Baroness Barran:

Moved by Baroness Barran

6: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—“Cessation of Child Protection PlansWhen proceedings are initiated or a care and supervision order is issued under section 31 of the Children Act 1989, if there is any cessation of child protection plans for children under five years old, that must be signed off by the relevant Director of Children’s Services or Head of Social Work Practice.”Member’s explanatory statementThis Amendment seeks to ensure that the relevant Director of Children’s Services or Head of Social Work Practice is required to sign off any cessation of child protection plans for children under five years old once proceedings have been initiated or once a care and supervision order has been issued.

My Lords, Amendment 6 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, who through no fault of her own is unable to be with us this afternoon, would require sign-off from the director of children’s services or head of social work practice when a child under five and previously on a child protection plan becomes subject to Section 31 care proceedings.

Last year there were about 18,600 children involved in care proceedings and about 16% of children in care are under five. Yet children in this age group are disproportionately represented in the most serious cases. Children under the age of one accounted for about 30% of serious incident notifications last year, and earlier triennial reviews found that about 65% of cases involved children under the age of five. If we pause to think about that, this age group appears roughly four times as often in serious incidents in which a child is killed or seriously harmed as it does in the care population. In this context, the amendment is a really modest and practical safeguard that could help prevent avoidable abuse and tragedy, and save very young lives. I very much hope the Minister will consider her position. My back of the envelope estimate is that a director of children’s services would, on average, have to look at 20 of these cases annually and, given the length of time of care proceedings, it is the least we should expect them to do.

On the wider group of amendments, on 17 December the Minister for Children and Families wrote to Peers following two very helpful round tables about Part 1 of the Bill. In that letter, he rightly emphasised

“the importance of local authorities operating within the right framework” so that

“families receive intensive well evidenced help early, that children are protected through more expert and decisive multi-agency child protection and that children … leaving care benefit from enduring relationships that the care system has facilitated”.

He warned against overreliance on legislation, regulations and guidance, arguing that an

“ever growing stack of rules” has, in the past, “failed to improve practice” and undermined professional judgment and accountability. That analysis is compelling, but unfortunately Clause 3 takes us in the opposite direction from the approach he advocates, and that is why the amendments in this group are needed.

There is, as yet, no robust evidence for the Government’s chosen model. I thank the department for the email it sent me yesterday, setting out in a bit more detail some of the evidence from the pathfinders, but they remain at a very early stage. The evaluation concentrates, as it says itself, on process and implementation rather than outcomes, and there were only 10 families interviewed for the evaluation, some of whom were unaware that they were part of these pathfinder sites. There is no counterfactual, no control group and no convincing data yet that shows better decision-making or earlier Intervention. Moreover, at a recent Ofsted inspection one of the pilot sites recently moved from “good” to “requires improvement”, which underlines that this is not a magic wand. Wanting a model to succeed is not the same as demonstrating that it does, and Amendment 17 would therefore delay implementation of this clause until a proper evidence base is available, which is entirely consistent with the Minister’s own stated aims.

The list of those expressing concerns about these reforms is growing. In Committee, reference was made to the public concerns of Professor Eileen Munro, who is possibly the closest thing to a household name in social work in this country. Similar concerns have been raised by Professors June Thoburn and Ray Jones. A Community Care poll of social workers found that 78% of respondents agreed with research warning that combining the investigative and chairing role of lead social workers would undermine impartiality. The Children’s Minister argues for avoiding prescription, yet the Bill allows the Secretary of State to prescribe by regulation “support of any kind” to be delivered by the multi-agency child protection teams. If we all try to imagine a future Government whom each of us would least like to see in charge, it is not difficult to see how such a broad power could be misused, so Amendment 11 would remove it.

Despite the Minister’s concerns about overprescription, the pathfinders themselves have been heavily prescribed. Some of the evaluation documentation only underlines how little is known about the real-world impact of this approach. For example, appendix 4 asks evaluators to

“identify what impact a greater role for education has on services and what costs are associated with strengthening the role of education”.

This signals that the implications for a key partner are still unclear.

Indeed, funding issues were brought up in the email which the department kindly sent me, where it pointed out that the dedicated health roles in most areas within the multi-agency child protection team are funded by the local authority, as are a number of education roles. Police, on the other hand, have funded their posts, but this links to government Amendments 12 and 14, which, if I have understood them correctly, would allow special constables—unpaid volunteers—to act as the police representative at the multi-agency child protection team meetings. The Minister is shaking her head, so, if I have misunderstood, I look forward to being corrected, but I thought that was what her letter to your Lordships said.

