By Tim Spencer-Lane
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill was introduced in Parliament on 17 December 2024.Part 1 of the bill contains reforms to children’s social care. Part 2 makes provision relating to education in England. Most of the social care reforms were foreshadowed in the policy paper, ‘Keeping children safe, helping families thrive’, which was published in November 2024.
This article summarises the main provisions that will impact on social workers.
Family group decision making
The bill would add a new section to the Children Act 1989 to impose a duty on local authorities who are considering making a court application for a care or supervision order, to offer a family group decision making (FGDM) meeting to the child’s parents or any person with parental responsibility for the child.The purpose of the FGDM meeting is to enable a child’s family network to meet to discuss the welfare needs of the child and to make a proposal in response to concerns about the child’s welfare.
The duty does not apply if the local authority determines that it would not be in the child’s best interests.
Child protection and safeguarding
Safeguarding partnersThe bill seeks to amend the Children Act 2004 to make it a requirement for the three safeguarding partners (the local authority, NHS integrated care board and police) in each local area to include education and childcare “relevant agencies” as mandatory participants in their multi-agency safeguarding arrangements. Currently, safeguarding partners only need to make arrangements to work with a “relevant agency” if they consider it appropriate to do so.
Multi-agency child protection teams
The bill would insert new sections into the Children Act 2004 to require safeguarding partners to establish and run at least one multi-agency child protection team in their area. The main purpose of these new teams is to support the local authority in delivering its child protection duties under section 47 of the Children Act 1989.
ICBs will be required to nominate a health professional with experience in relation to children’s health, while the police will be required to nominate an officer to be part of each multi-agency child protection team. The local authority is required to nominate someone with experience in education in relation to children and a social worker with experience in relation to children, and may appoint other appropriate individuals after consultation with safeguarding partners.
Information sharing
The bill would also amend the Children Act 2004 to impose a duty on specified persons and bodies to disclose information that may be relevant to safeguarding or promoting the welfare of a child, to other relevant persons in certain circumstances. The duty applies where the person considers that the disclosure may facilitate the exercise by the recipient of any of its functions that relate to safeguarding or promoting the welfare of children, unless disclosure would be detrimental to the child.
The duty to share information will apply to persons listed in section 11(1) of the Children Act 2004, including local authorities, ICBs, NHS trusts/foundation trusts, police forces, probation services and youth offending teams, along with education and childcare “relevant agencies”.
Consistent child identifier
The bill also makes provision, under the Children Act 2004, for a consistent child identifier (also known as a single unique identifier or SUI). Designated persons must include the consistent identifier when processing information about a child for safeguarding and promotion of welfare purposes.
Support for children in care or kinship care, and those leaving care
Kinship local offerThe bill would amend the Children Act 1989 to require local authorities to publish information about their general approach to supporting children in kinship care and kinship carers in their area, as well as financial support which may be available to them in their area (the “kinship local offer”).
Local authorities must take such steps as are reasonably practicable to ensure that children in kinship care and kinship carers receive the information in the kinship local offer.
Supporting educational achievement
Under amendments to the Children Act 1989, local authorities would be required to take appropriate measures to support the educational outcomes of children in need and children in kinship care.
The steps that can be taken under this duty include enabling children to overcome barriers to their educational achievement and improving educational attendance. The duty is a strategic duty, which does not extend to the educational outcomes of individual children.
The local authority must appoint at least one person to discharge the duty (in practice this is usually the virtual school head).
Supporting care leavers
The bill would also introduce a new provision in the Children Act 1989 to require each local authority to consider whether each former relevant child (up to age 25) requires “staying close support” and where their welfare requires it, to offer that support.
“Staying close support” is support to assist the former relevant child: (1) to find and keep suitable accommodation and (2) to access services relating to health and wellbeing, relationships, education and training, employment and participating in society. Support means the provision of advice, information and representation.
There are also amendments to the Children and Social Work Act 2017 to require each local authority to also publish the arrangements it has in place to support and assist care leavers in their transition to adulthood and independent living.
Accommodation of children
Regional co-operationThe bill seeks to amend the Children Act 1989 to give the secretary of state powers to direct two or more local authorities to make regional co-operation arrangements to carry out their functions in relation to the accommodation of looked after children.
The arrangements could be: (1) to carry out their strategic accommodation functions jointly, (2) for those functions to be carried out by one of the local authorities on behalf of the others or (3) for a corporate body, of a kind that may be specified in the secretary of state’s direction, to support them in carrying out those functions.
Deprivation of liberty
The bill also includes a number of changes to section 25 of the Children Act 1989. It would change the references from “restricting” liberty to “depriving” children of their liberty, to better reflect the nature and purpose of this section.
