because children are safer? Is it because services are less able to identify the children who are in need of protection? What do you think explains that particular trend? I will start with Lynn.
Lynn Perry: On reflection, one of the things that I would say is about the thresholds for accessing support for children, young people and families. Within Barnardo’s we operate several early help and family support-type services across the UK. One of the things that practitioners routinely tell us is that the complexity of cases continues to rise even for early help and early support. We know that there are some challenges with thresholds to access statutory services. We also know that there is a system that is under very significant pressure right now.
We welcome some of the focus on early help and intervention, and that is the only way in which we will be able to turn the tide of rising need in children and families. There are increasing attempts to put early help services on the ground but of course they are reliant upon funding for those services. A consistent approach across the UK is the only way that we will address the rising need.
Although the numbers of children on child protection plans may have reduced, we would not say that that is reflective of the evidence of rising need across our services within the charity.
Claire Throssell: I am coming from a school perspective. From being the safeguarding lead governor in Springvale School, I have seen that we have referred in and escalated situations, and social services have kicked back and said that the children do not need to go on a plan. We literally let children go knowing that they are not going to be safe with that parent because with social services it is either increased demand or they minimise the risk to the child. Risk assessments, dashboard assessments—we do not all fit in a box and there are many cases that do not fit in a dashboard assessment.
My case did not fit in a dashboard assessment. A lack of understanding of what abuse is, coupled with not meeting the criteria on the dashboard or risk assessment, ensures that lots of children fall through the gaps. Responsibility is placed on the parent to keep the child safe or the school to keep the child safe. We make numerous referrals, and they get put back because they do not meet the criteria for a risk assessment or a dashboard assessment.
We do not fit in boxes, and we do not always fit into the criteria but that does not mean that we are not in danger.
Anna Edmundson: I agree with my colleagues giving evidence today that, in answer to your question, no, it does not mean that children are safe. Certainly, from our experience at NSPCC, we know what we see coming through from adults with concerns about a child to a helpline, from children themselves to Childline, and some of the other indicators—so police reports, for example, of child cruelty figures, the impact of poverty, and the number of children who are in difficult or unsuitable housing. When you look at those indicators, it does point, we think, to a discrepancy between that level of need and then how many children are on child protection plans.
From our point of view at NSPCC, this is part of the reason why over many years we have been pushing hard for not just a reliance on some of the important and essential administrative data, such as how many children are on child protection plans or how many child in need assessments there are, but an understanding of the prevalence of all the different types of abuse and neglect. The only way we can do that and understand what is happening for babies, children and young people today, and what that means for children’s social care and for the safeguarding partners who are there to respond, protect and ensure that they get the support they need, is to understand that underlying prevalence.
The last time this was done—15 years ago—by the NSPCC, children’s lives were different. We want to see the Government invest in rolling out a partnership, which we are working on with the Office for National Statistics, to pilot a prevalence survey. At the moment there is no guaranteed funding to build that full picture. Without that detailed picture of what is happening for children and young people, we will always ask these questions: what does this really say? What doesn’t it tell us? We need that deep dive—that prevalence survey—to understand.
Claire Throssell: Also we have Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance and teachers are morally responsible for that. They can be disciplined and lose their jobs for not adhering to that. Take that law in schools and take what legislation there is to protect children in the home. There is a massive gap—a huge difference there. Social services and Cafcass need to perform more in line with Keeping Children Safe in Education and assist and help teachers to keep children safe.
Q355 Chair: Thank you. That is helpful. My next question relates to that issue of prevalence and trends. It might be based on what Anna has said: the answer is not definitive. Could you all tell us what you know from your work at a national level about the trends in child abuse across the country and particularly child sexual abuse?
I ask the question because we have had a lot of debate in this place in recent weeks around the horrific issue of the systematic abuse of children through child grooming gangs. The allegation is made that this is happening in up to 50 towns across the country. That begs the question, as organisations that are engaged in the safeguarding of children: what do you know about that horrific phenomenon happening in some communities and do you have any comment on why it is the case that in some areas local authority services seem unable to keep children safe? Anna, do you want to start based on what you said previously?
Anna Edmundson: Again, having a prevalence survey would help to understand the numbers and the patterns, and begin to delve into what needs to happen to tackle this. We do think that child sexual abuse is endemic, as Professor Jay said at the conclusion of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. We know that it is happening in a range of circumstances and settings. That could be in the family, it could be in the context of what children experience when they are in school or in the places and spaces doing the things they love, such as sports or music or drama, and it can also be in the community, as we have seen the focus on most recently.
Again, there is a trend here. One of the reasons why Professor Jay’s final report called for a core dataset and one of the reasons why we were pleased to see the Home Secretary say that that recommendation be taken forward is because we need to have that full picture across all the different forms of child sexual abuse and exploitation so that we can ensure that children’s social services, policing, health and education are laser focused on what is happening for children and then take action accordingly.
Looking at some of the discussions that have emerged in recent weeks, we are supportive of local areas having exactly that deep dive in their area to understand what is happening. From our perspective, we cannot assume that this is not happening. Just because you might not have the reports or there might be a relatively small number of child protection plans, for example, that have child sexual abuse as the main indicator, that does not mean that child sexual abuse and exploitation is not happening.
In that context, those deep dives looking at what is happening in a local area, the safeguarding partners coming together, and most importantly speaking to those who are at the sharp end of experiencing this—children and young people—and understanding from them what is happening in their lives, and from victims and survivors what happened to them, is the real way to get into understanding what is happening in those local areas and to build up what then needs to happen in terms of action.
It is clear that there have been responses to victims and survivors in particular that have not kept children safe and have not helped them to recover. That needs to change. We think that some of the measures that have been announced—we hope more will come in fulfilling other ICSA recommendations—will start to move us to a much better place.
Claire Throssell: For me, there are quite a few things that can make a significant difference in this area. One is to see the child, hear the child, believe the child. They are not invisible. Half of this problem is because of the language around sexual abuse and the attitude towards them. We know how bad it is for a rape conviction. Now make it for a child with the barriers of language and with the barriers of understanding what sexuality is. They face huge barriers, and the language and legislation needs to change to protect them.
They need to know that they are heard, listened to, supported and believed. They cannot just think that they are invisible walking around letting this happen to them. I am afraid it goes deeper than that. It goes to the family courts; it goes to the presumption of contact. We have fathers and mothers who are sexually abusive, and they are granted unsupervised contact by a judge. It is not just gangs out there grooming children. You are looking right into the home, in a court of law. It is happening throughout the system, and to change it the first thing we need to do is to say to these children and young people, “We see you; we hear you; we believe you.”
Lynn Perry: I support what colleagues have said already this morning. I think we recognise that the data we do have is probably not reflective of the extent of the abuse. That is the first thing to recognise. We support the ICSA recommendation for the improvement of data. That is an important starting point to understand the complexity and issues of some of these challenges.
We also know that increasingly there is a complexity about the way in which children and young people are abused and are groomed for abuse. The online world—online harms—is a significant part of that and addressing those issues through the Online Safety Act is going to be absolutely critical to build in some further protections and provisions for children and young people.
Claire Throssell: In three minutes online they can be convinced to show parts of their body—just three minutes.
Lynn Perry: Yes. There are some very real risks in that space and that is increasing for children.
One of the things that we know from over 25 years of working with children and young people who have been affected is, as Claire says, the importance of them being heard and the importance of them being believed. Only through a system that affords that will we be able to see a truer reflection of the extent of abuse.
There are some recommendations of course that we welcome but one of the things that is clear is that the provision of specialist and sufficient support across local authority areas to meet children’s needs is not currently consistent. It is important for victims and survivors that that is also addressed.
The final thing in response to your question is we know that this occurs across all communities. Although we have a number of inquiries we also need to ensure that the learning from those inquiries is shared in real time and that we do not limit the potential for further scrutiny.
Q356 Chair: I want to turn now to another aspect of child protection, which is the issue of neglect. We know that, while the number of children on child protection plans has gone up overall, the proportion of children on child protection plans—who are on that plan due to neglect—has gone up. I want to ask first about what your understanding is for the reasons in that change in the statistics.
Secondly, this Committee in its previous iteration before the election heard evidence that sometimes there is a difficulty for decision makers and professionals in distinguishing between what is neglect and what is in fact poverty. It would be helpful to have your comments on why that is such a difficulty, what steps should be put in place to support professionals to be able to make that distinction, and to understand where it is support that is needed rather than child protection action.
Anna Edmundson: I am very happy to start. The first thing to say is when you look at the number of children on child protection plans, one thing that jumps out is the persistence of those stubbornly high figures around neglect. That is something that has not changed over many years and is something that has led us at NSPCC, working with our colleagues at Action for Children, to ask some questions and dig into what is happening.
The first thing to stress is that neglect is a unique and quite complex form of child maltreatment. As you say, there is a nuanced relationship with poverty, but it is different from poverty. Not all children living in poverty experience neglect and likewise not all neglect is experienced by children who are just living in poverty. That is important to pull out right at the beginning.