It is critical that we do not have a dilution of skills, which leads me on to another point from the evaluation, which highlights a lack of confidence among so-called “alternatively qualified practitioners”, non-social workers who will now be working in early help and child-in-need teams in relation to risk assessment, and real concerns that they do not have the same expertise, both in risk assessment but also, crucially, in the identification of harm as qualified social workers.

Turning to Amendment 13, for which I am grateful to Professor Peter Green, co-chair of the National Network of Designated Healthcare Professionals, and Dr Vanessa Impey, this would stipulate minimum qualification levels for staff, including health professionals, aligned with the intercollegiate document and Working Together. Safeguarding leads in health are deeply concerned about the Government’s decision to effectively halve the capacity of designated doctors and nurses whose specialist expertise underpins safe multi-agency practice. Working Together defines designated professionals as

“dedicated clinicians whose roles centre on providing clinical expertise and strategic advice to the system”.

To quote Professor Green,

“halving, or worse, this workforce is the same as halving the number of children’s heart surgeons in the NHS, and that is a loss that would be unimaginable in any other area of child health”.

So I hope that, when she comes to reply, the Minister will agree that the multi-agency child protection teams cannot function effectively if overall safeguarding standards fall because senior, highly experienced safeguarding professionals are lost from health services. When she comes to respond, can she set out clearly how, in the face of cuts of 50% or more to statutory safeguarding posts, there will not be a deterioration in safeguarding standards within health, and in multi-agency working? If the Government are willing to protect these posts, there will be no reason to test the opinion of the House on Amendment 13.

There is agreement with the Government’s underlying aims in Clause 3, but deep concern about the speed of implementation, the weakness of the evidence base, the dilution of expertise and the scale of concurrent change, especially for local authorities and integrated care boards. These amendments offer a measured way to secure the benefits of reform, while avoiding serious and avoidable risks to very vulnerable children. I hope the Government will pause and treat them with the seriousness they deserve. I beg to move.

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Barran on Amendments 6, 13, 17, 250 and 251. I have also added my name to Amendments 11, 15 and 16. I remind your Lordships of my registered interests: I am a councillor in the London Borough of Bexley and was previously leader and a Cabinet member for children’s services—hence my interest in this area.

I put on record my thanks to the Minister in the other place, Josh MacAlister, for the round table discussion on this subject last November. We discussed some of the points covered by our amendments today, so I hope he will find them helpful. Likewise, I understand that the Minister here opened up communications with directors of children’s social care across the country last summer during recess, for which I thank her; I know it was welcomed. I apologise if some of the points I am about to make today are similar to those they may have made to her last summer.

First, not everything in the Bill is bad; as I said previously, we all want a system that seeks to keep children safe. However, I do not understand the Government’s reticence on ensuring that the pilots are fully evaluated—and that information shared with others —before full implementation, which they are proposing happens before the end of the year. The noble Baroness, Lady Blake, just made the case for evidence-based changes; I hope that I am knocking on an open door.

When we met the Minister from the other place in November, he promised to share the evaluation, but the document circulated—from July 2025—was Implementation and Process Evaluation Report: Early Findings. Surely this is not sufficient to drive full implementation before the end of the year, and I hope to explain why. First, I hear that, in some areas, the case loads are increasing for the family health lead practitioners. I am also told that the number of Section 47s is increasing in some of those areas. There is a suggestion that it could be about enlisting the expertise of the multi-agency child protection team.

If these two points were consistent across the pilots, it would contradict the Minister’s suggestion that the proposal would decrease demand. More importantly, it puts demand on the service that is not currently there. Surely it would be sensible to understand why that is happening—is it happening in all the pilot areas or restricted to some, and what is driving it?—to ensure that, if there is an issue, it can be addressed to avoid it happening more widely? It has to be in everyone’s interest to understand the reason for the increase, which is why we are asking for the full evaluation.

It would be helpful if the DfE were to conduct and publish comparative data analysis from both wave 1 and wave 2 pathfinder authorities, including trends in referral volumes, assessment outcomes, escalation from early help to statutory Intervention and Section 47 activity, to inform the rollout and ensure the right resourcing and the safe implementation of the multi-agency child protection teams.

