Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Second Reading

Summary

We welcome measures that will:

• ​​​​​Help more children stay living safely with their immediate or extended families. The Bill makes it mandatory for local authorities to offer ‘family group decision making’ (Section 1), so that families can explore options to address concerns about a child’s welfare before care proceedings are commenced. It also introduces a ‘local offer’ for kinship carers, which could make it easier for children to live with extended family or friends rather than enter care.
• Enable the introduction of a consistent identifier for children (Section 4). This should help to facilitate the sharing of vital information between professionals and services responsible for keeping children safe, so that risks are identified and addressed earlier.
• Help more care leavers find safe and stable accommodation. The Bill should help reduce homelessness amongst care leavers by including a new duty on local authorities to publish a ‘local offer’ outlining the support available (Section 8). It will also enable all care leavers leaving residential care to be assessed for an enhanced offer of “Staying Close” following the successful pilot of these schemes in a number of Local Authorities (Section 7).
• Help to mitigate the impact of poverty for some children and families. The Bill will introduce free breakfast clubs in all primary schools (Section 21). It is crucial that these breakfasts are nutritious. The Bill will also protect families against high school uniform costs (Section 23).
• Create compulsory registers of children not in school, and require local authority consent to home educate if a child registered at a school has a child protection plan or is subject to a safeguarding investigation (Section 24). We would welcome further strengthening.