It is clear from the evidence over many years from academics and other sources that poverty is one of the big sources of pressure for families. We have seen that increasingly in recent years. That is part of the reason we think we are seeing a growing uptick in the number of child protection plans for neglect. Those links are now well established.
From our point of view, when you talk about child neglect and tackling it, it is part and parcel of addressing poverty and the context in which this is happening. How do we get there? How do we tackle neglect? First, it dovetails with a number of things that I know this Committee is interested in around rebalancing the children’s social care system. At the moment the vast proportion of spend in children’s social care is directed at what we would say are the later stages of intervention, whereas that early intervention and preventive support has shrunk.
That is important from the point of view of tackling neglect, because it is about that early help and support for families who are often living in very difficult circumstances. That support to access services will help them, as will income maximisation and a range of potentially very supportive interventions. Getting that support at the outset can help stop problems further down the line. That is one of the reasons why we think we are seeing this increasing uptick in neglect in those statistics.
How do we turn that around? Yes, rebalancing children’s social care, but that needs to be alongside a national focus on this in terms of having a strategy for tackling it and a strategy that is dovetailed into the child poverty strategy that the Government are working on, which we think has the potential to be transformative if done right. In particular, it is, as part of that response to children’s social care and to poverty investing, in the new family help model through integrated, joined-up support for families. That is at the earliest possible stage before the harm that neglect can cause for babies, children and young people, both in time but particularly over a cumulative period and long into their future. Before that happens we want to see the support in place.
Lynn Perry: You are quite right to note how stubborn neglect is in plans. It has not declined very much over the last decade. In terms of prevalence, we know it is a major issue. In talking about any correlations, it is important that we are clear that most parents that we work with are doing their best for their children. As Anna has said, the evidence does not link poverty and neglect directly, but we do know—we see this across our 800 services within Barnardo’s—the profound impact of poverty. There has been a compound impact of Covid and the cost of living crisis. We know what that has meant for pressure on families, parental mental health and just the complexity of some of the challenges that families face at the moment. That impacts the stress and the wellbeing for those parents with care of their children.
Those cases that involve neglect are often complex and cumulative. That is an important point to note because it does point to a recommendation for earlier intervention, for universal, non-stigmatising services for children and families, such as family centres. We run 75 family centres within Barnardo’s. We know that that is one of the places and spaces where we can start to tackle some of those pressures in a constructive and positive way, which can turn things around for families. Coupled with good multi-agency work across the systems that support and protect children, and good information sharing, we know that we can respond at a better point on that continuum for children and families.
I echo what Anna has said. Currently we are spending significantly more on late intervention for families and some of the issues in respect of neglect could be tackled much earlier in the life cycle.
Claire Throssell: Again, I go back to schools. You have asked how we differentiate between neglect and poverty. Well, with school safeguarding—CPOMS—they build a picture up of that family, they build a picture up of that child. Social services and other teams should work with the schools and look at the pattern of what is happening. Is it lateness? Is it starvation? Is it a lack of emotional need? Is it another form of neglect? By building that picture, working with the schools, and working with the safeguarding leads who look after these children daily and see these children every day in school, that is the way to differentiate between neglect and poverty.
You have the school building up this picture. They have CPOMS in schools. They log every incident every day. We do our best for every child and that is how with professional interest as well you can build up a picture and say whether it is poverty, with all the fantastic things that we can put in place for interventions, or it is neglect that must go down the other route.
We also engage with the parents. Some parents do not want to engage, and they are the difficult ones because you have no idea what is happening in the home, and you must respect their wishes unless the child is in danger and then we will send it straight to social services and escalate it.
Most times we are looking at neglect, but we are not looking at emotional neglect. The parents may have had a mental breakdown. There may be something going off in the home, and it is a pressured environment right now. It might be that the parent needs a little bit of help, a counsellor, or a little bit of support and then that family would get back on track. It is not always the child who is at risk. Sometimes it is the parent. By engaging with the parents, you build up the picture of the whole family.
Sometimes it is not the child who has been neglected on purpose, but the parent who has an overriding need due to the pressure of life, the pressure of everyday situations, or maybe personal reasons. For me, the way you differentiate between neglect and poverty is to work with the schools, look at the picture that they build up every day with that child, and move it to the appropriate way that they need to move forward.
Q357 Jess Asato: Very quickly, off the back of that, there have been some calls to introduce equal protection for children so that they have the same protections as adults. To what extent quickly do you think that could help to safeguard them from harm?
Anna Edmundson: If it is all right, I will go first. Absolutely. Obviously with the recent horrific case of Sara Sharif, we saw what happens when there are misunderstandings or presumptions about what physical punishment is or is not allowed. From our point of view at NSPCC, for several years the adults we have polled have been supportive of a change in the law in England to match what has happened in Scotland and Wales to give that clarity that physical punishment of children is never acceptable.
We know from our conversations with safeguarding professionals—particularly health professionals and the RCPCH have clearly set this out—that the current ambiguity about having a defence of reasonable punishment means that it makes those professional conversations so much harder. For example, as a health professional, how do you have a conversation with a parent who has used physical punishment? What is reasonable and what is not?
From our point of view, to ensure that there is that clarity and children have that protection, we do want to see a change, not least because times have changed and public attitudes have changed but, most crucially, because the evidence base showing long-term health and other impacts on children due to the use of physical punishment. Like other things that have been changed due to better understanding of the harms they do, it is now time for physical punishment in England to end.
Jess Asato: I am going to move on to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
Claire Throssell: Sorry, could I just say—
Jess Asato: Yes, of course, Claire. Sorry.
Claire Throssell: In 2021, the Domestic Abuse Bill went through, and children now are recognised in their own right as victims of domestic abuse if they see it, hear it or experience it. That law has been in place since 2021 but in the family courts they do not implement it. Children have a right to be protected. Children have a right to live and have a right to a childhood. The family courts still presume that it is in the child’s best interest to have contact with both parents whether it is a proven abusive parent or not. We are putting laws in place to protect children, but one hand is protecting them and the other hand does not recognise the legislation, and they do not use it. If we bring in legislation to protect children, it needs to be implemented across all the courts, across all practice, across all organisations and it needs to be a blanket understanding of no harm.
Q358 Jess Asato: Thank you very much. Moving on to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, the Committee has heard concerns about the proposal to introduce a mandatory reporting duty for child sexual abuse because it may result in practitioners becoming overly risk averse and making assumptions about abuse without doing the necessary inquiries. What are your views on this and the creation of a Child Protection Authority as well?
Lynn Perry: I am happy to start on this. The starting point is to recognise the role that all professionals have in keeping children safe. To confer a responsibility upon professionals to share information when children are at risk of significant harm is something that we would be supportive of. All professionals should identify and be well trained to identify indicators of suspected abuse. One of the things in the proposal to introduce mandatory reporting that will be important is to create clarity about those professional responsibilities for those who have to discharge them and also clarity about the sanctions for concealing or covering up information about abuse.
One of the things that we recognise is the importance of building trusted relationships with children and young people and parents and carers. It does need to be acknowledged that sometimes that takes time. Children often fear what the implications of disclosure to professionals might be. The way in which this is articulated and implemented will be important for us to give careful consideration to in that context. If we do not get that balance right it may result in harm being perpetuated to children. It is important to balance all those considerations in the proposals around mandatory reporting.
The other thing that I would reflect, and it is a reflection that probably applies to some of the other questions that have been asked about why we have some stubborn statistics in the children’s social care system, is the need for any change in duty and any change in expectation within the children’s social care system to be accompanied by an investment in training, learning and development for those who are responsible for working with children and young people. Reporters must have the knowledge and the skill set to identify and be able to report concerns.
Claire Throssell: For me I would say that training, accountability and legislation must work together. If those three do not line up, the system will never change. There will be more children dropping through the safety net. There will be more situations. These three things are the key and run through everything.
Accurate and honest reporting, training to understand the subject, and the legislation to protect and make them accountable for the decisions that they make or the decisions they do not make. At the moment people are out there affecting children’s lives with no accountability. The decisions they make can ruin our end lives and it is time that they were made accountable for those decisions in those roles. Until we have that then unfortunately we will sit in committees for many years to come. All three need to line up and all three need to join together.
Anna Edmundson: Building on what colleagues have said, reporting is absolutely essential. We talked a bit about prevalence and the number of reported statistics not matching what is happening for children and young people. Part of that is making sure that the adults around children can spot the signs, so it is training and having the confidence to know what to do and report. It is absolutely essential.
In that context we do want to see more reporting. What is also critical is the response to those children and young people when abuse is suspected, reported and so on. We think that the introduction of any mandatory reporting model will probably increase the number of reports to children’s social services, policing and so on. The system needs to be equipped to deal with that. That includes ensuring that the resources, the services and the responses are in place.
Lynn mentioned one of ICSA’s other recommendations around therapeutic support. That is absolutely critical. When any model of mandatory reporting is taken forward, it must be in the context of investment in the whole system. It is not a magic wand unless children’s social care, for example, is equipped to respond rather than having a report that then leaves a child or a young person hanging.