Likewise, it would seem sensible to evaluate pilots from a cost perspective, across agencies, to ensure that funding is available to make sure that children are safe once the scheme is fully implemented and to see where the costs arise. That will avoid cost shunting but might necessitate new burdens funding from the Government.

The next reason is recruitment and retention of appropriate staff. I understand that the pathfinder areas reported significant challenges in recruiting both social workers and qualified practitioners for the multi-agency child protection teams, with particular difficulties for key partners, such as ICBs and the police, due to workforce shortages and funding constraints. Indeed, the early evaluation said:

“Resourcing was a key concern across Wave 1 and Wave 2 areas”,

this also being a key challenge across partner agencies. The partner agencies expressed nervousness about assuming the family help partnership role and the additional strain it would put on their already limited capacity.

However, the evaluation did not publish specific recruitment or vacancy data for the multi-agency child protection teams. Instead, it highlighted barriers, such as partner agency workload, funding uncertainty and delays in recruiting specialist roles. It would be helpful if the DfE published workforce metrics and proposed solutions to recruitment and retention challenges, including a competency, training and development programme for the multi-agency child protection teams and alternate qualified staff similar to that for qualified social workers.

The strain on resourcing from partners could explain some of the apparent lack of engagement seen in the pilots. The Minister in the other place told us that lessons had been learned from the SEND inspection process and that the police, health and schools would all be willing partners, but I understand that is not the finding of the pilot areas so far. He also suggested that there would be unique qualifications for health and police. My understanding of the letter published recently by the Minister is the same as my colleague’s, in that there was a suggestion that it might be open to police staff and specials. I look forward to clarification on that point as well. That would diminish the role, and those people would not necessarily be able to make the decisions or commitments that might be necessary.

Likewise, there is a concern about potential changing landscapes and how that might impact delivery. I refer specifically to local government reform and ICBs. In addition to workforce, how might that impact IT systems? The impact of cross-border cases also needs consideration, especially as the partner agencies involved might not be coterminous with the local authorities.

Finally, there is a concern about the inflexibility of the proposals. The Minister in the other place indicated that the system is overregulated and that the new expectation is of a “self-improving system”, using practice guides rather than the introduction of further statutory guidance, which could mean a way of reducing the financial burden on central government and potentially shifting it to local authorities.

How will the department ensure that the absence of tighter statutory guidance does not lead to variable implementation or a lack of accountability for best practice? What assurances can be given that practice guides will be sufficiently resourced and supported rather than just being aspirational documents? How will the department respond if local authorities are unable to implement best practice due to funding or resource constraints? Is there a risk of different levels of service and safeguarding from area to area for children and families?

The Government have invested a substantial amount of taxpayers’ money in setting up pilot schemes. It would be foolish not to analyse the experiences from those pilots thoroughly to understand and answer some of the issues I have just spoken about and to avoid repetition of errors. That would make best use of the investment; it would ensure that we listened to the professionals responsible for delivery, and, most importantly, keep children safe. I support the amendments.

My Lords, I think I understand why government Amendment 12 has been tabled, but I am worried that it is imprecise, and I am not sure that it is absolutely necessary. The unique thing a police officer will bring to these teams is powers—power of arrest, power of entry and powers to seize evidence—but if the teams do not exercise those powers, it is not clear why they need the police at all.

More importantly, the person needs experience. The amendment talks about a member of the police staff—that is, somebody who is not a police officer—who has “experience”. I do not understand the imprecision and wonder whether the Government might try to find some way of making it more precise. Experience could mean one week or six years. There is an accreditation process for trained officers—perhaps the police might offer some form of accreditation measure before they put someone in this role.

I would like to see somebody with experience of going into people’s homes, dealing with situations where childcare is needed, sometimes arresting the parents, sometimes moving the child to another location and sometimes involving other agencies to make sure that the child is looked after in the future. The reality is that, on the whole, police staff will not have that experience.

The only argument I can see for the amendment is that you might have a police officer who is retired—so, has previous police experience—and has become a member of the police staff. If that were the case, I am not sure it is necessary. There is now a scheme of fire and rehire—most chief constables seem to be working on it. The basis is that someone retires from their constable post, takes their lump sum, abates their pension and carries on being paid as a constable. So, if the requirement is to have someone in the role who has police experience, I would see that as a reasonable reason for doing this.

