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First, there is a fundamental problem with his comparison of social work practices with GP practices. Primary health care, like education, is the universal service. GP practices serve the whole community with non-acute services, while acute cases are referred to specialists and hospitals. The 60,000 children in care represent 0.001 per cent of the population and are the most needy, most acute cases. Given that GP practices have great difficulty in providing 24/7 cover to their patients, my first question for the Minister is, how does he think that groups of six to 10 people, not all of whom will be registered social workers, will be able to provide 24/7 care to their child clients? Our worry is that, given this difficulty, those practices will only contract for the easier end of the spectrum and will leave the most difficult cases to the local authority social services departments. If that were to happen, it would be easy to see how, eventually, the social work practices would be able to cream off the best social workers locally.

Clause 2(5) says that the local authority must secure that the functions are carried out by, or supervised by, a GSCC-registered social worker. Can the Minister confirm that only registered social workers in the social work practices will carry out those functions which would be carried out only by registered social workers in the local authority?

5 pm

On resources, given recommendation 11 in Professor Le Grand’s paper that these groups are given pump-priming funding, it is clear that they will not be working on a level playing field with the local authority department. Would the Minister consider that a fairer way of making a real comparison between a new social work practice and a local authority department would be to give the local authority department the same sort of pump-priming funding to enable it to address some of the problems that I outlined earlier? Will this difference in funding be taken into account in the evaluation of the pilots?

One of the problems that I mentioned earlier is the stability of staffing and the continuity of the relationship between the social worker and the child.

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Could the Minister explain how that matter is likely to be improved by contracting out services? Surely the monitoring and contractual arrangements between the authority and the social work practice will hive off funding from the coalface that could have been spent on ensuring greater continuity. It is also difficult to see how these new arrangements are going to “reduce bureaucracy”, as has been claimed. Indeed, it looks to me as if it will be increased.

Moving on to other issues relating to the pilots, I am concerned about the supervision of the social work practices during the pilot period. According to Clause 6(1)(b)(i), Ofsted’s supervision of providers of social work does not kick in until after the end of the pilot period. Who will be registering and inspecting these bodies during the pilot period? How will the Government receive independent advice about whether the pilots are working well and whether the evaluation before any rollout is considered will be independent?

Professor Le Grand’s working party recommended that the contract between the local authority and the social work practice should be outcome-based. Presumably the assessment of the success or otherwise of the arrangements will also be based on outcomes. In that case, it is essential that we compare apples with apples and not apples with pears. In other words, how will the Government ensure that comparisons are really being made between two organisations with exactly comparable client caseloads and resources? It is interesting that recommendation 3 of the working party was that information should be gathered about the real full costs of providing local authority children’s services to help inform the setting of the budgets for the new social work practices. It is surprising to me that the real costs of such services are not already known to the Government. Many local authorities that are determined to provide a good, high-quality service have to top up what they receive from the Government from their own resources to do so.

The working group recommends that there should be an evaluation strategy for assessing the impact of social work practice pilots. It stated that this should include comparisons with control groups of the average and the best authorities. If the Government accept that recommendation, will the Minister undertake to make use of the information so gathered about the characteristics of the best local authorities and put the same effort into disseminating best practice among those public authorities as they are now proposing to put into the new contracting-out arrangements?

In this regard, I made particular note of recommendation 2 of the working group report, which calls for greater attention in the social work training curriculum to the importance of stability and continuity in services for children and their implication for social workers’ professional development. Will the Government pick up this recommendation in relation to all social workers, wherever they are employed?

The overarching concern is that the proposals fit in with the Every Child Matters agenda and the delivery of integrated services. There seems to me to be a disconnect between the Government’s recent activities

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in this regard and the current proposals. The establishment of the children’s services authority and the appointment of a director of children's services and a lead member on the councils was a direct and appropriate response to the report of the noble Lord, Lord Laming. Indeed, within the past six months we have had the setting up of the Department for Children, Schools and Families in order further to integrate all matters relating to children. Against these developments, which we on this side of the Committee support, the contracting out of social work practice appears to be going into reverse. I hope that the Minister can allay some of our concerns in his reply and convince us that the power to set up these pilots will indeed advance the cause of better care for our most vulnerable children.

