Debate on the Address

My Lords, I should like to continue the theme begun by the noble Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen. Some 135 years ago, George Eliot wrote: "““If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence””." Social workers, foster carers and residential childcare workers working directly with the most vulnerable children and families expose themselves to that roar on the other side of silence. They work with troubling young people and troubling adults and often we fail to support them. To do this work properly they need to expose themselves and allow themselves a degree of vulnerability. This morning I was speaking to the manager of a children’s home, a person of many years experience. In the past, such people might have been able to cuddle their children or share a little of their lives with them but, with the failure to support them, heavy bureaucratic processes are introduced and the ability to be a genuine, caring person to such vulnerable people is lost to a large degree. So if there is any goodness in us, we must do more to invest in and support people working in social care. This is especially important because we are a greying population, with more elderly people and fewer younger people to look after us. If we want to be well cared for in our old age, it is in our interest that we invest in our social care system. For these reasons I warmly welcome the many steps Her Majesty’s Government have taken to invest in social care. I refer to the recent innovation ofthe Centre for Excellence in Residential Child Care; the new minimum allowances for foster carers; the introduction of a three-year degree course for social workers superseding the two-year diploma course; and the registration of social workers. I especially welcome the new Green Paper on children in the care system, Care Matters, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, so eloquently spoke earlier, and the White Paper on social care workforce reform, Options for Excellence. I pay tribute to the eloquent advocacy for social workers provided by the noble Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, in her magnificent speech. In Care Matters, the Green Paper on children in care, the Government propose a tier of salaried foster carers to work with the most vulnerable children. This may bring about a career pathway for foster carers and, to a degree, help in retaining foster carers and encouraging more people to enter foster care. Robert Tapsfield, the chief executive of the Fostering Network has said that, "““allowing teenagers to stay with their foster carers until the age of 21 would offer massive benefits for many young people who are currently forced out before they are ready””." This is another proposal in the Green Paper. The Options for Excellence White Paper is perhaps even more important for developing the social care workforce. In 1998 I was visiting a hostel in Kings Cross for young people addicted to heroin and other substances. I met a young mental health nurse, Gabriella Maceirras, an amazing woman. Ten months previously, she and three other colleagues had been appointed to work in that setting and, as she said, no thought had been given to the support that they would need to work with these young people. She was the last woman standing. Bowed but not broken by this experience, she was continuing to deal with the boundless needs of these young people, but her three colleagues had simply dropped out over that period. That was an excoriating experience and it kept returning to me in the days following. Options for Excellence points out that in 2005,49 per cent of local authorities rated their retention of children’s social workers as difficult or very difficult. That does not surprise me—so often those working in social care whom I come across are in untenable situations and are not properly supported so that they can sustain their work. I can think of two excellent managers of children’s homes who have moved on because they have become disillusioned with the system in which they have had to work. I have spoken to trainers about young social workers leaving training. Their caseloads are too large and give them too much responsibility for the most vulnerable children from the start. There is a lack of good quality supervision from senior staff and of good quality placements in their training to prepare them for entering this environment. One trainer told me about a conversation with one of her most promising students two years after she entered the social work world; the student was leaving social work because she had become disillusioned with it. I therefore warmly welcome Options for Excellence and what it says about continual professional development for social workers. I especially welcome its proposals for the newly qualified social work status and continual professional development for foster carers which, amazingly, has not existed so far. The new roles for social workers as teachers and researchers, which will enable social workers to keep practising rather than moving out of practice into management, seem a very welcome innovation. But with regard to these two marvellous documents, what priority will be given to implementing their proposals and will the Government find the funding to make these important changes? The British Association of Social Workers has welcomed the recognition of the need to provide specific support for newly qualified social workers. However, it says: "““We believe the NQSW status should be introduced immediately. The first new graduates entering work have now completed the social work degree. They should not have to wait ""to receive good supervision and limited workloads—we cannot afford to lose them from the workforce””." The association emphasises that this is urgent, and that specific action needs to be taken now. I appreciated the response from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, a little while ago on the newly qualified social work status. He said that it had cost implications and would need to be considered in the Comprehensive Spending Review. I should be grateful if the Minister could give some indication of the likely cost of the introduction of the newly qualified social work status. I appreciate that he may need to write to me. If he would be good enough to communicate to his colleagues the strong concern about this matter expressed in the Chamber by myself and my noble friend Lady Butler-Sloss, I would be most grateful. To return to George Eliot, social workers, foster carers and residential childcare care workers expose themselves daily to the, "““roar which lies on the other side of silence””." Caring cannot be mechanical; it requires making oneself, to a significant degree, open and vulnerable to others. If there is any good in us, we must do far better in supporting our carers. Her Majesty's Government have done much to improve social care, but my concern is that we will continue to fail many young people unnecessarily unless the vital long-term changes, following decades of neglect of social care, are begun now and not deferred.