Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 3: 3: Clause 6, page 5, line 20, at end insert— ““(2A) Any local authority may, with the permission of the Secretary of State, introduce other new initiatives aimed at improving their discharge of the care functions described in section 1(2). (2B) Such initiatives shall benefit to an equal degree from any financial arrangements introduced during the piloting period.”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 4, 5 and 6. This group of amendments seeks to ensure that other experiments in social care provisions for children are set up at the same time as the pilots for social work practices described in Clause 6, that any evaluation compares all these experiments and not only those relating to the social work practice pilots, and that the evaluation is robust and looks at a representative sample of experiments across different types of local authorities. We had a lengthy discussion of social work practices in Grand Committee and these issues were raised during that debate. Since that time, we have all had an opportunity to read the report from Professor le Grand, Consistent Care Matters, which proposes the setting up of these pilots. In his letter dated 11 January, the Minister reinforced the assurances that he gave the Grand Committee about the process of evaluation of pilots. I am extremely grateful to the Minister for these reassurances. Nevertheless, some doubts remain. It is not clear that establishing private practices of independent social workers, modelled on GP practices, will address the problems of freeing up social workers from bureaucracy and prevent the rapid turnover and changes of personnel on which all have remarked as being a bane within the service. Given the need for the local authorities to retain the role of the corporate parent, there are dangers that the proposals will fragment the child’s journey through the care system and militate against the drive towards multidisciplinary teams bridging the areas of health, social services and education. As Professor le Grand remarks in his report, better leadership and leadership structures within the local authority can lead, and have been demonstrated to lead, to considerable improvements in performance and practice among local authorities. It is for this reason that we put emphasis on the need to test out different models rather than only one model before making decisions on what does or does not work. In his letter of 11 January, the Minister drew attention to the Children’s Workforce Development Council experiments on new approaches to social work delivery and we are pleased to see that these are going ahead. Amendment No. 3 is designed to ensure that other experiments can go ahead under proposed new subsection (2A); and proposed new subsection (2B) is designed to ensure that that these are put on an equal financial footing to the social work practice pilots. Amendment No. 4 stipulates that the piloting of any such experiments should be considered alongside the pilots of social work practices, and that a rollout of these practices should not go ahead until a full evaluation has been completed and reported upon to Parliament. Amendment No. 5 sets out the terms of the evaluation, including the need for it to be undertaken by a body independent both of the Secretary of State and his department and of the local authorities involved, and for it to consider experiments that have been undertaken in a full cross-section of local authorities. The Minister’s letter of 11 January was reassuring on many of those points, and we were much encouraged by what it said. The letter itself is not in the public domain, however, so it would be helpful if he could repeat for the record some of the assurances he gave us in that letter; for example, about the nature of the evaluation process and the range of local authorities likely to be involved in experiments. These are important issues and we are anxious to get his reassurances on the record. I beg to move.