Baroness Morris of Bolton: As I said at Second Reading, it is vital for children and young people to know their social worker and to have a real relationship that develops over time. If this new model of social work practices can go some way to providing that, we welcome it, although we think that the pilot should run for a sufficient length of time and in a diverse range of local authorities.

Like many Members of the Committee, I received a pamphlet from Chris Waterman, director of the Institute for Research in Integrated Strategies, entitled “Motivation in agency and social work practices: Of halos and horns, paupers and princes”. It was a labour of love, as it was, I understand, written over the Christmas holidays. Like the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, it raises genuine concerns. For those of us who would like to see these social work practices work, it is important that the Government address those concerns.

Baroness Howarth of Breckland: I shall speak only briefly because I said a great deal of what I want to say at Second Reading, but I must at least say something. Social work has been bedevilled by change for change’s sake. Every time one child has died, there has been a review and the suggestion of legislation. If this had happened so often in the health service, it would be even more topsy-turvy than it feels it is at present. But it has happened in social work.

I ask the Minister what the real rationale is for these changes. I can see no reason why the present structure, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has so clearly outlined, cannot be reduced in bureaucracy—in fact, that was in the Climbié report—why the kinds of structures required to give social workers the support they need cannot be improved and why some of the services cannot be developed with other groupings, as already happens. That was the point of my intervention: some local authorities already use voluntary organisations to work with some families and children in care on a deferred basis. Why can these not be developed properly to get some stability? Not only children in care need stability, but the workers need some in their work.

That could be said to be resisting change for its own sake. I am certainly not resistant to change. If convinced by the Minister that this would really be in the interests of children in care, I will give it all my

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support. My great anxiety, as clearly outlined by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, is that it would be yet one more diversion and hitch, which will mean that good professional development will not happen. Good professional development ends up as good social work services for children.

Baroness Meacher: I shall speak briefly on this important amendment. I very much support the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. I am very worried about these pilots, which seem to be set up to succeed in a sense, even though they may not be the right way forward. I would question very seriously whether they are the right way forward. On reading the report by Professor Le Grand and other things, it seems that there are four issues that these social work practices might presume to resolve. The first issue is staff turnover and the second is the rather strange division of responsibilities within social services departments so that children have to move through at least four teams—therefore, four different social workers—even before you start worrying about changes of social workers. The system creates four social workers, then there are the changes on top of that. The third issue is the excessive caseloads, form filling, bureaucracy and all that. The fourth issue is, partly because of that, that managerial decision-making has taken over completely from professional decision-making.

Will social work practices resolve these four problems? The first two do not need this new, separate stand-alone unit of social workers. Certainly, as regards staff turnover, good social work managements already have massively improved staff recruitment and retention. It can be done: we just need good regulatory authorities to make sure that it is done. We do not need social work practices for that. On the divisions of responsibilities, again, good regulatory authorities should come in and say, “Come on, you have to organise yourselves so that children have continuity”. All the evidence tells us that children need continuity. It is so obvious and does not need social work practices.

Julian Le Grand points to the elimination of a third set of problems as the big plus for these social work practices. He argues that the big advantage of these practices would be the absence of the need to report continuously to a managerial hierarchy and the other bureaucratic demands of a large organisation. But on page 24, Le Grand recognises that social work practices would not escape the bureaucratic demands of the system. How then can he claim that social work practices will have little or no hierarchy and that decisions would remain firmly at the social worker level? This is the essence of the loss of rationale for these pilots. It is set out that these pilots will get rid of this bureaucracy, but they will not. Even Julian Le Grand, whom I know well as a good friend and who is a very able man, admits that it cannot do that and that it will not do that. Of course, these pilots cannot do that because of the government regulations and guidance that we are all so familiar with, which have arisen understandably as a result of Victoria Climbié and earlier tragedies.

