New Clause 20
Children and Young Persons Bill [Lords]
2:30 pm
Kevin Brennan (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Children, Schools and Families; Cardiff West, Labour)
I, too, met the virtual head teachers when they came into the Department and virtually all of them turned up on that occasion. It was interesting to hear about the progress on the pilots, which are an important initiative. I can assure the hon. Lady that I agree with everything she said, except for the need for the new clause. We are deeply committed to ensuring that looked-after children and care leavers who are entitled to leaving care services are properly consulted on the services they receive and involved in helping to shape and improve them. That is why we made the commitment, as she knows, in the “Care Matters” White Paper to introduce children in care councils in every local authority.
We are embedding that commitment by spelling out in statutory guidance our expectation that every local authority should have a children in care council or an equivalent structure to ensure that looked-after children and young people are able to put their experiences of the care system directly to those responsible for service delivery, and I recently met some young people in south Gloucestershire who are doing exactly that. We will ask Ofsted to report on those participation arrangements as part of the planned inspection programme focusing on children in care, and that will begin in 2009. The new clause is unnecessary because the reforms that it seeks to legislate for are already underway.