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Children: Laming Report

My Lords, I congratulate the Government and my noble friend Lord Laming on an incisive report. However, I should like to ask the Minister about three areas of real concern that I have. My noble friend Lord Laming quite rightly describes—as I have on the Floor of this Chamber on a number of occasions—the stress and the strain experienced by social workers and the devaluation and the scapegoating that has happened over the years. We have lost experienced workers over many different Administrations and for many different reasons. I believe that the Every Child Matters framework provides a package in which social workers can regain their confidence, particularly regarding children, and see themselves once more as equal professionals with their colleagues in the police, teaching and the legal profession. It is a real problem when the report talks about the balance between challenge and support. There is no doubt that we need to challenge; we need a zero tolerance approach to anything that does not protect a child. Zero tolerance is all that will do. The problem is that social workers and other professionals such as health visitors work in an extraordinarily complex matrix. How that working-together and the way in which we are able to develop it reflect the way in which government departments work together will be the key to their being able to move forward. That is the challenge. However, unless we also give support, social workers in particular will remain demoralised and continue to feel that all that matters is ticking the right boxes for Ofsted and meeting a particular target, when what they want to do is to work closely and dynamically with children and families. I therefore have three questions for the Minister. How does she see this balance between challenge and support? How does she see social work practice moving forward in terms of reflective supervision when we have only a limited workforce, which was the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and who will carry the cases while we give people the space? How, when we are focusing on children, do we ensure that there is understanding of adults? I ask that because child development was not the only issue in the Baby P case; there was also the fact that the social workers had not necessarily been trained in understanding the dynamics of adults.