My biggest concern—I say this against the police, who of course I love—is that the 43 forces might come to different conclusions about what “experience” means. Probably more worryingly, they might conclude that they want the cheapest option, which would by far be to put police staff into this area and not have to pay police officers. The Minister knows that I have concerns about whether the police should be members of these teams, but given that they are, it is probably best that they are police officers and not people whose experience we have an imprecise definition of, because police officers offer some judgment about the life situations that they deal with—and that other social services deal with—which might amplify their judgment in the cases that these teams will have to consider.

My Lords, I stand here today as a rather inadequate replacement for my noble friend Lady Tyler, so I will be very brief. As the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, pointed out, in Amendment 6 we are talking about the most vulnerable group—certainly a group that does not have the added protection of, for instance, the school environment and people looking on. So, having greater attention paid to it self-evidently seems like something we should have. If the Government do not like the suggestion made by my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, perhaps they can tell us where else they will get it, because it is very important.

The other amendments in this group go into a new area of government activity—new teams. We should explore in considerable depth the concerns that have been raised about how it will work and the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe. The experience of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, dwarfs any that I have in this field. I hope the Minister answers those questions thoroughly and explains why she thinks her amendments are necessary—I have no doubt that she will do that, as she normally does.

Amendment 17 really attracted my attention. If you are going into a new area, why not first check to see how it is working? There is a general agreement about the approach, but let us make sure that it is done properly. As well as the other amendments in this group, the House should consider those two amendments very fully.

My Lords, I shall speak to the amendments proposed by my noble friend Lady Barran. We have heard from a number of Members of the House about the changes that this part of the Bill is making. A fundamental rebalancing of responsibilities in social care is being carried through in the pilots. It is putting much more on to the shoulders of less-qualified staff. The reforms are intended to streamline the system and manage rising costs but, as my noble friend has pointed out, there are many concerns from experts such as Professor Eileen Munro and from many practitioners about the implications of inexperienced staff finding themselves doing child protection work, which, paradoxically, could lead to more Section 47 investigations, not fewer, which was one of the aims of the reforms.

Taking one step back, the hypothesis behind the reforms was the idea that the social care system had become weighted too much towards individual children in isolation rather than children in the family context, and that more of the support available should be diverted to families rather than given to individual children. However, little account was taken of the profile of the children most likely to be in the care of a local authority. They include children with severe disabilities and special needs, often children who are most likely unavoidably to live in social care as adults. They are children whose parents simply do not have the capacity to manage at home, even with extensive support. Indeed, the strain of trying to manage a child’s needs has sometimes fractured parental and other family relationships. More family support and more kinship care is often simply not a solution.

Then we have to acknowledge that there are some children who simply do not have a decent parent nor any other decent adult in their family and realistically never will have. It is horrible, but true, that there are children who simply do not have a family member able and willing to give them the care, attention and love that they need. We have somehow to recognise and face this.

A substantial minority of looked-after children are unaccompanied migrant children, typically boys in their late teens. These children are not here because they have a dysfunctional family network that needs support and Intervention by our social workers. They need help, but other kinds of help. There are, of course, risks to these children, and there are also risks to others from some of them.

Together, these kinds of children account for a substantial proportion of the social care caseload, yet the reforms that are being pushed through do not acknowledge their particular needs. For all these reasons, considering all these kinds of children, Amendment 17 in particular, which would defer carrying through the full reforms until the full findings from the pilots and pathfinders are published, discussed and understood, and any necessary changes reflected, is important. It would be unsafe to proceed.

My Lords, creating new multi-agency child protection teams through Clause 3 is not, as the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, suggested, about saving money; it is about bringing together social workers, police, health and education colleagues with experience in child protection to take swift and effective action that protects children from harm at the earliest opportunity. I hope that I will be able to respond to the points raised in this short debate, as we did at length in Committee and have continued to do since then through engagement, which noble Lords have acknowledged, including, in my case, directly with directors of children’s services.

Government Amendments 12 and 14 broaden the range of police staff who can work in these teams to include police officers and other police staff experienced in child protection. The need for this Amendment arose as we talked more closely with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing to make sure that we were providing the scope for the correct representatives from policing to be on these teams. We are confident that this will improve front-line operational capacity through the right people with the right skills working in the team. Regulations will be clear that individuals must have appropriate levels of experience, seniority, qualification and expertise. I will come back a little later in my remarks to how we will ensure that those appropriate levels are delivered.