The final thing I would add to what colleagues have said is the vital importance of having some safe spaces for children to reach out about concerns—about child sexual abuse in this context, but also more broadly. As Lynn says, we know from working with children and young people that they will not say, “I have been sexually abused.” Well, they might, but that is unusual. It is a process of building trust and relationships, and having the confidence to then share what is happening for them.
What we want to see in any model is the preservation of these safe, confidential spaces, and for us at NSPCC that is Childline. Sixteen children or young people contact us every day with concerns about child sexual abuse and every year one fifth of those have never spoken to anybody else. We want to ensure that, however mandatory reporting is taken forward, those thousands of children still have a space where they can receive support, get the help that they need to be able to either go on and disclose or get the adults working with them to act on their behalf. They are vital.
Claire Throssell: When it comes to safeguarding, teachers are accountable under Keeping Children Safe in Education. Why are social services and Cafcass not accountable for their umbrella too?
Chair: Before I pass to Mark, can I just say we have covered quite a lot of territory in quite a lot of detail already and we are relatively constrained in time? We want to hear your evidence, but if you have already answered a question in a previous answer do not feel that you have to say it all over again. We have banked that, and it will help us to get through the questioning in the time we have left.
Q359 Mark Sewards: Brilliant, Chair. You took the words out of my mouth. On this question you have already answered it comprehensively so feel free not to repeat your answers: to what extent would more investment in early intervention reduce the risk of children suffering harm?
Claire Throssell: Massively.
Anna Edmundson: Shall I launch in? The easy answer is massively, as Claire says. NSPCC alongside Barnardo’s are members of the Children’s Charities Coalition and over several years we have worked with different economists to analyse the current spend on children’s services and where that is going, the early versus late, and critically what that means for children, young people and families but also to the taxpayer.
What we have seen—and we touched on it before—is that increasing spend on late intervention versus the shrinking of what is available for those early preventative services is something that we find as children’s charities difficult to stomach. From our work with children and families, we know that it is those early interventions that support at a point when families are often crying out for help and looking for support where you have the opportunity to make the most difference, to support that family, stop escalation and stop them reaching that crisis point. From our point of view, that is the important reason of why we want to see that shift back to focus and protection of that spend on early intervention but there is a financial cost. I do not know if Lynn wants to pick that up.
Lynn Perry: It is absolutely critical. If we are ambitious about achieving transformational change for children and young people today, investment in early help and early intervention is the only way in which I think we are going to reset the system. There is both a human and a fiscal cost to not doing that. We know that where we have embedded vital services for children and families that focus on that early help, whether it is universal or targeted, we can make a significant difference to prevent them reaching crisis point.
To give an illustration, in the Isle of Wight, we have done some cost-benefit analysis on one of our services. For every £1 that we spent on early help there was a saving of £2.60 in that area. Over the course of 12 months that was an estimated saving of £1 million in one area. There is a financial case for this.
The human case of course is that we prevent families from needing section 17 support or finding themselves in situations where child protection is a concern for agencies. Unless we take this opportunity we will not achieve the transformational change that we want for families.
Q360 Mark Sewards: Great stuff. Anything to add, Claire, before I move on?
Claire Throssell: It can start from the midwives; it can start from health visitors going in after the baby is born. It does not have to start from nursery to school, “Oh, there is an issue. There is a problem”. They are invisible up to that point and you must look at the points where the children are invisible. If it starts from birth and all agencies are involved—midwives, health visitors, whoever, the early interventions can start from even before the baby is born. There is no price on a child’s life.
Mark Sewards: No. Absolutely right.
Claire Throssell: No price on a child’s childhood.
Q361 Mark Sewards: Spot on. In a similar theme—but I am moving on to a slightly different topic—the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is going to require local authorities to introduce family group decision-making before children are taken into care. What impact do you think that will have on the number of children being taken into care? I am happy to start with anyone.
Claire Throssell: Nobody has a crystal ball, but I think again you are going back to working with the whole system, involving the schools, building the picture. You know when the intervention needs to be and equally you know when you can help the parents. As we say the safeguarding hubs and the family centres that we have now in our areas are targeting families to stop us getting to that point.
It is the ultimate thing to take children away from their homes and if they need to do that, that is fine. You also have the holistic approach of working with the family, work hard, find out—as I said earlier—if there are issues within the family, not the child and in some cases the family can be put back together.
In answer to the question, on a safeguarding level, if it goes up I am thrilled because that means children have been saved—children’s lives have been saved. Equally there is a balance and if we can help the parents to become better parents—sometimes they have not had a model themselves and if you cannot see it you cannot be it.
Lynn Perry: As Claire said earlier, one of the things that family group conferencing and family group decision making affords is the opportunity for families to be heard effectively. The opportunity to be able to give voice to some of the challenges that families are experiencing and also contribute what you think some of those solutions might look like from that place of experience is something that is important. We have direct experience in Barnardo’s of running family group conferencing and we know that it can be a highly effective model of support. Preproceedings is quite late in the stage of things to intervene in a way that might achieve significant change. Nevertheless, we do think that as a model there is merit to it and that applied consistently and mandated it could have a positive impact.
The only final thing that I would say is that for family group conferencing to work effectively it does rely on a relationship of trust. There does need to be an opportunity from the family’s perspective to influence decision-making and change about the direction of things. To Claire’s earlier point, it does enable families to draw on other support within their network and to think about how they might lean into that more effectively to achieve change within the family home.
Anna Edmundson: Two very brief things to add to what Lynn said. One of the things that we think is positive in the Bill’s provisions around this is the explicit inclusion of children’s voice. We would say that there is not enough across the whole Bill, but in family group decision-making there is explicit reference to that. That is so important. I know you are hearing later from the Chair of the National Safeguarding Practice Review Panel, but some of the most horrific cases and reviews it is the importance of hearing from children, so that provision in relation to family group decision-making we welcome.
As Lynn says it is late. We would prefer seeing it at other stages. We would also like to see it extended to the point of reunification. Reunification is the most common way for children to leave care, but we know that one in three of those reunifications ultimately break down and then you have care entry. Again, that is a high human and financial cost. We think that family group decision-making used right at that point of reunification could help to ensure that it is turned around so that reunification can be more successful. There are obviously other things that we would like to see in place to support reunification, but we do think that there is a role for family group decision-making done in the way that Lynn says at reunification.
Mark Sewards: That makes sense.
Claire Throssell: Unless there is domestic abuse involved and then it will not work because the perpetrator will just either bully, harass or manipulate the situation and they are all in danger.
Q362 Mark Sewards: Absolutely. Thank you for your answers. Bear in mind there are about 10 minutes and five areas to cover, so very briefly in this case. Some evidence that this Committee has received with previous members has argued that a focus on child protection has led to parents feeling threatened and stigmatised by social services. How can an appropriate balance be struck between keeping children safe but also ensuring that parents do not feel deterred from accessing essential services?
Claire Throssell: Again, it comes down to building up that trust. It comes down to understanding the family and it goes back to early intervention. The earlier people get involved in this the earlier they can spot the issues, the earlier they can support the parents. Sometimes it is the way that you speak to somebody. I am a big advocate of saying to people that you can tell two people the same thing, but each person will react in different ways.
Again, it is down to training, relationships and the way that you speak to people, understanding their level and communicating appropriately. As I say you can say the same thing to two people, and both will take it in different ways and react completely differently. For me, it is all about building that trust, that relationship, and giving them that sense of us being here to help, not being here to interfere or take their children away. We just want to keep the child safe.
Anna Edmundson: I would echo what Claire has said and go back to what we said previously about that vital importance of that early intervention, that support, the family help. You are building up the relationships, you are—
Claire Throssell: Building the picture.
Anna Edmundson: Exactly, and in that context in the Bill we do think that the provisions around explicitly including childcare and education in those conversations about safeguarding are important. They do, as Claire says, help build that full picture and the nuance. It is not just social work. It is not just policing. It is all with health, education, building that picture, being alongside those families when they need help before it gets to a crisis point.
Q363 Mark Sewards: Brilliant. Thank you. Any final comments?
Lynn Perry: The final thing that I would add is the importance of co-ordinating and convening services. A lot of families that we work with are engaged with multiple services and for families under pressure that is also quite difficult. The recommendations for multi-agency ways of working are important but consistency and a plan that is understood by professionals and that can be communicated with clarity to families and that enables them to support and that they can see the change that the support is intended to effect is also important.
Q364 Dr Tidball: Claire ,in particular, moving to a focus on child contact and domestic abuse, you have campaigned over the last decade following the tragic deaths of your two sons at the hands of their known domestically abusive father. What change have you seen in that time and what more needs to be done?
Claire Throssell: In the context of domestic abuse not very much has changed in schools, unfortunately. You still have the contentious issue of contact orders. Without a contact order the abusive parent can come into school, and they have the right to take their child out of school and you cannot stop them. The legislation still does not support schools. It does not support in any environment, and it certainly does not protect the child.
