Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Written evidence submitted by Professor Mike Stein, Emeritus Professor, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of York (CWSB214)

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill: evidence for the Public Bill Committee

Summary

· The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill includes important and welcome measures to improve the lives of children in need of help, protection and those living in and leaving care.

· To ensure all children and young people are able to fulfil their potential will require Government action to address child poverty, end austerity and rebuild public services. These are the foundations stones upon which the legislation must build to transform children’s lives

· By ratifying the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) the UK have endorsed a commitment to ensure all children:

· have the right to live free from poverty

· are entitled to be protected; to participate in decisions which shape their lives, and; to be provided with services to meet their needs

· Paragraphs 6 to 14 (in italics) contain the main recommendations

Mike Stein is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Social Policy and Social Work at the University of York. A qualified social worker, he worked in probation and children’s services. From 1975 at Leeds and 1995 at York University, Mike has carried out and directed pioneering research studies: on young people leaving care, in the UK and internationally; the neglect and maltreatment of teenagers, and; those who go missing from home and care. Mike has also been involved in the preparation of Guidance and training materials for Leaving Care legislation, including the Children Act 1989, the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 and Planning Transition to Adulthood for Care Leavers, 2010. He acted as the academic adviser to the Quality Protects research initiative and was a member of the Laming Review on ‘Keeping Children in Care out of Trouble’. This evidence, submitted in a personal professional capacity, arises from Mike’s long standing commitment to promoting the rights of young people through research, policy and practice.

The right to live free from poverty

1. In response to the increase in children living in relative and extreme poverty (destitution) since 2010 (over 700,000 increase since 2010, currently over 4 million children, including 1.8 million children in destitution) and MP’s concerns about the impact of the two child limit on benefits, the Government set up a ministerial Child Poverty Taskforce in July 2024 (supported by a Child Poverty Unit in the Cabinet Office), and due to report in ‘spring 2025’.

2. The taskforce is an opportunity to consider the comprehensive evidence of the impact of poverty: how poverty severely damages children’s health, education and wellbeing and is closely associated with an increased demand for children’s services, and is causally associated with children coming into care.

3. The policy implications include: the need to reverse the two-child limit on benefits, end the benefit cap and introduce an ‘essentials guarantee’, to ensure all families have enough income to meet their needs without having to resort to the indignity of charitable aid.

4. The Government have made a general commitment to end austerity and rebuild public services (September, 2024). Since 2010 the Conservative government’s austerity policies, including major reductions in local authority funding, have had a devastating impact upon children’s services. This has included cutting the Sure Start programme, major reductions in local authority family help, substantial cuts to youth services and the rationing of young people’s mental health provision.

5. This has resulted – in conjunction with the rises in child and family poverty - in increased demands for a range of preventative services, high levels of unmet needs until they reach crisis levels, and entirely ‘preventable’ additional numbers of children coming into care. This is the context for the implementation of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

6. The Government’s Child Poverty Taskforce should detail evidence of the impact of child poverty and inequality on children’s health, education and wellbeing and introduce comprehensive proposals for addressing these in conjunction with the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

The right to protection

7. In a Bill designed to protect children, and in the immediate aftermath of the Sara Sharif tragedy, the removal of the ‘reasonable chastisement’ defence of physically assaulting a child, is urgently overdue

The right to participation

8. G iven the welcome direction of policy to enhance the rights of children and young people, the Bill should ‘ place a duty’ on the local authority ‘ to seek and give due consideration to the wishes and feelings of children ’ , to participate in family group decision making meetings

The right to provision

9. The Bill should ensure all children in care be legally entitled to receive ‘care’ until they are 18 years of age. A t present this is denied to, and discriminates against, many young people , aged 16 and 17 years of age, who are ‘placed’ in poor quality unregulated accommodation, and often exploited, many miles from their familie s and communities

10. The Bill should ensure the provision of c hildren ‘staying close’ to their accommodation and former carers , entitles them to the same assistance, including financial support, as those ‘staying put’ in foster care : a failure to do so discriminates against the former far more vulnerable group

11. The Bill should extend ‘priority need’ under homelessness legislation for care leavers from 18 years up to 25 years of age

12. The Bill should define the purpose, describe the type of regime, detail the funding and stipulate the intended outcomes proposed by Clause 10 –‘widening places where looked after children can be deprived of their liberty under the Children Act 1989’

13. T he Bill should introduce measures to end profiteering in the provision of all children’s social care , including residential and foster care placements, children’s homes and any specialist residential provision, to end the ongoing transfer of much needed funding from children’s services

14. The Bill should ensure the provision of a l ocally based family and community service with experienced qualified social workers, for earl y help , children in need and child protection work – not just the latter group, as proposed, as this will seriously undermine the Bill’s provision for effective early intervention

February 2025