Noble Lords have heard me speak before in Committee—in fact, at some length—about the Families First Partnership programme, where we are investing £2.4 billion over the next three years to change the way that we help, support and protect children. One element of that—introducing new multi-agency child protection teams—brings a sharp focus to better multi-agency working, information sharing and decision-making. I therefore welcome the opportunity to address amendments relating to these new teams, to clarify what we are learning through the national rollout and how this will inform the future legislative framework on day-to-day operations.

I turn first to Amendment 6 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, on the important matter of child protection for very young children in legal proceedings. Of course, as the noble Baroness identified, these are children who are widely represented in the system and for whom we need special care. However, Amendment 6 would require specific senior sign-off for the decision to end a child protection plan when proceedings have been initiated or care or supervision orders are issued for children under five. As I have outlined before, these plans should end only through a child protection conference, when multi-agency practitioners are confident that a child is no longer suffering or likely to suffer significant harm, and not automatically when proceedings are initiated.

I know the noble Baroness is concerned that children in these circumstances may fall between teams or services deciding whether staying at home will keep them safe from harm. I want to reassure her, and other noble Lords, that I am confident that reforming the system of family help, with new multi-agency child protection teams wrapped around, is about exactly this: making sure the whole system holds the safety and well-being of children as the number one priority.

I will now speak to Amendments 11, 13, 15 and 16, also tabled in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. These amendments focus on the operation and delivery of the new multi-agency child protection teams. Amendment 13 seeks to ensure that the new teams would operate within the existing statutory framework, Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023, and that these teams have sufficient access to health safeguarding expertise, specifically in relation to the NHS intercollegiate document, Safeguarding Children and Young People in Care: Competencies for Health Care Staff.

I reassure noble Lords that these teams, as part of the safeguarding partners, will absolutely be required, under the existing duties in Sections 16E, 16G and 16K, to comply with the expectations set out in the working together statutory guidance and local arrangements. We are working closely with health, police and local authority national leaders to ensure that practitioners in the teams have the skills, expertise and knowledge they need, or need access to, to deliver effective child protection interventions.

On the specific point about the police, I want to be clear that the intention of broadening the category, as we have done in the government amendments, would not suggest that a volunteer special constable would be suitable for one of these roles, but we could envisage police staff who would be appropriately qualified. In fact, as I have said, regulations will set out the requirements for the skills and qualifications, including police representatives.

The College of Policing’s professionalising public protection programme is developing resources to make sure that the police workforce has enough of the right professionals, with the right competences, qualifications and experience, to work in multi-agency child protection teams. There are good examples of police forces providing expert staff for child protection work: Thames Valley Police deploys experienced senior police representatives to its local multi-agency safeguarding hubs, including detective sergeant equivalents. They are decision-makers and offer expertise to support their police representatives at all levels. Thames Valley will take this approach to staffing multi-agency child protection teams as well.

I would be grateful for the Minister’s clarification. When I was speaking, she said that special constables would not be represented, and I think she has said that again just now. In the letter she sent to all Peers on 7 January, she said that, to Clause 3, the Government are laying two amendments to broaden which practitioners from the police can be deployed to multi-agency child protection teams so that it includes police, staff and special constables. Can the Minister explain that?

I regret that we included special constables. Given the criteria that will be set out in regulations for the level of expertise, experience and skills necessary to be part of these teams, I could not envisage a situation in which a volunteer special constable would be an appropriate part of these teams. I was about to reiterate that we are setting out in regulations the skills, knowledge and qualifications that all practitioners nominated in multi-agency child protection teams will need, and that these regulations will be subject to public consultation and parliamentary scrutiny. In that way, we will be able to be clear about the types of people from those safeguarding partners who would be appropriate to be part of the teams.

Amendment 11 seeks clarity on the support that multi-agency child protection teams will provide to local authorities to keep children safe from harm. I have listened to requests to be more specific about what these teams will do in practice. That is why, last week, the department published a policy statement to give clarity about the scope of regulations for the operation of these teams. I hope noble Lords have had the chance to look at that. The statement makes it clear that the teams will deliver all statutory child protection functions, from strategy meetings to conferencing. The teams will lead investigations and make decisions about what needs to happen to keep children safe from harm and then hold agencies to account for delivering support. I hope the statement reassures noble Lords that we are working closely with multi-agency partners, and will continue to work with noble Lords and others, as we develop the regulations through public consultation and parliamentary scrutiny to make sure that these teams are the very best they can be.