If a child discloses domestic abuse again there is not enough training in schools to understand the various forms that it takes, particularly coercive control. The relationship building that we have talked about in such a positive way when it is an abusive parent cannot happen because the abusive parent is either aggressive, coercive or lying. To build that trust, to build that relationship with that family, is twice as hard because they are going through the courts, there is animosity, and the child is caught bang in the middle.
Q365 Dr Tidball: Particularly on the family courts, is there anything more that needs to change?
Claire Throssell: Yes. There should not be a presumption of contact. Presumption has no place in a court of law. All that should be in a court of law is fact, truth and justice. People who go through the family courts are traumatised, scared, minimalised and they feel invisible. Again, we come back to we need to hear victims, we need to see victims, we need to believe and support them.
What the courts need to stop doing is shielding the perpetrator behind money, behind barristers, behind taking them back to court again and again to retraumatise them. It is time that the family court put into place the legislation from the Domestic Abuse Bill. They need to stop ignoring children’s voices. They need to stop making presumptions about their lives. They are making presumptions on lives that can also end lives.
It is no coincidence that there were 19 children murdered between 2004 and 2014. Jack and Paul made child 18 and child 19. I am going to show some evidence now. These two children were never Child A and Child B. These two children had lives. These two children were going to school. We did not fit in a box. We did not fit the dashboard assessment. We did not fit a risk assessment. They just thought I would keep my children safe. That was a presumption that far too often in family courts comes out across the country—that one parent is then responsible for their children’s lives when the other parent threatens it.
The very fact that the word “presumption” is in a piece of legislation is incredible. It was not there in the Children and Families Act when it was first written. It was introduced later and as I said earlier there is no price on children’s lives. Jack and Paul deserved a childhood, which is what I fought for.
Jack and Paul deserved to live. I tried to protect everybody—Cafcass, social services, the school, the boys—and I failed to do that, but no parent should have to take their child to school and then just nine hours later, after a court-ordered visit, hold that child in their arms as they die knowing it is the other parent that has done it. The culture of family courts must change, and we need to understand children, listen to them, believe them, and support them. They were never a Child A and a Child B. They are Jack and Paul.
Chair: Claire, can I thank you very much for sharing that with us? It is incredibly important for us that you did. Can I also just record for the purposes of Hansard, which is the written description of what has happened in the meeting, that Claire held up a photograph of her two sons, Jack and Paul? We will now move on to questions from Manuela.
Q366 Manuela Perteghella: I want to focus now on multi-agency working and safeguarding partners such as the police, the local authorities, and the ICBs. This Committee heard evidence that there are problems with multi-agency working. We heard issues of workforce difficulties. We also heard about these bodies having separate and overlapping policies. I want to know from the panel how these problems affect the response of child protection concerns. Then, looking forward, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will require local areas to establish multi-agency child protection teams. What are your views on these? Also, are the provisions of the Bill sufficient?
Lynn Perry: I am happy to start. First, as a principle and in practice, working together is absolutely critical. Information sharing and some of the proposals in the Bill—like the single unique identifier—would help. It is also important to recognise that culture, leadership and shared objectives for change for children are important in this space. Many of the families that we work with and many of the families that are subject to child protection provisions work with multiple agencies. The ability to work across those agency boundaries is critical to achieving and better outcomes for children.
Previously we called for—and this is also one of the recommendations in the IICSA inquiry—a Cabinet Minister for children working across Departments on child and family policymaking. That would set the standard. For agencies working at a local level. Now is the time to consider that and to consider a coherent narrative and framework for all the various missions, strategies and plans in scope at this point. We know from practice that colocation can also benefit practice. Where we have integrated multi-agency teams working in the same building, wrapping around families, as opposed to families having to move between services, we have seen better outcomes.
We welcome some of the recommendations in respect of the child protection teams and the requirement for those cases to be considered in this way by children’s social care, health, police and education. That will need real leadership to make sure that that is embedded on the ground, that there is good challenge and support between agencies and that it has real impact for children. Some international evidence from countries like Finland, where coworking is more common, shows that that can lead to better supported decision-making for children.
We also have an opportunity through the family first pathfinders, where we have been piloting some of those approaches, to get some early dissemination of the learning and to use that to inform some of the plans that you have talked to.
Anna Edmundson: Yes, I totally agree. Effective multi-agency working is the backbone to any coherent joined-up approach and so you absolutely have to get that right. It is a problem at the moment, as you rightly describe. At the NSPCC we have done an analysis of case reviews, looking at the learning from rapid reviews. In over half—57%—of those, the lack of handover information sharing between partners was part of the problem that was identified in those case reviews. There is clearly huge potential, but it is not fulfilling that at the moment. A number of measures, both in the Bill itself and that the DfE is pushing on with, particularly guidance and that granular frontline understanding of what “good” looks like, are also important.
We support multi-agency child protection teams. It was an important recommendation to come out of the awful deaths of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson. We are pleased to see that this will be taken forward. The Government are working at pace and there are some questions, as Lynn says, about what this looks like on the ground, how it is funded, how that working together is embedded, and the different roles and responsibilities of the team, which will be holding some significant risk and safeguarding responsibility. The time needs to be taken to get that right, but the potential is huge.
Finally—and I suspect you will hear about it later as well—one recommendation that we think has been overlooked so far in the national panel’s report into the deaths of Arthur and Star was a powerful call for a national child protection board that would give that national leadership across central government, local government and specialist safeguarding partners to provide both that oversight and also that injection of expertise to what happens with multi-agency child protection teams at a local level. At the NSPCC, we would like to see the changes in the Bill at local level bolstered and reinforced by national leadership. We think that that recommendation from the panel is the way to go.
Chair: Sureena, a final and brief question, if that is okay.
Q367 Mrs Brackenridge: Okay. We have touched very slightly on the single unique identifier that is proposed in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. How will this improve child protection?
Anna Edmundson: It will not be a magic wand on its own, but it is an incredibly important step forward and it is potentially transformative. That is the opinion not just at NSPCC but at a range of children’s charities, including Barnardo’s, Action for Children, the Children’s Society and NCB. We consistently called for it because we could see that it will be an important tool for the different agencies we have been talking about to have in their toolkits to make that information sharing work and to build into that multi-agency work. We are absolutely supportive.
However, as with some of the other measures that are being taken forward at pace, we think it would be worth the Government thinking about some questions and the Committee asking some searching questions. Will this single unique identifier be assigned to all babies, children and young people? That is critical because, for it to be effective, it needs to have coverage, in the same way that a National Insurance number for adults acts as that common link. We want to understand the vision in relation to all babies, children and young people.
In a similar vein, while we understand and welcome the focus on safeguarding and welfare purposes in this. We would also point out that particularly the Children Act, which we talked a lot about, is framed around children’s health and development, but that is not the language used around the single unique identifier. We want to understand. In that, how do you make sure this is seamless? How does it deliver for children? What is the join-up between the provisions in this Bill with that landmark bit of legislation as well?
Those are some of the questions we have, but we think that with the legislation going through, going back to what Lynn and Claire were both saying, proper investment in understanding what this looks like, training in how to use it and implementation, as Claire said, will be key.
Q368 Chair: We are short on time now. Can I ask Claire and Lynn to come in only if you have anything genuinely new to add to what Anna has said on the single child identifier?
Lynn Perry: The only other question that is worth exploration is which agencies and whether, as currently scoped, that might be too limited. That is my only other point of consideration.
We touched earlier on the question of data. Exploring why there are no plans currently to use that data for insight in a way that might also help with research and commissioning priorities, accepting of course data protection rights, could also give us further insight into the emergent needs and vulnerabilities of children, young people and families.
Chair: That was helpful. Thank you. I thank all the witnesses on our first panel. I particularly thank Claire. All of us can only imagine what it must take to continue to talk about your personal story and your experience, but it is incredibly important for us that you have done so today, and we are grateful to you for that. Thank you very much.
Also, to all three witnesses, if you would like us to be aware of further observations on the Bill, please feel free to write to us after the session and we would very much welcome that. Thank you very much indeed.
Witnesses: Annie Hudson, Rob Williams and Andy Smith.
Q369 Chair: We will begin now our second panel of the morning. Before I ask our witnesses to introduce themselves, can I remind both witnesses and Committee members that following announcement in the news yesterday or certainly in the last couple of days, the Sara Sharif case is now subject once again to the sub judice rules, which means that we are not able to discuss any of the details of that case in public today. Thanks very much for being mindful of that as we go through our proceedings.
Can I ask our witnesses now to introduce themselves to us, starting with Annie?
Annie Hudson: Good morning. I am Annie Hudson. I am Chair of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel and previously a Director of Children’s Services.
Rob Williams: Good morning, everybody. I am a former headteacher and now a senior policy adviser with the National Association of Head Teachers. I am Rob Williams.
Andy Smith: Good morning. I am Andy Smith. I am the President of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, and my day job is Director of Children’s Services and Adult Services in Derby.
