9. Welsh Conservatives Debate: Independent review of children’s social care

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:51 pm on 7 December 2022.

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Photo of Julie Morgan Julie Morgan Labour 5:51, 7 December 2022

I think I did respond to you when you raised a similar question in the oral statement last week, that we have already agreed that there will four joint reviews between the different inspection bodies of child protection procedures over the next two years. So, I think I did tell you that when I responded before.

But we have done a lot of reviews, and I will repeat them: the thematic reports of the Wales Centre for Public Policy concerning looked-after children; the work during the last Senedd term of the improving outcomes for children ministerial advisory group; the Public Law Working Group's report and recommendations to safely divert children away from becoming subjects of public law proceedings; the 'Care Crisis Review'; and the Nuffield Foundation's 'Born into Care'. And this research, in addition to the findings of reviews carried out elsewhere—the ones that Gareth Davies referred to—have informed our priorities, and we already have a clear plan for radical reform of children's services in Wales that builds on almost 25 years of experience since devolution, and we do know that the challenges must be addressed.

This is what we're already doing: preventive interventions for families with children on the edge of care, including parental advocacy services; family group conferencing; family justice reform; and a national practice framework. The establishment of a national care framework for social care and a national office provides the vehicle for transformation with nationally commissioned services, and the development of a single, unified, safeguarding review will be a means to conduct one single review following serious incidents, enabling reviews to be conducted more quickly, avoiding duplication of multiple reviews, and enabling the identification and implementation of learning on a pan-Wales basis.

Also, I did say in my oral statement last week that the additional actions are being taken forward. CIW have agreed to undertake a rapid review of structures and processes in place to inform decisions about how a child is added to or removed from a child protection register. It's been agreed that a task and finish group will be established under the Wales safeguarding procedures project board to consider the existing legislation, guidance and procedures to ensure that these provide the right information required to fulfil their duties.

We're certainly not uninformed, and we are not complacent, and we will always be responsive to new evidence. So, all those things are going on, and we have accepted the five national recommendations, which will include considerable input from the Welsh Government in taking forward those five national recommendations, and the health board has already set about commissioning an independent review of the way that they conduct safeguarding procedures. But we know that this a very, very important issue, and that's why I've made it clear that I expect action to be taken quickly by all relevant agencies to address the learning themes and recommendations identified from the child practice review arising from Logan's death.

I am under no illusion regarding the challenges we are facing in ensuring that these priorities identified to improve our children's services are taken forward, but I haven't yet heard anything to persuade me that a national wide-ranging review would surface anything substantive or substantial of which we are unaware. If I thought there would be a benefit in having one of these reviews, of course I would want to do it. The interests of the children in Wales are at the absolute top of my agenda and the Government's agenda. But to conduct a review of this nature would draw in the time and resources of the very people who are needed right now to do the job in hand.

I am sure Members are aware of the extensive efforts that have to be put into a review in order for it to be carried out properly, and those are the people from our services who have to deliver the services, who have to improve things for children in Wales, and that is my real concern. When there is nothing very substantive that you can see by having a review, I cannot see it being justified by diverting people from the work that they're already doing.

Now is the time to support our front-line staff, rather than create more uncertainty for them, and now is the time to get behind the reforms. It's for this reason that I've requested that a summit for practitioners is arranged. We want to talk to and hear directly from the front line, to shape and improve how we transform children's services, while recognising the great work they do, but to share existing good practice.

This follows the first ever summit for care-experienced children and young people, which we held last Saturday in the museum in Cardiff, which was a very successful event. We had 40 care-experienced young people from over Wales. We had five Ministers who came, and we sat there all day and we listened to what those care-experienced young people said. And we've got a list as long as anything that we've got to go about, and we've got to do, and we are committed to the children in Wales to make those things happen.

But we can't do that if we've got to divert to a review on children's services in Wales. The point was made very forcibly by Huw in his contribution that this isn't just children's services. We've had some confusion in the debate about asking for a child protection review, about children's services, but it's a wide-ranging review that we'd have to have—[Interruption.] I don't—. I think—