Amendments 15 and 16 seek to allow the social worker and education practitioner in multi-agency child protection teams to operate on behalf of multiple local authorities, where teams are combined across local authority boundaries. As I clarified in Committee, local authority professionals in the teams must remain responsible for children in their area. This ensures that the local authority with statutory responsibility for the child continues to be accountable and that children do not fall between the cracks. Collaboration across areas and between practitioners will happen. In fact, Clause 4 creates a clear duty on all practitioners to share information to safeguard or promote the welfare of the child, regardless of local authority boundaries.

Amendments 17, 250 and 251, also tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, relate to evidence, funding and accountability of these new multi-agency teams. On Amendment 17, I agree that learning from the families first pathfinders is important, but we must balance that with acting now to improve protection for every child who needs it immediately. Pathfinders are, as the name suggests, about finding the way to the new approach that the Government have set out. They are not pilots as such that we would then need to complete before we carried on with progress. We are already seeing commitment across the country from local areas that are driving forward on implementing these new teams. There are existing proven models and decades of learning about what works in protecting children that these new teams are based on, and I would seriously worry about delaying this great progress.

Will the Minister confirm that all the pilots are not exactly the same, so therefore there will be different evidence from the different types of pilots done? Surely the sensible thing is to find out what works best and what does not.

I know this is semantics, but the point that I made about pathfinders is important. The pathfinders are trying out different approaches within the criteria and the framework set for them. They are discovering, as we suggested at some length when we talked about examples in Committee, different ways of doing things. They are also ensuring that we are doing this on a basis that will have the right professionals in the right place so that children do not fall between gaps—and in fact will actively close the gaps that exist within the system now—and from which we will continue to learn. I will come to the point about timing in a moment, because that is important.

I was just coming to the point about the round table with pathfinder directors of children’s services and representatives from each of the regions that I held to discuss the opportunities and challenges in implementing these new teams. I reassure noble Lords that I said specifically to my team in setting up the round table that I was interested in hearing not only from people who thought that everything was going well but from those who might be more sceptical as well. I have to say that I heard overwhelmingly from pathfinders that, while changing the approach to child protection has been challenging, the benefits of multi-agency expertise and working are already evidenced in the decisions and outcomes for children. For example, areas shared positive examples of innovative whole-family work enabled by multi-agency collaboration, and noted that more empowering and transparent practice has given partners confidence in the approach.

I want to take a moment to reassure noble Lords that we recognise the scale of the ask here. This is a complex national system reform that requires leadership, co-operation and commitment from agencies, and that requires us—the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, is right—to learn from the pathfinders. By the way, I undertake to ensure as far as possible that, as we continue, we are able to provide some of the evidence that the noble Baroness identified.

That is why, through the families first partnership programme, we are working, for example, with three police force areas—the Met, Thames Valley and West Mercia—to identify how we can create multi-agency child protection teams that align with policing footprints. This work includes over 40 local authority areas working together to create effective delivery approaches, and we will bring into that work representatives from health and education as well.

Finally, on delay, it is not the intention—assuming this Bill passes through both Houses—that the multi-agency child protection teams will instantly need to spring into action. It is not even the case, as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, said, that we expect them to be fully in place during this calendar year. I want to reassure noble Lords that the provisions will not come into force before late 2027, following public consultation and further scrutiny of regulations by Parliament. We also have a comprehensive quarterly monitoring process to measure progress, impact and outcomes as the Families First Programme rolls out nationally and are working across sectors to share learning about what works. I just ask noble Lords not to slam the brakes on an important reform for which I think there has been considerable support, and on which work is already under way.

I turn to Amendments 250 and 251, on resourcing, funding and effective delivery of these teams. To be clear, as we were in Committee, safeguarding partners already have a joint and equal duty to work together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in their area. The statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children is clear about the expectations on safeguarding partners in making these local arrangements. Guidance will be updated in line with the new regulations to clarify what this means for delivering multi-agency child protection teams. Therefore, resource and funding are already agreed locally, and this will be the same for multi-agency child protection teams.

