Examination of Witnesses (Questions 398-399)
KIM BROMLEY-DERRY,
DAVID HOLMES,
CAROLINE LITTLE
AND MICK
LOWE
30 JUNE 2008
Chairman: Will the next group of witnesses
join us, please? We have four witnesses in the second group—Kim
Bromley-Derry, David Holmes, Caroline Little and Mick Lowe. Welcome
and thank you for your time. As you know, we are trying to find
out some facts before we write a report on this important subject.
I shall hand over to Paul to open up the questioning.
Q398 Paul Holmes: As was mentioned in
the previous session, we have just spent two days in Copenhagen,
looking at the Danish system, and we were struck by a lot of things
there. They have spent more on child care, supporting parents
and better training for the social workers, yet they take twice
as many children into care as we do, which is interesting. I want
to ask particularly about the quantity of children in the Danish
system who were put into care voluntarily by the family—up
to 80% or more are in care voluntarily, whereas here it is about
a third—and the lengths that the system goes to to keep
the families involved, even when children are in care in the long
term or have been adopted, although not many are adopted in the
Danish system. Is there more that we can do to have a less adversarial
system and get parents involved more in placing their children
voluntarily into care?
Chairman: Who wants to open up on that?
Perhaps the question could be considered a little more broadly,
with introductory remarks cut out, because we are running a little
late, as you might have noticed.
David Holmes: I am happy to talk
a little bit about Denmark, because I have some knowledge of the
system. It is important to recognise that we need to compare like
with like, wherever we can. Yes, Denmark has more children in
care per 10,000 of population, but it is a much smaller country
than England—there are 11 million children in England and
about 1.2 million children in Denmark—and, yes, more children
come into care in Denmark through voluntary arrangements, but
about two thirds of the children who first come into care in England
do so in a voluntary arrangement. When those children have been
in care for some time, the local authority moves to take a care
order. The other significant difference between the care populations
in Denmark and England is that in Denmark it is generally much
older than in England. You can go into care in Denmark until about
21 or 22 and the majority of young people or children in care
are 10 and over. A big difference is that we have many more younger
children in our care system. The final difference is that Denmark
uses group care—residential care—much more than we
do, with about half of children in group care. I argue strongly
that younger children in particular are much better off in families.
Mick Lowe: Actually, it is not
something that is within the jurisdiction of the General Social
Care Council. Our concerns are mainly to do with the training
and development of social workers. I do not want to make statements
outside that general area.
Q399 Paul Holmes: But from the point
of view of training, for example, are social workers encouraged
to work with families to look to voluntary arrangements and to
use more section 20 voluntary agreements, as opposed to compulsory
agreements?
Mick Lowe: Certainly. The last
thing that any social worker wants to do is take a child into
care, particularly if it were not done on a voluntary basis. The
training for social workers is now degree training, and we are
now on the third cohort of social workers coming through a three-year
degree. That training focuses on all means to support children
other than taking them into care. As I have said, that is a feature
of those degree courses in all the higher education institutes
that provide degree training.
Chairman: Mick Lowe, I called you because
I thought that you wanted to come in—you were holding up
your pen, which I thought was a cue. In the future, perhaps you
could catch my eye in another way. Do you want to come in on that,
Caroline?
Caroline Little: Yes. I am a child
care practitioner representing children and parents in care proceedings,
and I have done so for many years. I baulked at some of the previous
comments about the care process, because, although there are problems
in individual cases, care proceedings work well as a system of
justice. The Children Act 1989 is a well thought out and researched
piece of legislation, which, on the whole, has served the needs
of children. The quality of representation for children, which
is measured by the Law Society children panel, is good on the
whole. There are risks, which have been alluded to, funding issues
and problems with legal aid. We are a dwindling and ageing population,
so there are risks. One of the things that concerns me is the
emphasis on voluntary placement outside the family. You have heard
from previous witnesses about the injustices in our system, and
in my experience care proceedings provide protection against inaccurate
allegations against parents. Such proceedings allow parents to
be represented in a way in which they are not outside care proceedings,
which means that they can challenge allegations and have free
legal representation without means-testing. They can challenge
social workers' allegations in a court of law and in front of
an independent arbiter, and the child has separate representation
through guardian and solicitor. If local authorities make inaccurate
assumptions or say that a child has been injured, care proceedings
on all the matters being considered by this Committee can provide
justice for the parents and child.
Kim Bromley-Derry: I work for
an organisation that represents all the directors of children's
services across the country. We are seeing an increasingly high
level of voluntary agreements and arrangements for older young
people. Interestingly, the major investment in family support
has been for younger children. One of the issues that that raises
concerns the level of identification surrounding a family, which
we might not have noticed or which might have been hard to reach
previously. We are also seeing an increase in the number of children
on the child protection register. An interesting debate is going
on about whether you are sufficiently protected by being on the
child protection register as opposed to brokering a package of
family support or entering a voluntary arrangement. It is still
early days in deciding on that balance of risk. The legal profession
has criticised local authorities for being insufficiently cautious
in managing that risk and has suggested that the balance might
move in the other direction. Certainly, the number of children
on care orders is reducing every year, as is the number of looked-after
children as a result of that different level of intervention.
We are also increasingly seeing the use of family group conferencing
with families with complex needs and arrangements. Social workers
rarely act independently, but usually act with a team of colleagues
from other professions. One of the checks and balances in the
system is that decisions are rarely made independently of other
professionals involved with the family. Certainly, the threshold
for either care proceedings or voluntary arrangements is discussed
in those arrangements around questions such as whether it is possible
to put together a package that supports the family. Most social
workers of whom I am aware always see putting a package together
within the family as their first priority. However, we are in
a transitional phase. SureStart is still in its early days, and
the evidence on the positive impact of that additional level of
family support is not as strong as we would like it to be at this
point, although families feel good about it.
|
