Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

My Lords, I support this amendment, to which I have put my name, because it does what I had hoped we would be able to do during this Bill—strengthening and making more consistent the processes by which children’s safety is looked after by the courts. I have been influenced considerably during our deliberations by the valuable report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Court Administration. It contains some conceptual leaps, but it is a very useful document. It makes a number of recommendations that line up very well with the amendment. Recommendation 2 says that CAFCASS should,"““ensure that all cases, including conciliation at court are subject to risk assessment and liaison with other agencies””." Recommendation 3 says that it should,"““implement a strategy to ensure improved practice in domestic abuse cases””." These are all recommendations to CAFCASS. Recommendation 5 is that,"““to improve services to children and families CAFCASS should provide training . . . in assessment and risk assessment skills””," picking up the point just made by the right reverend Prelate. Recommendation 8 is to,"““take steps to ensure an appropriate balance is maintained between safety and service delivery through the use of robust risk assessment procedures””." Finally, Recommendation 11 suggests that HMCS should,"““provide appropriate training to assist staff in gaining a greater understanding of domestic violence and its impact on survivors””." All those recommendations lead us to one such as has just been described by the noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton. However, a poor risk assessment could be much worse than no risk assessment at all, so training is very important indeed. If the Government are minded to accept the amendment, they must put the resources where their intentions are and provide the resources for that training and for the manpower—and woman power—that is to brought to bear to carry out the assessments, so that we can be assured that they will be of high quality. I am aware that CAFCASS is not in a position to match the golden handshakes or enhanced salaries that many local authority social services are now offering to social workers to come and work for them because of the great crisis that we have had in recruitment and retention of social workers. CAFCASS has simply not been given the means to match those incentives and, unless it is, it will not get the best quality social workers coming to work there. That is what we need to support the amendment. However, I very strongly recommend it to the House and very much thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Gould of Potternewton and Lady Thornton, for there persistence in coming to something that I hope the Government will be able to accept.