Q370 Chair: Thank you very much. We will begin this session where we left off with the last session, which is with the proposal in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to require local areas to establish multi-agency child protection teams. From each of your perspectives, what impact will this have on child protection practice, perhaps starting with Annie?
Annie Hudson: Thank you. Yes, as previously mentioned, we made this recommendation in our national review into the tragic deaths of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson. We made that recommendation based on the evidence about what had happened to those two children and also the much greater volume of evidence that we have as a panel about the learning and the improvements that need to be made to multi-agency practice from a great number of serious incidents. The rationale and the evidence for that recommendation was further exemplified in our most recent review about sexual abuse in the family.
First, we need to not see this as an absolute panacea for all the issues and challenges within the system of protecting children. However, it reflects a potential for a real design change and a cultural change in how we work together across all agencies to protect and safeguard children.
The potential is threefold. First, it will bring together in one place one team, collocated and working together in a way that we have seen works successfully in relation to youth offending services. You have social workers, police officers, hopefully paediatricians, people from education, potentially probation as well and also other organisations who will be able to share in real time the information that they have about children and, therefore, be able to have that much more real-time picture of what is going on in a child’s life, particularly when there are sudden changes. Who lives in a family may change. There may be a crisis or whatever.
Secondly, it also means that you have within one team the potential for people to provide the challenge, the support and the specialist expertise that needed to protect children. To protect children, while individual agencies have their own duties and responsibilities, you need the expertise of the police officer who has the experience of forensically investigating allegations of abuse, the experience of schools, the experience of health and so on in terms of children’s development. It is bringing together all that expertise in one place.
Thirdly, it means—and this particularly was exemplified in what happened with Arthur and Star—that you have siloed decision making, when actually to make the kinds of decisions that often have to happen quickly in relation to a child, you have all in one place the necessary professionals to make those timely and rapid decisions. That is the rationale and where there are some benefits.
Clearly, we need to trial and test and there are now 10 pathfinder areas but has some real potential for a real sea change in how we protect and safeguard children.
Rob Williams: We welcome the commitment to multi-agency working. Schools consider that pupils’ needs go beyond whatever the school’s experience and expertise is. For example, if social care support is required, the school’s role is to refer those pupils to relevant professionals, including social care. Schools are committed to working with other agencies to ensure that pupils remain appropriately supported.
However, as Annie was saying, school leaders, teachers and support staff are not social care experts and they are not health experts, either. That team around the child approach is absolutely critical, we think.
One challenge to consider in it is the respective workloads and demands on each of those sectors to deliver their substantive role. That is why, if we are working towards a multi-agency way of working, it needs to be facilitated to be almost a business-as-usual approach of each of those sectors, not an additional expectation upon them but a new way of working for some ways.
A school’s strength will often be the amount and quality of information they can supply into these ways of working because we spend more time with children than any other sector. One challenge can be that because children and young people spend so much time in schools, schools by default can be expected to deliver noneducation aspects of it. However, school-based staff can feed in incredibly important information.
We welcome the section in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill about this. It will be crucial which person is selected by the Director of Children’s Services to be part of that group for the local authority to have that level of experience in education across the piece and understand that education is a diverse sector with different settings. Having that broad understanding will be critical, so that the information they feed in can be the highest qualities and the decisions made can be in the best interests of the children. Yes, that is all I want to say. Thank you.
Andy Smith: As a Director of Children’s Services, I can see the positive impact that multi-agency working makes at all points in a child’s journey. Child protection work is complex because families are complex. The way social workers, police officers, GPs and the range of professionals working with a child work together to understand the story has been one of the most significant developments we have seen in child protection over the past 20 years or so.
We have expressed some reservations about multi-agency child protection teams. Some of that is to do with resourcing and workforce issues both within children’s social care and also broadly among other professionals and other agencies that will be part of those teams.
I also have a reflection around working through carefully the continuum of social work and any unintended consequences of separating out child protection social work and social work with children who might be in need or might have a family help need. It is about trying to work that through carefully.
We have seen some challenges around the recruitment and retention of social workers. We need to mitigate and minimise issues around burnout and make sure that social workers, through their professional development, have a rounded experience of social work across a broad array of service users and service types.
The other challenge to reflect on is that it is not clear yet whether other Government Departments will sign up. The Bill does not go as far as to mandate other agencies to engage in the multi-agency teams. We know that the pathfinders that Annie referred to are currently testing out the way these teams work, and we need to see what comes out of the pathfinders.
The information today is encouraging, but those pathfinders were selected because they had a positive culture and a stable context around agency working. That will not be the case in 140 other local authorities. It is about trying to work through the learning from the pathfinder and then what that means for scaling up.
ADCS is involved in that discourse, but it is about working through some of those practical considerations as well as the workforce issues as well.
Q371 Dr Tidball: Thanks, Andy. It is helpful to hear your perspective of the positive impact because the Committee has heard some views that the evidence for multi-agency working in child protection is not strong and that focusing on the quality of practice is more important. How would you all respond to that?
Andy Smith: If you were to look at this in a strategic context and look at the profile of Ofsted inspections, we have a significant number of local areas or councils now that are “good” or “better” in their ILACS. We have seen an increasing profile of Ofsted inspections over the course of the last 10 to 12 years and that will look quite forensically at the whole health and protection dynamic. That includes also looking at how partners work together and how they form plans to protect children.
We have also seen increasing evidence through the Ofsted joint targeted area inspection arrangements as well, looking at different elements of multi-agency practice, both the front door into children’s social care and also some of those thematic inspections that have taken place. We see broadly an improving picture, although clearly there are always opportunities to reflect and to think about the impact of your work on children.
Picking up on Annie’s point from earlier, one of the benefits of multi-agency child protection teams is that there will be opportunities to think about some of that joint quality assurance activity, which you would expect your multi-agency safeguarding partnerships to be co-ordinating as part of the quality assurance work, which in fairness takes place anyway as part of the role of multi-agency partnerships. Integral in social work practice is the importance of opportunities and importance of practitioners reflecting on their practice through effective supervision and thinking about what difference they make to children.
One issue that can impact, though, goes back to my earlier point. The churn in elements of the workforce can sometimes impact on the quality of practice. We are mindful of trying to address that and the Bill is trying to address that as well.
Rob Williams: It is fair to say that when the sectors work together, there have been examples of some tensions between education and social care. That is more a reflection of the relative resources that each has and the level of workload that each has to deal with. It is more a reflection of that than, when they are trying to work together constructively, their limitations.
Schools are asked to do more than they ever have been. Social care is the same. They are asked to do more than they ever have been. Much of the frustration stems from that, but neither of those sectors feels they have access to sufficient resources to manage that as well as putting in place early intervention work. A lot of firefighting takes place, not so much early intervention, and that can become frustrating for everybody working in that space.
At the leadership level, we see the new creation of this multi-agency piece is important because we need that degree of leadership, but it is fair to say that the practice level and the operational level have had some difficulties. However, we think that reflects a lot about the levels of resource that each has.
One thing that our members have reported as a part of that is raising thresholds for intervention. Things have to get a lot worse before you see any kind of action. School leaders see that for families when it leads to little or no action and it is felt that there should be some intervention. Clearly, that is a workload issues as much as anything else.
Q372 Dr Tidball: Rob, can I come back in before I bring Annie in on a question off the back of what you said? We heard from colleagues on the panel previously about the cost benefit analysis of early intervention. I wondered. You talked about the increased workload and probably the churn is, I suspect, partly as a result.
Have you done any work on looking at the ratio that is needed to ensure that both the level of intensity of multi-agency working can take place and also then the interventions that are needed with the family or the child can also happen? They are two quite different functions, both important. We often get change only when we get the latter, but we need the former to be resourced. It would be helpful to know if you have any recommendations around resourcing and that ratio in the context of the cost-benefit analysis we heard others talk earlier.
Rob Williams: We have not done any work in that particular area, I can say, that can give you any evidence on that. One problem at the moment is such a consumption of resource on the crisis element. One other hat I wear is within SEND and we see the same thing there. People do not lack the commitment to want to intervene early. It is purely to do with their ability to do so because of the resource, capacity, staffing and all those sorts of things, but we have not done any specific work that is measurable. I cannot give you any metrics on that.
Q373 Dr Tidball: That is helpful. Annie, do you want to come in on my first question and then I will ask my last one? It was about the effectiveness of multi-agency working and whether in fact, as someone said, it is better to focus on quality practice. What is your response on that?
Annie Hudson: The evidence of a problem with multi-agency decision-making communication is there and that is without doubt. Whether this is the answer is of course the key question. It is not the only lever that we need to have to strengthen our child protection system. However, there is evidence from other similar environments.
The youth offending service, which was mandated back at the beginning of this century, faced quite a lot of scepticism about whether it would make a difference. The evidence has been pretty strong and pretty good that it has made a difference to the lives of many children.