Once again, we are learning from the pathfinders. For instance, some areas are funding new roles; others are using existing or seconded resources, and some are using agreements between agencies to pool resources for multi-agency child protection teams. The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, seemed to suggest that it was wrong for different approaches to be taken in different areas. That is precisely the type of flexibility and local recognition of responsibilities in the way teams have been set up that is important.

The Children Act 2004 means that safeguarding partners can already work with relevant agencies, such as probation and youth offending teams, to support their arrangements to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. Clause 3 will supplement these local arrangements and allow safeguarding partners to choose from a sub-list set out in regulations, which relevant agencies will work most closely with to support the multi-agency child protection team functions, agreeing this locally through co-operation memorandums. We say more on this in the published policy statement.

In Committee, I outlined the £523 million of funding made available in 2025-26 for national rollout of our children’s social care reform. Since then, we have confirmed a further £2.4 billion over the next three years. I am sure that noble Lords will agree that this is a significant and important investment that shows our commitment to reforming the system, to reforming it right and to improving protection for children. I hope, therefore, with the reassurance and clarification that I provided, that the noble Baroness feels able to withdraw this Amendment.

I wonder if the noble Baroness could clarify two things. I apologise if I missed the first, but she went through a series of expectations for qualifications for staff in the multi-agency child protection teams and I did not hear her confirm that those would align with the intercollegiate document, so I would be grateful if she could confirm that in relation to health staff. Also, I wrote down that she said “these teams”— I was not sure whether that was the multi-agency child protection teams, the early help teams or both—will not be implemented until the end of 2027, which feels later than was previously projected. I wonder if she could clarify that.

On the point about the NHS document on intercollegiate guidance, the point I was making was that we believe the provisions are already set out in the Working Together requirements. We will be able, of course, to set them out more fully in regulations; I am pretty confident about that. If I have gone beyond where I should have, I will make that clear.

When I referred to teams, I was in some ways shortening my speaking note. I think every time I did so, I was referring to multi-agency child protection teams. The point I was making was that many of those teams will already be set up and operating as part of the pathfinder process. But in recognition of the scale of the challenge, we are clear that we will take time to get the regulations right and continue the learning from the pathfinders, and to do that in a way that ensures we can all be confident that they will be successful. That is the reason for the timescale I set out.

I thank the noble Baroness very much for that clarification, as I thank all noble Lords who contributed to this debate. I also acknowledge the Government’s financial commitment to this programme.

In relation to my Amendment 6, the Minister said that a child protection plan should end only when there is a multi-agency child protection case conference. One could argue that under the Government’s proposed system, where the same social worker will work with a family but also chair that conference, there is the need for fresh eyes to look at those cases of very young children who are at risk of not having adequate protection and are not nearly so visible to society as those over the age of five, because obviously they are not in school. I am not convinced by the arguments the Minister made.

I am amazed that the Minister regrets she put special constables in the letter. I can imagine she is feeling a bit irritated about that, but I think a lot of people who will have received the letter are not in the Chamber, so I hope she will write to clarify that special constables will not be eligible, because that looked like a cost-cutting measure, as the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, alluded to.

In relation to cross-border work, I agree that one should not in any way blur accountability, and Amendments 15 and 16 aimed to introduce some more flexibility. But as the Minister knows, families move around a lot, particularly in London, so having rigid boundaries will be unworkable and more flexibility will need to emerge in future.

Turning to Amendment 17, whether they are pathfinders or pilots is semantics. I hear and absolutely believe what the Minister says about the Government seeing increasing commitments from some local authorities, but she is also aware that some very senior, experienced and committed people who want to see the best for children also have specific concerns. This was before my time—I am not for a second suggesting I would have got it right—but those who were involved in the special educational needs reforms and who introduced the Children and Families Act did so in the same spirit: to address an urgent problem that needed an urgent solution. However, without proper piloting that has ended up in a place that nobody intended. The spirit of my Amendment 17, together with the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, is to avoid that happening again.

As I say, I am not convinced by the Minister’s explanation in relation to Amendment 6. We are talking about 65% of child deaths and serious harm occurring to that age group, so I would like to test the opinion of the House.

Ayes 278, Noes 176.

Amendment 6 agreed.

Clause 2: Inclusion of childcare and education agencies in safeguarding arrangements