The reality is that whether the bureaucracy shifts into the social work practices or remains in the local authorities, it will be there. The difficulty for the

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Government—I really sympathise with them on this because it is terribly difficult—is whether they bite the bullet and say, “We have got to move away from zero risk or something very close to zero risk. We will take away a lot of this bureaucracy, a lot of these forms and lot of this stuff. We will take away managerial decision making and return the decision-making to social workers, so that they can feel professional again, can have job satisfaction again and will really be able to deal with the interests and needs of the child again”, which they used to do rather more effectively. Of course, there may then be something like a 2 per cent greater risk of another tragedy. There will always be a risk, but dare you risk increasing that risk by, say, 2 per cent? That is a very difficult issue for the Government. But, rather than addressing the real issue of whether the balance is right, the Government are throwing, or perhaps grasping, these social work practice pilots as something that will look as though they may resolve the problem. I honestly think that all of us in this room know that it does not feel very likely that they will.

5.15 pm

So this is where we are. Dare a Government bite this bullet or is it really just all too difficult? A London borough recently contracted out its elder services. Shortly after that, an elderly person was mistreated by a carer in a stand-alone unit. It was very embarrassing and there was a big to-do in the local press. But if a social worker in a social work practice mistreated a child, it would be in all the national press, and yet the local authority may have difficulty dealing with that contracted-out service. However, if we hold on to all the bureaucracy that we have now, it would be able to deal with it. That is the dilemma with which we are stuck.

One of Laming’s main findings was that one of the most significant causes of breakdown and tragedy was the difficulty of communicating across different organisations involved with a child. That was one of his main findings. Is it a good idea to create more separate organisations and therefore increase the likelihood of communication problems, which Laming says is the one big thing we have to avoid? Will the Minister consider commissioning a piece of work to examine the impact on the services and the costs of government regulations and guidance affecting social work with looked-after children? Would he be willing to commission a piece of work to look at what we are doing with all this bureaucracy, regulation and guidance? What is it doing to the services on the ground? If we really understood that, it would be very helpful. I put that to the Minister.

My second point to the Minister, which is a little similar to that made by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, is whether he would consider piloting and evaluating within a group of local authorities all the administrative changes envisaged for social work practices but within the social services department so that one could see whether, with the additional pump-priming funding, a real focus on some of the administrative issues and getting the decision-making where it needs to be, one could generate the

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improvements that we all, including Ministers—I absolutely know that is the case—want to see. I hope that we all speak from the same side on this. We all know where we want to go. I will welcome hearing the Minister’s comments on that.

Lord Hylton: Speaking as a complete layman in these matters, I support the anxieties that have been expressed about these first six clauses. I therefore invite the Minister to reflect on issues such as the following. First, to what extent is the turnover of social workers responsible for at least some of the breakdowns in foster placements, especially in London and other high-cost areas? When I talk about high-cost areas, I particularly mean areas which have high housing costs. Secondly, will the current turnover of social workers be improved by contracting out? Is there any evidence to show that it really will be? Thirdly, to what extent will the proposed pilots be representative of conditions across the whole of the country and, indeed, across Wales, so that sound conclusions are capable of being drawn from the experience of the pilots? Then, thinking about things from the point of view of voluntary organisations providing children’s services, will the proposed contracts be sufficiently long term so that voluntary organisations can plan their personnel, resources and finances? Those are rather important considerations.

Lord Ramsbotham: Briefly, I echo the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. I will quote one example to illustrate my concern about the involvement of the privatisation of some of this work. Noble Lords may have heard of a local authority secure home called Orchard Lodge, which is near Crystal Palace, and which focused on the problems of young people with serious mental health disturbances. It was run exceptionally well for many years by Southwark Council. One of the things about it was the fact that the staff had an average length of stay of 11 years, and it told in the fact that not only were the children able to establish long-term relationships with people, but over time the staff developed a confidence in the use of techniques which meant that they did not have to resort to some of the restraint and seclusion that has been the subject of other debates in your Lordships’ House.

Sadly, the Orchard Lodge contract was let to privatisation, and the immediate result was the exodus of good staff and the reduction of people who were prepared to stay for a time. The terrible thing that one finds most in private sector prisons and young offender establishments is staff turnover. They just do not stay. Therefore, I echo the point, when we are considering what is done, that the relationship that is established between staff and children is so crucial to any development that we should not do anything to undermine that.

