Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)

My Lords, I have five amendments in this group, all of which come from my knowledge and understanding of evidence-based work. I declare my interest as a trustee of the Foundations What Works Centre for Children and Families. I have been involved in this even longer than the noble Baroness opposite. My first job in this country was in 1970 in Newcastle, at what was then the first of the children’s departments after the Seebohm report. I had just qualified as a social worker specialising in family casework. You do not get anything like that these days. I was keenly aware that this country, in its legislation on children, responds to tragedies, and I have seen this all my working life. We do not start by asking what we need to give children the very best. We start from: “This child died in dire circumstances and we must make sure that it never happens again”. Of course, we have to do that, but we need legislation that starts by asking: what are the best ways to support families to enable their children to have the very best in life? We get things the wrong way round, so I am pleased that the Government are trying to start by asking what we mean by the well-being and best interests of children, and how we can start there, rather than just asking how we protect children. Protection is very important, but if we think about well-being first, many of them will not need a level of protection. My amendments all come from the work that Foundations has done on family group conferencing. I am delighted that the Government talk about family group decision-making in the Bill, but I want them to be brave and go to the next stage: the family group conference, which is now a well-established and researched evidence-based model. In 2023, Foundations completed a randomised control trial of family group conferences—the first in the UK and the largest in the world—which involved over 2,500 children and their families across 21 local authorities in England. The evaluation found that the children whose families were referred for an FGC at pre-proceeding stage were less likely to go into care. It also found that 12 months after the pre-proceedings letter was issued, 36% of children whose families were referred were taken into care, compared with nearly half, or 45%, of children who were not. Children who had been part of this process were less likely to go to court for the decisions about their care: only three in five—59% of children—who were referred to FGCs had care proceedings issued, compared with 72% of children who were not referred. They also spent less time in care: six months after the pre-proceeding letter, children whose families had been referred to FGCs spent an average of 87 days in care, compared with 115 days for those who had not been through the process. Foundations estimated that 2,293 fewer children would go into care within a 12-month period if FGCs were rolled out nationally. This in turn could save taxpayers over £150 million within two years, from a reduction in both court proceedings and the number of children entering the care system. From my perspective, when I was dealing with this in government and was responsible for social exclusion, it was so clear that when you used evidence-based programmes, although you did stop a bit of, “Let every flower bloom”, which we love in this country, you got much better outcomes for children; for example, by introducing parenting classes in Sure Start—I could say a lot more about that now, but I am not going to. We need to look at evidence-based programmes and use them. We do not have time to let these kids suffer while we think, “Oh, that might be a good idea. Why don’t we try that instead?” Until we have based something on evidence, we should be giving them the strength of what we know works.