Clause 18
Children and Young Persons Bill [Lords]
12:45 pm
Kevin Brennan (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Children, Schools and Families; Cardiff West, Labour)
The amendment was designed to further tie down the exiting duties, as modified by the Bill, to notify the director of children’s services of the responsible local authority where a child is provided with accommodation for health or education reasons for more than three months. I am sure we will get into the wider debate about the needs of this group of children and the services they should receive when we debate the new clauses towards the end of the Bill. I know a number of hon. Members are interested in those matters, but for the purposes of the present debate, I shall confine my comments to the subject of this clause and this amendment.
We do accept that some evidence suggests that children’s social care teams are not always notified when children are provided with long-term accommodation by health authorities or education departments. In other cases, accommodating authorities have claimed that the notification was made, but the responsible local authority took no action. We do not have any evidence that effective multi-agency working and appropriate involvement of social service professionals is inhibited by any lack of time limits on these notifications. Whether notifications are made within one working day, or any other particular time, is not really the issue here. The real issue is whether the existing notification mechanism is an effective means of ensuring that children’s services authorities consider the child’s social care needs. The amendment does not address that issue.
As children’s trusts embed further joint working and multi-disciplinary teams become the norm across the country, we would expect problems with notifications to become a thing of the past. In the short term, however, we agree that more needs to be done. That is why we have introduced clause 18, which will help ensure that the notifications are made. It will ensure that they are made specifically to the director of children’s services of the responsible authority. That reflects their importance and will ensure that the responsible authority responds appropriately to the notification.
We are going further in clause 19 by requiring the local authority to take specific action in response to a notification. That means that there is a new duty to visit all such children. We will ensure through regulations that the visit is not a one-off but is regularly repeated to provide an ongoing supervision of placements by the children’s social care team. We have not stopped there. We are working with health colleagues by using the proposed new framework for children with continuing care needs to provide practical guidance to help bodies and local authorities work together to address the social care needs of children who are placed in long-term residential care.
I understand completely the sentiment behind the amendment. It is important that all agencies and all parts of a local authority are involved in and aware of children with complex needs at the right time. However, I do not think that the amendment is necessary. On that basis, I hope the hon. Gentleman will withdraw it.