The Earl of Listowel:May I make one comment on what my noble friend Lady Meacher said about bureaucracy? To my mind, trying to understand the history of social work and the history of social care, one asks why all these reams of bureaucracy have

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been introduced. One might say that it is because there have been tragedies to do with children, but why have there been such tragedies? Partly, it is because of the way in which the media responds, but it is also because of the gradual de-professionalisation of social workers. Who would want to be a social worker today? More people are wishing to be social workers because of some of the steps that the Government are taking, but it really has become an unattractive job. I welcome the fact that pay has been increased in recent years by the Government, but historically the pay that has been given to this job, where individuals are responsible for vulnerable and difficult families, has not reflected in any way the degree of responsibility that is entailed.

I put it to my noble friend that this bureaucracy has arisen in part because of failures, which have been in turn the result of the failure to support and give a proper professional framework to social workers. It has happened in education that the more we develop that framework, the better our schools have become, the less we have needed to inspect them and the more we have moved toward them assessing their own performance. There is a way forward, and it fits with what my noble friend Lady Howarth said. If we concentrate on the professional expertise of front-line social workers, that will do so much to improve the circumstances that we are currently in and the outcome for children.

That point is very much reflected in residential care in children’s homes. There, we have had terrible disasters with children, which have made the profession very unattractive. On the continent, in Denmark and Germany, 50 per cent of looked-after children are in residential care. In Denmark, 90 per cent of the staff in children’s homes have a degree-level qualification. Comparative research highlights the fact that staff there are so much freer to interact with the children. They can hug, they can kiss, they can go into the child’s bedroom at night; whereas we are bound by regulation after regulation because we put people who were never equipped to work with those vulnerable children. Disasters have happened, and we have put down layers of administrative red tape. I hope that is a helpful observation.

Baroness Meacher: I agree with the noble Earl that social work is a challenging and difficult job. That has never been adequately recognised over the years; the noble Earl has already addressed the pay issue. One could turn it around the other way, however, and say that social workers in general have done a rather good job if there is one tragedy with social workers involved every three or four years and one relates that to the numbers of children with whom social workers are involved year by year. These families are chaotic, if I may put it that way. They are difficult. They do not answer the door and so on; it is sometimes difficult to make contact. These are not easy situations to work with, but we live in a blame culture.

I happen to work in mental health. Occasionally, one of our patients commits a homicide. There have been terrible headlines about a homicide in my trust. But the fact is that homicides on the part of people

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with mental health problems have remained static over 50 years; homicides among the rest of the populations have increased markedly. You would never dream that from the press. I am sorry to raise something outside the debate, but it is related because the blame culture of the tabloid press is the problem. I am afraid that we are all affected by it. I feel for any Government dealing with legislation in the difficult areas of social services and mental health. One tragedy: headlines, pressure, reports, bureaucracy; that is what happens and what has happened in this field. All I am asking is whether we, as a legislature, can perhaps encourage our Government to sit back and say, “Let’s ensure that we are getting the balance right”. But I completely agree with the noble Earl about professionalism and adequate pay.

The Earl of Listowel: I thank my noble friend. I was just reflecting on the experience in the prison system, where there have been no suicides of children in local authority secure units, but there have been in larger, less specialist provision. Both points have some weight; my noble friend’s probably has more than mine. I absolutely take her point.

Lord Adonis: This has been an extremely useful debate on social work practices. I hope that I am able to provide the reassurance that the noble Earl seeks. I do so in no small part by addressing the crux of the debate: when the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred to the proposal for social work practices. I stress that there is no government proposal for social work practices: there are proposals for pilots of social work practices. To get this debate in perspective, I stress that we are talking about six to nine pilots—a small number—within a large social work profession and local authority system. The issue to be addressed by the Committee, to which the Government have applied their mind, is whether, given the scale of the challenges we face in social work—so well set out by the noble Earl and other Members of the Committee—it is sensible for a Government who are seriously undertaking their responsibilities to see that we provide the best possible standards of care, to pilot—and I stress pilot—one possible approach which, alongside others, may have a beneficial role to play as part of the wider system.

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