Baroness Barran (Con)

I put on record how much I welcome the noble Baroness’s last comments about a round table, and meeting and talking to a range of directors of children’s services. It is reassuring and the right thing to do, and it builds our confidence in the Government’s commitment to get this very important area of policy right. I appreciate that enormously, because I know that ministerial diaries do not have a great deal of slack in them. On this amendment, just to be clear, I appreciate the noble Baroness’s clarification regarding child protection. However, I was not worried there was a risk of someone who was not a qualified social worker writing a report in those cases, and I was not talking about independent social workers, nor about particular experts, such as the example the noble Baroness gave of someone with specific medical expertise. I was thinking more about the situation of merged targeted help and child in need teams writing reports when Cafcass is not writing the Section 7 report. In that situation you might have, for example, a youth worker or someone who does not have the expertise and training preparing court reports—I am not saying they could not have it, but traditionally they have not had that expertise. I will reread Hansard, but I think what I heard was that they will be able to write those reports but under supervision from a social worker. If I have misunderstood and they will not be able to, maybe the noble Baroness could set the record straight now, or maybe she would like to go away, double check and write me a very short letter. I would appreciate that. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.