When we came to this recommendation two and a half years ago for the Arthur and Star report, we looked at some evidence from the Behavioural Insights Team, which looked at evidence from other contexts, not child protection, with high-risk decision-making where having professionals in one team was generally beneficial. You only have to look at good accident and emergency and good multiprofessional teams working in the health service where bringing together different professions with different types of expertise and knowledge generally is beneficial. However, of course we need to look to the evidence that is coming through from pathfinders.
Secondly, we should not underestimate the real change in how we think about and do child protection that multi-agency child protection teams will usher in. This is not just a bit of structural change. This is about having a different approach where everybody works together in a much more everyday way than they do currently.
That comes back to the point that colleagues have mentioned about the importance of leadership in a local area across health, police and the local authority to model out that shared leadership and that shared accountability and ownership of child protection so that it is not just for children’s services or for the police to do.
That is, again, why that leadership at a national level across all Government Departments is absolutely crucial to this. I support Andy’s point about the importance of this not being seen just as a Department for Education initiative and led bit of legislation but something that should be right across Government. Hopefully, some of the other types of abuse and concerns in recent times about group-based offending also point to the need for that real join-up of leaders locally and nationally.
Q374 Dr Tidball: Thank you. Moving on, I wonder what your views are on the proposal to introduce the single unique identifier for children. Andy, do you want to go first?
Andy Smith: Yes, I can go first. The reflection from an ADCS perspective is that a technological solution may not be an easy answer to such a complex question. There is something about managing expectations and being clear about what this can and cannot do.
There are lots of practical issues to think about how different information systems work. We know that within the health system, different IT systems do not talk to one another, let alone when you start to then extrapolate that out more broadly across other partner agencies. You have different approaches to recording. You also have different levels of confidence in some individuals about when they should pass information from one agency to another. Within that as well, you have different cultures and different behaviours around how people make sense of information. There are some real cultural issues to try to work through.
The biggest benefit in safeguarding comes from that multidisciplinary working, in terms of the conversation we have been having, around how partners come together to understand what is happening for children, how they build that jigsaw together about a child’s life and then understand how that translates into a plan of work for a child. It is about moving beyond those single incidents and building up that story.
There is a risk that increasing amounts of unanalysed information that might pass from A to B does not necessarily keep children safe. Social workers still have to do something with it. In the last year, research that we published as an ADCS a couple of weeks ago showed that children’s social care in a local authority received in excess of 3 million contacts from a whole range of different partners who thought social care might need to do something. Starting to add additional information that might come through the single unique identifier could increase that exponentially.
The DfE is taking a sensible approach. It is piloting and is taking a much more evolutionary rather than big bang approach to this.
It will be important that the unique identifier is the NHS number for the child. We would start to get worried if another number was created. Every child who is born has an NHS number. That feels like the place to start, but we have to be thoughtful and careful about how this is used and what it cannot do.
Q375 Dr Tidball: Thank you. Bringing you in Rob and then Annie, Annie has already touched on this to an extent, but it would be useful to hear from your own experience how the single unique identifier will be used by relevant agencies and what difference it will make to current practice.
Rob Williams: Intuitively, having a single unique identifier seems to make sense. Andy has raised quite a few key points that we probably agree with. It could help join up services a little bit more easily. Certainly, in my experience—and this is going back a while when I was a head—even communication between the health and the education sector about information that can and cannot be shared and the systems that are used has been problematic in the past.
Our members get worried when they have children who move to school frequently and keeping track on those children and, if they move in and out of areas, being able to know who to pass on to. Often if their families are not telling them where they are moving, that can be a concern. It will be interesting to see how an SUI will mitigate some of the risks created by that and whether that is practical and can be delivered.
We also need to consider the sensitive information that will be stored and how that will be managed, shared and protected. All those things will need to be safeguarded and also how we safeguard against discrimination with the use of that information, too, certainly learning lessons from previous cases that we have seen in child protection and safeguarding.
The cost and complexity of putting a new system in place needs to be considered, particularly having existing systems in all the different sectors we are talking about.
I agree with Andy that the DfE has taken a pretty pragmatic and sensible approach to this, but I am cautious about rushing it out at any kind of speed. We need to make sure also that in school systems, which is where our area of expertise is, often the IT hardware and structures in place are necessarily the most sophisticated or the latest pieces. We need to be careful that whatever system is brought is compatible so that if there are benefits, those benefits can be reaped by each of those sectors.
It seems to make sense to us, but it remains to be seen how it will operate, particularly for those children we are most worried about, who seem to move quite a lot. How an SUI will benefit is a little unclear yet.
Annie Hudson: I support what my two colleagues have said. I have a couple of additional points.
We have been in a similar place before with the contact points initiative from about 2007 or 2008. We have to be cognisant of what it will and will not do. From what we see from the reviews and learning and improvements from the serious incidents, a bigger issue is around culture and behaviour and how people know what information might need to be passed on.
We had a number of examples in our recent national review about sexual abuse of, for example, GPs not thinking when a child presents with certain conditions or sexually transmitted infections and questioning. Should we be asking and being more curious about this? It is about people knowing what information might need to be shared with other agencies and where there may be a potential safeguarding issue and generally having the confidence to ask questions and share that with the police or the local authority.
The other thing is that information systems, whether within local authority children’s social care or the police, have voluminous information. If you have a family with a number of children who have been known to agencies for 10 or 15 years or longer, often the challenge is not that the information is not there but being able to dig down and find the right bit of information. An interesting other question is about where and how AI might assist in providing some tools to enable professionals to use the information they already have in a better way. That is a related but equally important question.
Q376 Jess Asato: This is for Rob Williams. The NAHT highlighted in its written evidence the unique role that schools play in safeguarding children. What are some of the key issues in the relationship between schools and children’s social care?
Rob Williams: I touched a little bit on this in a previous answer. One issue at the moment has been that we feel that the capacity in both sectors has been under pressure. When you compare that to the level of demand in both those areas, it has been difficult. As I said, schools are asked to do more and more. Social care is in the same space. Much of the frustration has stemmed from neither education nor social care feeling they have access to sufficient resources to manage the level of need as well as being able to put in place the early intervention work that both wish to do.
We have seen as well our members reporting on this raising of thresholds, which has been a real concern. Children who in the past would have met thresholds for intervention do not seem to be so often. That is a reflection of capacity, which makes sense.
An example is Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission, and His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services in 2023 finding cases where families should have been stepped up from early help to statutory social care earlier than they were because of the risks to the children and also the variations in different areas, too. The number of children now not meeting the social care thresholds creates an increasing burden on schools and that then creates the tensions. As I say, many of them would have reached thresholds in the past.
The problem is it then leaves schools to try to navigate the support that is required when they are not specialists in social care. My specialism and school leaders’ specialisms are in education. We have an absolutely critical role to play in safeguarding child protection. That is indisputable. However, when we turn for additional support and specialist help, that is where people rely on it. We see both in social care and in health this is becoming an issue because of the capacity at the moment. The increase in child poverty appears to impact the number of families and children who require this support.
Another thing to note as well is the frustration for some of our members with the time-limited nature of some of the interventions from social care and the fact that it can sometimes end a little bit sooner than some of our members think it should. Again, we are pretty sure that is because of capacity and ability to carry that on. The problem, of course, then is schools will work with those families and then often will have to rerefer the families again later, which—going back to the point made earlier—is probably not a cost-effective way to deal with the children and families, either. Some families will need that ongoing support, but you wonder whether a little bit of a longer intervention and staying in monitoring for a little bit longer could mitigate the numbers that require that in the longer term.
Yes, that is where we are at the moment. It is a frustration shared because, ultimately, both sectors want the same thing. They want to be able to provide the support for their children and young people when they need it in the right places.
Q377 Jess Asato: The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill would require education settings to be automatically included in safeguarding arrangements. Should the Bill go further and make education a fourth safeguarding statutory partner, as recommended by the independent review of children’s social care?
Rob Williams: I am happy to answer that as well if you want me to start to start with it. Clearly, we welcomed the work of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse and Professor Alexis Jay’s invaluable work. We absolutely agree that education must be involved in providing that critical information into strategic decisions about child protection and safeguarding.
I guess our concern would be how an individual person could take on that statutory role and have such a detailed knowledge of such a diverse sector as schools. If you consider early years settings, primary schools, special schools, secondary schools, outdoor education centres, alternative provision—I could go on and on—it is such a diverse sector.
We welcome the approach that has been taken, which is compelling existing strategy partners to have to consult and work with education because we think there could be circumstances, for example, where the statutory safeguarding partners want to make a decision early intervention in the early years. It gives them the flexibility then to talk to people who understand that sector and to get invaluable information rather than a single person who may not have that level of expertise.
We think that approach will probably be useful. It still places a burden on education to be able to deliver that, but in that way it will be focused, and we are more likely to get the quality of information that means the partners can make good decisions that are likely to work with that sector because they have fed in crucial information.
Andy Smith: I agree with what Rob has said there. Clearly, schools are a vital partner and the eyes and ears of a safeguarding system. A lot of evidence shows the protective role that schools play for children in the system. They see children and young people every day, apart from school holidays, of course, but they have a key role. Drawing education settings closer into multi-agency partnerships is absolutely right but—as Rob has reflected on—having one person who could represent hundreds of different schools and early-years settings is a real practical barrier, particularly in some of the larger counties with a real proliferation of different settings from early years right through to post-16. It is not the same as police representing on the masses or health, even, and integrated care board representation.
