One of the BTL responders to the article in the Guardian called caroline Willow wrote as follows:
"Clauses 29 to 33 (formerly 15-19) are unprecedented, because they seek to enable councils, individuals appointed by Ministers to drive improvements in local authorities, and the Secretary of State, to kick-start the removal of legal duties towards children in a particular area. Hitherto, Acts of Parliament placing social care duties on England's 152 local authorities have applied across the entire country.
If these Clauses pass, social care duties - and the concomitant legal rights of children and families reliant on social care services - will vary between local authorities. A child living in a children's home in Barnet could have a completely different set of rights and safeguards from those living in children's homes in Bradford or Brighton. This postcode lottery will apply to all other children's social care services, from child protection, to adoption and fostering, to services for disabled children and leaving care.
Like other statutory instruments, regulations removing legal requirements will be subject to the negative or affirmative resolution procedure in Parliament.
Under the negative resolution procedure, Parliamentarians have 40 days to object to the draft regulations. Alternatively, both Houses must formally approve the regulations if the affirmative procedure is being used. Regulations are very rarely rejected. The Hansard Society reports that, "Since 1950 the House of Commons has rejected just 11 instruments and the House of Lords has rejected 7 (2 of which were decisions to delay). This equates to 0.01% of the total...".
It is impossible to count the number of legal duties (and corresponding rights) under threat. Every single social care requirement put into primary or secondary legislation since the 1933 Children and Young Persons Act is endangered.
It's naive and misleading to present these requirements as top-down burdens. As Kathy Evans says below, social care duties frequently arise from innovation in local authorities and children's charities. She and I personally lobbied for a duty on social workers to ascertain the child's wishes and feelings when conducting child protection enquiries. This became law in 2004. Now it's on the hit list. In 1987, Leicestershire County Council appointed the UK's first children's rights officer, to promote and protect the rights of children in care. One of the role's key functions was to stand by children when they made complaints. I know about this first-hand, because I did the job in the 1990s. Since 2002, local authorities have been required to provide independent advocates to children who make complaints. This was a hard-fought for legal development, which children and young people campaigned for alongside charities and others. It will also be at risk if Clauses 29-33 pass.
Andy Elvin wants to pilot children in foster care not having social workers or statutory reviews of their care. Before his post was axed, the Children's Rights Director published his report of 10 years' worth of consultations with children living away from home. The importance of social workers shines through. It is now 71 years since 12 year-old Dennis O'Neill was beaten to death by his foster father. We should remember that social worker visits to foster homes, and statutory reviews of children's care, were two of the outcomes of the Monckton Inquiry, established after this boy's death. Moreover, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by the UK in 1991, requires that the care and treatment of children placed away from home be periodically reviewed. These legal safeguards must be robustly defended. That doesn't stop us continuing to be creative in implementing them, of course.
Finally, if privatisation is such a no-go area, as Andy suggests, why hasn't the Government accepted the amendment to the Bill - tabled by Lord Ramsbotham, Lord Watson, Baroness Walmsley and the Lord Bishop of Durham - that would place the prohibition on profit-making in children's social care in primary legislation?
Check out the Article 39 website for regular updates on the Bill."
