Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)

We have come on to more understandable consideration of how the teams will work in practice, particularly with respect to local authority responsibility. Multi-agency child protection teams will be effective only if they are truly multi-agency. There is an understandable concern here about the significance of the role of local authorities, but it is probably also worth remembering, as we discussed on Tuesday, that safeguarding partners—local authorities, health and police—have joint and equal responsibilities for safeguarding in legislation. Through the multi-agency child protection teams, we are trying to ensure that day to day, in operational terms, with respect to individual children and cases, there is a practical way for those responsibilities, and the information that those agencies may have, to be brought together in that full picture about the child. I spoke earlier about the findings from the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel on child protection. To tackle the issues it identified, we need, as I have suggested, multi-agency experts in a room together, sharing information and bringing their different perspectives to decisions that protect children. It is important that we ensure the right people are deployed to those teams so that expert, swift and decisive action is taken to protect children, and we recognise the importance of safeguarding partners reporting on the impact of their arrangements to make sure that is happening. We need to base that, as has been the argument on other parts of the Bill, on the best possible evidence, which is both the professional work that constituted the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel and, as others have mentioned, the independent review by my honourable friend Josh MacAlister. Of course, we also need the evaluation that noble Lords have talked about. It will come in more than one stage. There will be evaluation of the process and some of the practicalities of setting up the process that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, referenced, and, later, of the impact of the teams. Amendment 30 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, seeks local discretion in multi-agency team membership and organisation. Requiring safeguarding partners to nominate a minimum team reflects partners’ collective duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in their area. They will also have, as I outlined in the previous group, flexibility to add other agencies or individuals, reflecting local needs and to tackle local harms. We know from Families First pathfinders that these teams are already making a real difference. In Ofsted’s recent inspection of children’s services, Dorset, one of the pathfinders, received an “outstanding” judgment. The report noted that when children are at risk of significant harm, strategy meetings are well attended by partner agencies and that effective information-sharing and analysis of risk lead to children receiving the right intervention and support. It is right that we celebrate the success of and learning from pathfinders and, as I suggested previously, learn from where things have been more challenging. On the resourcing, as I said on Tuesday, this transformation journey is being supported from our £500 million Families First Partnership Programme funding. The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, made a couple of specific points. On whether this is doing away with an independent chair, one of the main purposes of multi-agency child protection teams is to have a fresh pair of eyes coming in at the point of the Section 47 inquiry. The new lead child protection practitioner role will work—in fact, is working in pathfinders—in a very similar way to the current independent chairs. I take her point about the need for a fresh view and independence, but that is built into the design of the teams. On whether this would mean children having more than one social worker, children and families will stay rooted in family help throughout. Multi-agency child protection teams will lead the child protection functions, working with and wrapping support around children, families and the family help lead practitioner. The multi-agency child protection team brings expertise and a fresh focus on significant harm. The lead child protection practitioner will be an experienced social worker but will not be the case lead. In other words, the important ongoing relationship, which I know children feel strongly about, with a person they can understand, work with and gain a relationship with, will remain in place, but additional expertise will be brought to this from the multi-agency child protection team. On Amendment 37, which would place in the Bill a requirement for the Secretary of State to report annually on the team’s impact and activities, I completely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that it is essential that we understand how multi-agency teams are leading to better outcomes for children and that that learning be shared across the system. That being said, safeguarding partners already have a statutory responsibility to publish annual reports on their multi-agency safeguarding arrangements. This will include reporting on multi-agency child protection teams once the teams come into force. Statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children, already sets out the information that should be included in yearly reports, and that will include evidence of impact. Guidance will be updated to include the reporting requirements for these new multi-agency teams. There will be, at the level at which it really matters, a responsibility to account for and report on the nature and success of the multi-agency safeguarding arrangements. On that basis, and with those assurances, I hope that the noble Baroness feels able to withdraw her amendment.