The bill would also provide for the authorisation of the deprivation of liberty of children in alternative placement types beyond just a secure children's home. It brings within the scope of section 25 accommodation provided for the purpose of care and treatment of children that is capable of being used to deprive a child of their liberty (“relevant accommodation”).
The secretary of state would have powers to set out in regulations: (1) the maximum period for which a child may be kept in relevant accommodation both with and without the authority of a court, (2) the cohort of children who may be placed in relevant accommodation, and (3) a description of the alternative accommodation.
Currently, many children are being deprived of their liberty outside of a statutory framework, via the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court.
The government’s intention is to “provide an alternative statutory route to authorise the deprivation of liberty of a child in a more flexible form of accommodation, bringing more deprivation of liberty cases under a statutory framework via section 25, including its criteria for access, mandatory review points and parity with [secure children’s homes] in terms of access to legal aid”.
Regulating provider groups
The bill would give new powers to Ofsted in relation to parent undertakings (ie where more than one setting is owned or controlled by the same private or voluntary provider group).The bill seeks to place a duty on parent undertakings to develop and implement an improvement plan where Ofsted have identified quality issues in multiple settings and reasonably suspects there are grounds for cancellation of registration in relation to those settings.
Should parent undertakings not comply with these requirements, Ofsted will have the power to issue an unlimited monetary penalty.
Tackling unregistered children’s homes
The bill also includes new powers for Ofsted to impose monetary penalties for breaches of the Care Standards Act 2000, including for operating unregistered children’s homes. This is designed to give Ofsted a quicker alternative to prosecution in these cases.Financial oversight regime
The bill would also introduce a financial oversight regime for relevant children’s social care providers who meet conditions that will be set out in regulations. These are likely to relate to the size of the provider and whether it would be difficult to replace were it to fail.The bill would give the secretary of state the power to require providers made subject to the regime to submit a “recovery and resolution plan”, setting out risks to their financial sustainability and actions they propose to take in response to these.
The secretary of state would also have the power to arrange an independent business review of a provider where there is significant financial risk to its sustainability. The secretary of state would also be under a duty to warn local authorities if there was a real possibility of relevant services failing, with potential adverse effects for the councils or any children looked after by them.
Limiting profits
The bill also provides for regulations to be made enabling the secretary of state to cap any profit made by a non-local authority registered children’s social care provider. The secretary of state may only make such regulations if satisfied that it is necessary to do so.The government has said that it only intends to use the provision if other policies do not sufficiently reduce profiteering in the children’s social care placements market.
Agency workers
The bill seeks to provide a power for the secretary of state to make regulations applying to all English local authorities on the use of “agency workers” in children’s social care. The regulations may require that the agency workers meet certain requirements and make provision about how they should be managed and the terms on which they are supplied to local authorities.When in force, this regime would replace the rules, introduced in 2024 under statutory guidance, regarding local authorities' use of agency social workers in children's services.
Ill-treatment or wilful neglect
This bill also intends to close a gap in existing legislation by extending the offences of ill-treatment or wilful neglect by a care worker or care provider to someone in their care, under the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, to children aged 16 or 17 in regulated establishments in England.Currently, the 2015 act protects against ill-treatment or wilful neglect by care workers providing health care for an adult or child or social care for an adult, while the Children and Young Persons Act protects those under 16 from cruelty by those who have responsibility for them.
Children not in school
The bill proposes a number of reforms aimed at protecting children who are being educated at home. Most of these involve amendments to the Education Act 1996 and include:- Compulsory registers of children not in school in each local authority area in England, and a duty on local authorities to support the children on their registers (should a parent request this).
- Changes to the school attendance order (SAO) legal framework, for example, by introducing statutory timeframes for issuing and processing SAOs and making it an offence for parents to withdraw a child subject to an SAO from school without following the proper procedure.
- A requirement for a parent to obtain local authority consent to home educate if a child is: (1) subject to an enquiry under section 47 of the Children Act 1989, (2) on a child protection plan, or (3) at a special school or academy.
- A power for the local authority, in cases where a child is subject to a section 47 Children Act 1989 enquiry or on a child protection plan and is already being home educated, to review whether it is in the best interests of the child to be in school and require that the child be registered at a school.
- A duty for local authorities to consider the home environment and other learning environments when determining whether or not such children should be required to attend school.
What happens next?
The bill will be subject to debate in Parliament and will no doubt be amended during its passage. It is likely to become law sometime in spring 2025.Some provisions will come into force the day the act is passed (such as the powers to make regulations and orders), others will come into force two months later (such as the duty to publish information for kinship carers and children in kinship arrangements, and the extension of the ill-treatment or wilful neglect offences.
Some provisions will be implemented over a longer period of time. For example, the new multi-agency child protection teams will not be implemented until 2027.
Tim Spencer-Lane is a lawyer specialising in social care, mental capacity and mental health and is legal editor of Community Care Inform.
