Debate contribution: Children’s Social Care Services

Debate contribution by Mr Mike Nesbitt on 8 October 2024.

MLA

Mr Mike Nesbitt

Party at the time

Ulster Unionist Party

Date

8 October 2024

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Committee Business

Heading

Children’s Social Care Services

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4581632

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Mr Deputy Speaker, thank you very much. I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate. I begin by recognising the need for immediate and sustained action — action — to protect and support vulnerable children and young people. I also acknowledge, as many Members have done, the excellent work of Professor Ray Jones in reviewing children's social care in Northern Ireland — not just the work of the report but his work since then, and his continued focus on ensuring meaningful change for children and families. I assure you that I share his determination to deliver that change. It is a fact, though — it will not be welcomed, I am sure, by Members — that the pace of change in some areas will be determined by factors beyond my control. Children's social care services have experienced significant pressures over the past number of years, made worse by COVID-19, workforce issues such as high vacancy and turnover rates, and increasing family complexities. We know that there is a strong correlation between deprivation and the need for intervention in family life. Around 43% of children in care come from the 20% most-deprived areas in Northern Ireland compared with 5% from the least-deprived areas. Previous research identified that children in the 10% most-deprived small neighbourhoods here were nearly six times more likely to be on the child protection register. We also know that child poverty rates have been rising. The review found that we have a higher rate of children being referred to children's social care services compared with the rest of the United Kingdom. We have a higher proportion of children in need of help, a higher proportion with child protection plans, and record numbers of children in care. The review, as Members will know, was commissioned in 2022, and reported in June 2023. The report made 53 recommendations along a continuum, ranging from the establishment of new ways of delivering and overseeing services through to hosting an annual conference. My Department consulted on 51 of the recommendations. We received 134 responses. Some recommendations were accepted in advance of that consultation, either on the basis that they were necessary things to do or on the basis that they reflected work that was already in train. Of the 53 recommendations, I have accepted 34. Three are now considered closed, four have not been accepted, and two are beyond the scope of the review.

I would like to make some progress. Ten of the 53 recommendations are subject to ongoing consideration, because they either are the responsibility of other Departments or require cross-departmental support in order to progress. Those include the recommendations that relate to having a Minister for children and families, the expansion of the Sure Start programme and the implementation of the Gillen review of civil and family justice and seven recommendations that relate to what Professor Jones termed:

"the most significant and core and crucial proposal",

which was the recommendation for a region-wide children and families arm's-length body. I think that Members will accept that those are significant steps to take, and we need to be assured that they have real potential to deliver the change that is being sought and that they will not destabilise services. Professor Jones concluded that there is a "systemic and endemic" children's social care crisis in Northern Ireland, caused not by individual failings but by the current children's social care structures, systems and processes. In August, I met Professor Jones, and it was clear that he had not changed his mind since the publication of his review report. It remains his view that the crisis needs to be addressed through changes in governance and organisational arrangements and through a renewed focus on supporting families, in line with the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995. Members have mentioned that he deemed us to be heavy on activity and rather light on action. I agree with him that, as I have said often, government is not about inputs and outputs but about outcomes and whether we deliver better ones. Members will understand that decision-making on those recommendations extends beyond my Department's remit. What is proposed is an arm's-length body that would incorporate not only children's social care services but potentially education welfare services, youth services and youth justice services.

I thank the Member for her intervention. To answer the direct question in a strict sense, I have not brought those issues to the Executive. I have taken the issue of the arm's-length body to the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Education, because they would be most involved with Health were an arm's-length body to be established. I took the issue of a Minister for children and families directly to the Executive Office, to the First Minister and the deputy First Minister. For clarity, the Minister of Justice is supportive of the establishment of an arm's-length body. The Department of Education has engaged with my departmental officials to seek further clarification and to explore further the implications of an arm's-length body. I have not received a definitive response from the First Minister and the deputy First Minister on the issue of a Minister for children and families. I will say this to the Member: the appointment of a Minister for children and families could be repercussive. For example, why not then have a Minister for older people? Those are the considerations that I imagine are being discussed in the Executive Office. There is scope for a new arm's-length body to be central to the implementation of the Children's Services Co-operation Act (Northern Ireland) 2015: a lead "children's authority", to use that Act's terminology. I pause at this point to pay tribute to former Member Steven Agnew, the man who brought the private Member's Bill to the Assembly that became that Act. My view is that a new ALB has to be more than the drawing together of children's social care from the five trusts. While Professor Jones proposed that the ALB should have a local footprint aligned to trust areas, I believe that we need to look at the regionalisation of some services, with them being provided in one place rather than five. That is consistent with my view that we must identify best practice where it exists and turn it into common practice across the five geographical trusts. The decision on the arm's-length body will mostly impact on the Department of Education and the Department of Justice, so, as I said, I have asked those Ministers for their views. These are not minor decisions, and I appreciate that the Education Minister wants to consider this very carefully, as I do. However, I know that we cannot ponder forever, and I do not intend to. It is my intention to bring a paper to the Executive in the coming weeks to seek their consideration of the recommendation that calls for a children and families arm's-length body. I also intend to seek Executive support for additional funding to enable a shift away from statutory intervention in family life. I totally agree with Professor Jones that greater and earlier support for families is needed in order to keep them together. I also agree with him that making that shift will require additional funding, at least in the short to medium term. Once the Executive process concludes, I will make a statement to the Assembly.

