New Clause 5
Children and Young Persons Bill [Lords]
9:15 am
Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister, Children, Schools and Families; East Worthing and Shoreham, Conservative)
New clause 5 deals with family conferencing and overlaps to some degree with new clause 29, which has been tabled by the hon. Member for Stafford and other hon. Members. Both new clauses contain references to a family conference, and that relates to our previous debate on the importance of early intervention and of being able to keep vulnerable families together rather than having children taken into the care system. The importance relates to both the value to the families and the cost savings to society as a whole. The new clause also refers back to the welfare checklist that I proposed as part of new clause 1, which the Minister responded to positively. She did not adopt it, but she is certainly prepared to consider it within regulations.
I will not go into great detail on family conferencing, as I am sure that many members of the Committee, if not all, are familiar with it. Family conferences are family-led, decision-making meetings at which parents, relatives and friends, following significant preparation by an independent co-ordinator, develop a plan for the child’s care that addresses child welfare or protection concerns identified by the local authority. The Family Rights Group’s briefing sets that out well and gives evidence of how it is a proven mechanism. It claims that family conferencing is:
“a means of engaging the family to identify and support care arrangements for vulnerable children and their parents”;
“a way of identifying alternative care arrangements within the family when the parent cannot continue to look after the child, including identifying necessary support packages to avoid the child being received into state care”;
“a means of planning for the child to see members of their family and return home to their family network from state care wherever possible”;
It claims that such conferencing should be used prior
“to ‘pathway’ planning for children leaving local authority care.”
I mentioned some of the examples of best practice on the model of family conferencing and family support run by certain children’s organisations, not least of which is NCH, which has a good track record of some impressive projects. I recently visited its Phoenix service in Merton, which works intensively with families that are reaching crisis point. It can take them on board quickly and provide them with intensive, 24-hour support, seven days a week, whatever the crisis might be. At the end of the period the family is linked into existing local services. The intervention involves defusing the immediate, precipitate crisis that led to the service referral, with support workers engaging the family, children and/or young people, liaising with other agencies, assessing the problems, developing specific, measurable goals and helping everyone in the family to acquire the skills to achieve them. That gets all gets all the family members together around a table—literally or metaphorically—to sort out what outside, holistic support will be required to get the family back on its feet. Based on an average placement time of three years for a child who is taken into the care system, NCH estimates that such a family intervention service could offer cost saving of £127,140 per intervention, which is significant. That really is investing to save—there are financial savings and it makes financial sense, but the family could also be saved and kept together.
The Government are positive about such organisations and they are keen to disseminate best practice, but not enough kinship placements are initiated by local authority social workers. One good way of promoting that, other than the through the measures that are already in the Bill, is to ensure that family conferences take place as standard rather than as an exception. There is a bit of postcode lottery regarding the availability of family conferencing. If we were to put a measure in the Bill that stresses the preventive attraction of family conferences so that there would have to be good reasons why a family conference was not attempted or viable, there might be many more kinship placements; better still, many more families could be kept together, and fewer children would have to be taken into care, with all the expense, angst and trauma that that can bring about. New clause 5 is straightforward and I am happy to recommend it to the Committee.