Clause 11
Children and Young Persons Bill [Lords]
10:30 am
David Kidney (PPS (Rt Hon Rosie Winterton, Minister of State), Department for Transport; Stafford, Labour)
It is a pleasure to see you back in charge of our proceedings, Mr. Pope. Hon. Members will recall that I introduced the amendments on Thursday, albeit briefly. I shall now move on to the specifics.
Amendment No. 35 is a probing amendment to tease out the Government’s thinking on what an independent reviewing officer’s independence means and how they believe that the reviewing officer will be able to do their job independent of the local authority that they are helping. Independent reviewing officers are registered social workers; the local authority for which they carry out their work may employ them or they may be self-employed. In the context of the amendment, that work is participating in the statutory reviews of looked-after children cases, monitoring progress made in accordance with the child’s care plan and reporting their concerns to the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service.
Clause 11 alters those duties by adding more responsibilities. First, each child will know who their independent reviewing officer is. Secondly, the independent reviewing officer will be charged with assessing the child’s views and wishes and with ensuring that they are taken into account at the statutory reviews.
The amendment relates to the proposed new subsection 25B(4) to the Children Act 1989, which begins:
“If the independent reviewing officer is not an officer of the local authority, it is the duty of the authority”.
It goes on to say what those responsibilities are, which include co-operating with the independent reviewing officer. With those words, the Government draw a distinction between a self-employed independent reviewing officer who is engaged to do the work and one whom the local authority employs. Why does that authority not have a duty to co-operate with an independent reviewing officer who is an officer of the local authority? Surely, our job as Parliament is to ensure that, whoever the independent reviewing officer is, they do their job independently, since it has “independent” in the title. An independent reviewing officer employed by a council could be put in a compromising position if we do not say that the local authority is under a duty to co-operate with them as much as it is required to co-operate with outside officers.
The Family Rights Group has trained 250 independent reviewing officers. It has found that the pressures on independent reviewing officers from the local authorities are equally intense, whether they are an officer of the council or self-employed. If they are independent they worry about whether they will get more contracts if they give the local authority a hard time, and if they are an employee they worry about whether it will affect their career progression and future job with the local authority if they give their employer a hard time.
The amendment’s purpose is to ensure that it is the authority’s duty to co-operate with the independent reviewing officer, whether or not they are an officer of the local authority. I shall be interested to hear the Government’s response. I am reminded by my tenuous knowledge of employment law, which goes back to when I practised as a lawyer more then 11 years ago, that it is an employee’s duty to obey “reasonable and lawful instructions” from their employer. A local authority could say to its employee who is going to take part in a statutory review, “You will have regard to the parlous state of our finances when you take part in the review, won’t you?” If they are under that kind of pressure from their local authority and a child is saying to that independent reviewing officer that they want an outcome that is expensive for the local authority, how is an independent reviewing officer to advocate for the child in the statutory review? If the law of the land says it is the duty of the authority to co-operate with its employee in that situation, at least the independent reviewing officer would be able to turn round to the council and say, “Excuse me, but in this situation you have the duty to co-operate with me. I shall therefore do my job independently, as the law requires.” That is the outcome that all in this room would hope to happen on every occasion. That was my purpose in tabling the amendment.
The group of amendments includes No. 12, which is about the independence of independent reviewing officers, and amendment No. 33, which is about independent advocacy for children who are in contact with the independent reviewing officer. I did not table those amendments and will leave it to those who did to explain them.
I did table amendment No. 36 so I will speak briefly to it. It is very similar to amendment No. 33. I must declare a slight interest because some years ago I was a founder member of a citizen advocacy scheme in Staffordshire called ASIST, which is an acronym for Advocacy Services in Staffordshire. It successfully set up a scheme of advocates for adults covering the entire county and many different situations. It has a good combination of employees who are paid to do the work and volunteers who are trained to do it. They work as a team to provide advocacy across the county.
The first time I saw the advocates in action, having helped found the organisation, was when a large mental institution was closed down and people were moved to independent living in the community. Advocates from ASIST were contracted to carry out advocacy on behalf of the residents. I know that this is a bit of a diversion, Mr. Pope, but shockingly, I met a woman in her 80s in the mental institution who had been admitted because she had had a child out of wedlock when she was a young woman. That is amazing in this day and age.
The advocates provided superb skills to people who had been institutionalised for their entire lives. The advocates got to know them, understood their circumstances, learned what their points of view were and articulated their views and wishes to the reviews, which determined where they would live and what support they needed to live independently. I have seen advocacy at first hand through that tremendously successful scheme. To explain my interest further, I am still a patron of ASIST because it did not want to lose contact with me when I was elected to Parliament.
Amendment No. 36 proposes that when an independent reviewing officer seeks the wishes and views of a child, they should tell the child about the availability of independent advocacy services. If the child wanted somebody to speak for them in a statutory review, they could ask somebody to be their advocate and bat for them in front of the professionals in the review.
Some might argue, as did Lord Adonis in the other place, that if the independent review officer’s role is being strengthened and they will be charged with learning what the child thinks and wants, there is no need for an advocate because the independent review officer can do the necessary work on behalf of the child. I disagree with that because if the independent review officer is to stay true to that title, they will take account of the views of the child, the local authority, other professionals and the parents in deciding what is best for the welfare of the child. That might or might not be what the child wants. The point about an advocate is that they are never diverted from speaking up for what the child says the child wants. Ensuring that that voice is heard in the place where it matters the most is an important role.