I thank the Member for his question. There was an opening Budget position, and then there was the June monitoring round, which released significant funds to the Department. We are optimistic that we will receive Barnett consequentials between now and year end. That is not to say, however, that that will ease our budgetary pressures. We are finding it extremely difficult to balance the books, and that is without considering pay pressures, which will need to be met in some form. There is no easy answer or good news on the budget for this year, and I anticipate that the same may well be the case in the next financial year. Work is in train to deliver against the 34 accepted recommendations, of which 27 have formally been assigned to the children's social care services strategic reform programme, including eight that we categorise as being guiding principles. The remaining seven recommendations are the responsibility of my Department to progress. That reform programme was established in April of last year and is overseen by senior leaders in children's social care within the Department, by the health and social care trusts and by other departmental arm's-length bodies. The Department of Education, the Department of Justice and trade union side are also represented. The voluntary and community sector is embedded at all levels of the reform programme, including in a dedicated work stream built around the Reimagine Children's Collective. I express my gratitude to the collective for the leadership that it has shown. Among other things, the reform programme identifies effective practice in Northern Ireland and beyond, and plans to replicate that practice, where appropriate, to ensure that the best use is made of existing resources in order to achieve consistency across the region. For example, work is ongoing to identify the root causes of waiting lists across children's social care services and to test solutions. Models of best multi-agency, front door practice in children's services across the UK and internationally have also been reviewed. A children's residential care strategy is being developed and work is under way to enhance residential capacity in the immediate term, including looking to new models of residential care to enable trusts to respond more flexibly to meet need and to enable children with complex needs to remain in Northern Ireland. We are also looking at the potential of introducing multi-site children's homes: homes with one manager and staff team that have the capacity to use space across multiple sites in order to better meet the needs of children by, for example, supporting time out or enabling children with acute needs to live in a smaller home environment.

I thank the Member for her intervention. Professor Jones raised concerns about the private sector beginning to infiltrate the provision of residential care for children in Northern Ireland. The absence of the private provision of children's social care was identified by him in that review as a strength. We have a small number of independent sector providers of residential homes. At 11 April this year, there were 55 registered children's homes in Northern Ireland, seven of which — 12·7% — were run by independent sector providers. Only two of the seven were operated by for-profit providers. That having been said, the pressure on statutory sector provision points to the need to work differently to fill placement gaps. We need to plan for and develop a wider range of accommodation options for children and young people, but I assure the Member that the private sector is not top of my list. Policy and legislative reform under the programme includes the continued implementation of the Adoption and Children Act and the A Life Deserved: Caring for Children and Young People in Northern Ireland strategy. Care-experienced children and young people are central to ongoing work to review care planning and looked-after child review arrangements, and a care pilot that aims to improve the quality and responsiveness of care planning is due to commence this month. Those are only examples; the time available does not permit me to do justice to the breadth of activity that is being undertaken. A paper that we prepared for the Health Committee, which was issued last week, gives a better sense of the ongoing work and the progress that is being made. The reform programme and the implementation of the review recommendations are now firmly interconnected. Other programmes of work are also relevant, principally work related to the reform of the social work workforce, which is being led by the Chief Social Worker in the Department. The number of social work training places funded by the Department increased from 260 in 2020 to 325 in 2024, which is the highest number on record. As I begin to run out of time, I want to touch on a couple of things. Mr Robinson was keen to know about the implementation programme. To do a whole-system reform, including the implementation of the review recommendations, will take not months; it will take years. I say that to be honest and practical about the timescales that are needed. One of the Members said that we should be boosting Sure Start. That belongs with the Department of Education. The Gillen review belongs with Justice, so, as I said, it is not just me. Finally, I commend the BBC and Tara Mills for the excellent programme 'I Am Not Okay', which was a wonderful piece of journalism that has had a huge impact on my thinking.

I just want to clarify that I said that I will bring a paper to the Executive "in the coming weeks" rather than in the next couple of weeks.

2,168 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:12 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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