It will be interesting to see what comes out of the different ways education can be represented on the masses that are currently being trialled at the moment. We wait to see with interest the learning from that and, hopefully, we can draw upon that going forward. It feels like a pragmatic, proportionate position to take at this juncture, pending the outcome of seeing how it works rather than one size fits all. We know it will not fit.
Annie Hudson: I support what Andy and Rob have said. One has to be a bit pragmatic for all the reasons that Andy has explained. It is not one organisation and one accountable body.
It is important to make sure that in the strategic and executive decision-making processes the education world is represented, possibly by one or two people, who then have a clear system back in which they can report and be accountable or certainly communicate with that whole mixed economy that you have within education. That they need to be at that table is beyond doubt. I know lots of areas already have the chief executive of a multi-academy trust or somebody at that top table of decision-making and strategy formulation. It is important that their voice is heard throughout all the decision-making processes.
Q378 Mark Sewards: Thank you, Chair, and thank you for your answers so far. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill places a number of restrictions on home educators, and it requires local authorities to create registers of children not in school. What are your general views on this approach?
Andy Smith: Shall I start off on this? ADCS has long argued for a register of electively home educated children. We carried out surveys over a number of years to try to understand the cohort across the country. That was prior to this being undertaken by the DfE. The DfE now publishes information on EHE. We know that at the last count about 150,000 children were known to be electively home educated. We are still not absolutely clear on the exact number, but it is around 150,000. We know that that has increased exponentially since Covid for a range of reasons.
Again, we need to manage expectations around what a register will and will not do. A register in itself will not keep children safe, but it will be a tool to help identify concerns. The kerb on elective home education where there have been child protection concerns around section 47 enquiries or children on child protection plans is welcome. We welcome that as an association.
Something to reflect on is some of the training implications for the workforce, specifically those individuals from local authorities who will go out to visit children in homes to capture information for the register or to have a conversation about the quality and the type of teaching that takes place at home. The position is local authorities have been so hollowed out over the past 10 years that the current capacity to do EHE work is reduced. Certainly, in my authority in Derby, it is often less than one FTE post going out to do all the door-knocking. In some councils, it will be almost an administrative task.
There is something about understanding the new burdens and the demands and expectations on local authorities in capturing information for a register, which is detailed in the Bill, as well as then the responsibility for the visit that takes place. Think about the training needs for those officers who might not have a safeguarding or broader wellbeing background to understand the kinds of things to be looking for in that broader perspective.
Annie Hudson: From a panel perspective, we support the proposal for a register. As you may know, we undertook a piece of work that we published last year about 40 incidents where children had been seriously harmed—and in fact six children had died—where there was elective home education. That highlighted a whole range of things including that when children do not go to school, that potential protective factor evaporates. It is not there.
It also showed that other professionals such as GPs and hospital professionals do not always understand what elective home education means. Of course, we have at the moment a system where a child who is electively home educated can disappear from sight of agencies.
We welcome the fact that there will be a register. That debate has raged for some time and so it is important that it is now progressing. We also think that the provision that children who are subject to child protection plans have to have the consent of the local authority is important.
The section 47 provision is slightly interesting because section 47 investigations about allegations of abuse or neglect tend to take place over quite a short period of time, sometimes days, sometimes just a week or so. What additional benefit will that do? If a child was the focus of a section 47, there would be an outcome to that failure that fairly quickly. Thinking through the consequences and the benefits of that could be usefully done.
The final area where there will need to be quite a lot of clear guidance and thinking is about this phrase about the local authority’s duty to consider the home environment when determining whether a child should be required to attend school.
The people who will undertake that work will primarily be elective home education officers, usually working in the education part of a local authority, and they will not necessarily have deep safeguarding knowledge and expertise. They should have the foundation knowledge, but we will need to be clear so that those officers undertaking that work know what they might need to look at and look for and families know that so that it is a transparent relationship when the local authorities execute that duty.
Quite a lot of detailed work on the implementation of this element of the Bill will need to be undertaken before we can be confident that it will address the kinds of situations that people will be concerned about.
Rob Williams: It is a long-awaited change, and we welcome it, too. We want to note from our position that elective home education, we believe, is an informed choice. We want to stress the importance of parents being well informed when they make those decisions. Local authorities will need resource and others to provide that support, too.
If it is implemented, well, it should help protect against potential risks in many circumstances but also make it possible for those who want to and are able to provide home education to still do so. It is about getting that balance right and making sure that local authorities have additional resource to deliver it because at the moment, from a school’s perspective, it feels like what local authorities can do to support schools has diminished. We do not want to place additional burden on their existing resources without additional help.
Q379 Mark Sewards: Absolutely. Following on from that, I have three specific questions for Andy, if I may.
The first you have already touched on. What resources do local authorities need to deliver this? Secondly, how will local authorities use this information? Thirdly, what needs to be done to ensure a consistent approach to the register from all local authorities so that we do not end up with hundreds of different approaches to data entry?
Andy Smith: Starting with your latter question around consistency of approach, it is about absolutely being clear about what is captured and why so that local authorities can then reflect on what that means for the training and development of those individuals who will undertake the visit. The information contained in the Bill that will be captured is detailed and there is probably a discourse to have around whether that is all absolutely necessary, but it is a starting point. We need real consistency and clarity about what is collected and why.
How that is done is then for local authorities to determine, but your point around resourcing is important because it picks up on my earlier point and Annie’s point about the capacity in local authorities to implement this. Particularly when you start to think about the new requirements around visiting, understanding a suitable education, doing all the checks and balances and potentially going out relatively quickly, particularly if the local authority has not given permission when a child is on a child protection plan, for example a capacity assessment needs to be carried out in a way that understands the real burdens of that.
That will be a real challenge, given where we are at the moment. That work needs to be done because none of these reforms can be rolled out on the cheap. They need to be properly costed if they are to be effective and if they are to make the difference we hope they will make to children. That is important.
The other point I will say is that it would be helpful if there was a discourse and some clarification about what constitutes a good elective home education. We do not have an agreed position on that, and the Government do not have an agreed position on that as well. That would be helpful, because we are talking at the moment of legislation that originates from the 1940s. There is an opportunity for us to reflect on that and to think about that.
Mark Sewards: Brilliant. Thank you all for your answers.
Q380 Chair: Thank you very much. I will let this session run on until about 12.10pm to account for the late running of the previous session, but if you could help us with that by keeping your answers as concise as you can, we will be able to ask you about everything that we want to ask you about, which is important for us.
I will ask Annie quickly about some work that the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel has undertaken. You found that weak risk assessment and decision-making occurred in 62% of serious incidents in the last year, which is a concerning finding. Why is that? Does it speak to other pressures within the system that go beyond multi-agency working and what needs to be done to improve it?
Annie Hudson: Yes. That 62% will be taken from the reviews that have been undertaken in local areas and aggregated up. There are lots of reasons for that.
Some of that can be the conditions. For example, having a lot of churn in the workforce of social workers and health visitors often undermines the quality of decision-making. It depends on what you are looking at. If you are looking at, for example, as we have detailed much more thoroughly, decision-making around sexual abuse of children in families, we have said that the criminal justice system and the safeguarding system often do not work together in concert in the interests of children. That undermines, again, the quality of decision-making.
The biggest factor behind that weak decision-making is the failure sometimes of agencies to communicate together, to share the information, to seek the information and then to analyse that and make the timely decisions. Those are global, general statements, which we talk about in more detail in the report.
Andy Smith: To add to some of the points that Annie has referenced, one challenge we see is the churn in the workforce and some of the particular pressures that we see in the social work and social care work force, which can impact on the quality of practice at times, despite local authorities working hard to do a whole range of recruitment and retention measures and to develop the workforce.
Some of it goes back to my earlier point around ensuring that certainly in the development of multi-agency child protection teams, you give newly qualified social workers a good broad offer about social work in a range of different contexts so that they have experience in a range of different settings and working with different children. That becomes important.
The measures that the Government have already taken to tackle some of the challenges around agency social work and to stop the attrition of workers moving to agencies before they have had that thorough post-qualifying experience are beginning to make some impact now. That will all start to impact on a slowing down of the churn and, hopefully, we will see that translate through into impacts on children.
In my local authority area in the East Midlands, we were reflecting on the impact of some of the changes around agency social workers only at our meeting on Friday. We are seeing is less churn, less disruption and more agency workers moving over to permanent contracts in local authorities. That will all start to impact on the quality of practice for children.
Q381 Chair: I want to touch briefly on support and the relevance of other services beyond children’s social care in relation to cases of extrafamilial harm. I see in my constituency that we have far too high a level of serious violence affecting young people. We see cases where children come to harm or is at risk of harm outside of the home and it becomes a child protection issue. In fact, in some cases if additional support could be provided to the family from the housing system, for example, or the school system, it might be possible to keep that family together.
Those cases feel uncomfortable in relation to what we now know about attachment and what removing a child from their home does to the strong bonds that there can be within a family that might make a situation worse, not better. I wondered quickly if you have any observations on those circumstances.
Annie Hudson: In our annual report this year, it was one of the themes that we gave sort of particular attention to. One common theme in that group of children who have been harmed outside of their homes through violence, youth violence, knife crime and so on is education and the disproportionate numbers of children who have been out of education for some considerable time. That is one feature.
We also know, particularly in relation to that form of harm, we see disproportionality particularly of black boys. That is particularly manifest in London but also in some of the other urban centres.
Other issues include, quite rightly, as you say, sometimes children are on education and healthcare plans, some of those needs for the family and the needs for the child, not getting the help in the timely way and also perhaps not getting help for long enough. You made that point earlier about time-limited intervention, which is also a feature.
In that whole area of practice and concern, I know a number of national charities and other bodies have been reviewing that evidence because, still, in local areas across the police, local authorities, health and so on, people still struggle to know what to do and how best and most effectively to help and protect children in those situations.
Probably of all the areas of safeguarding practice, that is probably the area where we are least knowledgeable and least sorted in terms of how to help children, families and communities because it is also about what a community experiences when those awful, tragic events happen. Thank you.
Rob Williams: We saw a little of this particularly during the pandemic with alternative provision. School leaders were speaking about the sudden vulnerability of these young people who were not in the settings and, as Annie was talking about, the inability of the services to get in and start to make some tangible progress with them. They suddenly became vulnerable and particularly open to criminality, gangs coming in, realising they were vulnerable and exploiting that.
From a school’s perspective, it is difficult because of course often the underlying drivers of these things and getting in will be beyond the reach of the school to do by itself, but they will notice when it is happening and will recognise when it is. Ways to connect up more quickly with the key services that can provide that support will be critical for schools.
I have nothing else to add to what Annie was explaining before other than that, but it was a particular feature that was picked up for those children and young people.
Andy Smith: To add briefly, if I may, to try to balance it, comparing to where we were as a system 10 years ago to where we are now, the conversations that we are having around transitional safeguarding and contextual safeguarding are in a much stronger place than they were back in 2009 and 2010. I can reflect on that from my own experience in my own authority.
There are absolutely still challenges. Partners often have a view that the solution is to secure a child or to remove a child from its community and to place them miles away from home in a placement rather than to think about the risks around that child and how they could be managed, working with the partners as a system and working with their family. There will be a lot of issues around the reasons for that around risk averseness, culture, experience and so on. We are absolutely mindful of it, but we have also come some way over the past 10 years as well as a system.
Q382 Mrs Brackenridge: Andy, you have already spoken about the workforce churn, but workforce instability has such a profound impact on safeguarding. Go into a little bit more detail. How far do the measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill go to address this? What more could be done to give support to the workforce?
Andy Smith: Sure. Recruiting and retaining a whole range of different children’s services roles has a number of issues and challenges. Not just social workers, but teachers, educational psychologists, health visitors and even directors of children’s services have significant churn.
We have been calling for a wider workforce plan to support children and families to thrive and to think about that holistically. Part of this could play into mission-style government and how we think about the children’s workforce in that strategic broad sense across all Government Departments and think about some of the unintended consequences of gaps that might result in pressures, problems or costs being shunted around. We have a real opportunity to think about that in a real strategic sense.
More can always be done to raise the profile of working with children in a range of different settings and the rewarding nature of a career in that level of public service and to raise the profile particularly of my world of social work and of jobs in social care. The Bill touches upon that. The MacAlister review touched upon that. The Bill probably could be stronger in raising the profile of social work.
The measures that have been taken to curb the flow of staff to agencies, which I reflected on earlier, are positive. Could the Bill go further? As an ADCS, we always advocate for project teams’ case-holding children’s social work to be banned. That was in the original consultation that came out but then was taken out by the previous Government. Agency work or project work is not social work. It could go further in that sense but, as I reflected on earlier, we are seeing already some positive impacts of the changes that have been made around agency work.
Annie Hudson: I am speaking as a former social worker and former director of children’s services. There is still weak public understanding about what social workers do. Unlike teachers or doctors or police officers, the role they undertake, which is important, difficult and challenging, comes into the public limelight only when something goes drastically wrong. The Government continue to have a role in making sure that the role and the contribution of social workers is better understood, partly because that is more likely to make social work an attractive career.
A lot is still to be done on both initial qualifying training and post-qualifying training. Work is being undertaken in relation to the post-qualifying aspect, which Andy referenced earlier on, and which is positive.
To give you an example—and I am sorry to quote again from the review we did about sexual abuse in the family, but it illustrates the point—work was done to look at the initial training offered to social workers about sexual abuse, which is not an uncommon experience for many children, certainly in referrals to children’s services. Few programmes offered detailed knowledge and input and so people started work as social workers with a minimum understanding of sexual abuse and how to respond and work with children. More work still needs to be done on training of social workers.
Chair: I will move us on to Manuela’s question now, which is an important one, to finish with. Thank you.
Q383 Manuela Perteghella: What are your views on the recommendations made by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse and, in particular, the mandatory reporting duty and the creation of a child protection authority? In particular, you told the previous Committee that introducing a mandatory reporting duty for child sexual abuse may result in practitioners becoming risk averse. In your response, could you address how the Government should avoid these when implementing the duty?
Annie Hudson: Okay. On mandatory reporting, some of the comments made in the earlier session I support. First, build on what is already there because it is already clear that regulated professionals like social workers and doctors are required to report.
When taking forward that mandatory reporting requirement, it needs to be clear about the situations when mandatory reporting is required because the recommendation, as I understand it, came out primarily from IICSA’s focus on abuse in institutions rather than, for example, in the home. Will that mandatory reporting duty be about all forms of abuse or specifically about sexual abuse? Those questions need to be answered clearly.
People could potentially avoid thinking about a child being sexually abused and asking some of the open questions that might enable a child to talk. We need to make sure about understanding how children will take time and sometimes several goes before they will tell anybody what has happened to them. You do not want people asking closed questions to children because they are conscious of this mandatory reporting duty. Children will then shut down and will not then be protected. It is about thinking through carefully how to protect children and use this duty to increase the protection of them rather than to diminish that by the behaviours of social workers and other professionals.
It seems to me that the child protection authority recommendation will require some careful delineation of different options because it could need a quite big and bold organisation like the equivalent of the Health And Safety Executive or it could be, for example, additional functions and roles attached to something like the panel or an existing body. There is a range of options, but the architecture certainly has some gaps. The panel is probably the only national, independent, multi-agency body that looks at child protection, but our focus is on serious incidents and on learning and we have relatively few powers. We have a duty, but we have relatively few powers.
It is about thinking through what the Government want a child protection authority to do. We could better utilise lots of data and intelligence to better understand what goes well in the child protection system and its failings and limitations. I suppose my big plea is to think about what you want it to do and what models are best placed to deliver on those functions.
Rob Williams: From our members’ point of view, we are not persuaded necessarily that a mandatory reporting duty at an individual level in a school will bring in greater protections for children and young people. All school staff already have incredibly robust statutory guidance and clear expectations of individuals about what to report and when.
As Annie explained, children often will not provide or present evidence as a clear disclosure that can be reported. It will be small pieces of evidence over time. Our concern is that if a mandatory duty was brought into schools, to err on the side of caution, all those tiny little bits of information would be reported into social care and would overwhelm the system. That could create a situation where children are at increased risk because of the huge amount of information to wade through and those important ones are not picked up as quickly as they could be.
Schools and organisations already have sanctions in place. The inspection process has sanctions. Serious safeguarding failures can have a bad result in terms of the judgment and also we have seen school leaders lose their jobs over safeguarding issues, too. Also, breaches of employment contracts in schools in most centres in terms of safeguarding can lead to school staff, school leaders and others losing their jobs and having disqualifications from working with children as a result.
We are not necessarily convinced that a mandatory duty would add anything to the existing situation at the moment. When we submitted to the consultation around mandatory reporting, we asked to see the evidence that would show us how this would add to it and not cause the overwhelming of the system that we are worried about.
Andy Smith: Briefly, ADCS has raised concerns about mandatory reporting over a number of years. That has been a fairly consistent line from the association. Instinctively, it feels like the right thing to do but, practically, there is a worry about reorientation and refocusing resources on handling reports rather than the change work with children and families that we need to do in the social care space. That is some of the learning from other countries that have introduced mandatory reporting. The reality is that already—as Annie and Rob said—professionals have duties to refer things anyway through legislation, policy, and practice.
On the CP authority, it is similar to what Annie has said. We need to understand the role, the remit, the footprint and the exact intention because it is a busy space. Layering things could have unintended consequences. Think that through carefully.
Chair: Thank you very much. I thank all our witnesses for their evidence today and members of the Committee for their questions as well. That brings our proceedings for today to a close.