The Children Bill- Provisions For Wales

The Children Bill was published last Thursday.  We set out our broad intentions for the Bill in the document Children and Young People: Rights to Action, which has been circulated to all members.  I should now like to take this opportunity, to inform members in more detail of its proposals for Wales.

The Bill proposes a major addition to the devolution settlement by transferring the functions of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS) in Wales to the Assembly Government.  CAFCASS looks after the interests of children involved in family proceedings, advising the family courts on what it considers to be in the children's best interests.   Family proceedings can include private law issues such as divorce and public law matters like adoption and care proceedings.  As part of the Assembly, CAFCASS staff in Wales will be at the heart of the children’s services agenda.  Devolution will involve almost 200 staff throughout Wales who perform a vital role for children.
We have also taken advantage of the Bill to take forward our partnership planning agenda for children and young people.  It will introduce a duty for the statutory partners to co-operate to improve the well being of children.  We shall use guidance to give a statutory basis to the Children and Young People’s Framework Partnerships and their sub-groups, the Children’s Partnerships.  In this way their relationship will be rationalised with the Young People’s Partnerships, which already have a statutory basis founded on the Learning and Skills Act 2000.  Local partners will be able to pool budgets for children where they decide this makes sense.

Local authorities will be required to identify a lead director for children and young people with responsibility for planning under the Framework, thus giving a high profile and focus to children and young people’s issues. A lead elected member for children and young people will reinforce the director’s role. Unlike in England, these posts will not change accountability for service delivery. They will be about overseeing the partnership planning process.  In Wales, local health boards and NHS Trusts will also be asked to identify lead executive and non-executive directors for children and young people.  

There will be no requirement for children’s trusts in Wales andthe identity of the lead directors and members will be decided locally. However, identifying a senior officer to take responsibility for the Framework planning process will give a high profile to children and young people’s issues.

We will be discussing with local authorities the most appropriate ways of implementing these requirements, taking into account differences in structure and political management arrangements across authorities.


Co-operation is important between local authorities as well as within local authority areas.  There is an existing requirement in the Children Act 1989 on local authorities and other statutory agencies to assist a local authority in the exercise of its functions.  I intend to encourage authorities to work together under this duty on issues such as provision of placements for looked after children, where specialist facilities cannot be provided within the boundaries of every authority.

Local Area Child Protection Committees perform vital roles but have not been equally effective in all areas, and can suffer from a relatively low priority in the eyes of some partners.  The Bill includes measures for both England and Wales to enhance their work by placing them on a statutory basis as “local safeguarding children boards”, in line with Lord Laming’s recommendation.  

The Assembly will also be taking powers in the Bill to make regulations relating to the establishment of databases to share information about children at risk.  As with other aspects of the Bill, we shall want to discuss the practicalities and identify funding before implementation.

I wish to make sure that changes and good practice are taking place across Wales to protect children in all circumstances and have appointed Gwenda Thomas AM to lead a review of the progress that has been made in safeguarding vulnerable children.  The review will look at the delivery of services on the ground to see how lessons have been learnt and guidance on good practice has been put into action.  It will make recommendations on action that is needed. The review team will talk to providers of services, the Children’s Commissioner and to children and young people in collecting evidence, and is due to present its report in around a year’s time.

Care plans for children must include details of their education needs and how they are to be met. Those who are still looked after until they are old enough to leave school must be helped by the local authority to pursue their education or follow a training course. The Bill will include a new duty on local authorities to promote the education of looked after children.

The Bill includes provision for England and Wales to strengthen current arrangements for the notification of private fostering to local authorities.  In the unlikely event that the strengthened notification procedure does not work well, there will be provision for a registration scheme without further legislation being required, if it is implemented within a reasonable timescale.

We wish to be able to act effectively where an authority is failing in its children’s services function.  We intend to make provision in the Bill to take the same power of intervention over social services as currently exist for education under the Education Act 1996.  This will provide greater flexibility in the type of interventions that might be made.  The power will not be implemented before detailed discussion with local government in the context of the existing intervention protocol.

The Bill shows England following Wales’ lead in establishing a Children’s Commissioner albeit on a different basis from our Commissioner. Nothing in the Bill reduces the powers of the Children’s Commissioner for Wales.  The two Commissioners will, however, need to work closely together to ensure clarity in the area of non-devolved functions.

I am also pleased to note parliamentary interest to reform the defence of reasonable chastisement for parents who smack children. This is a welcome start. The Assembly Government has always made clear its opposition to the physical punishment of children and we look forward to the opportunity this presents.

Finally, there will be a number of detailed provisions concerned with issues such as registration of daycare providers, payment of adoption panel members and financial support for parenting.  In addition, there will be revisions to Child Safety Orders to enable positive intervention to address the behaviour of children under 10 who commit what would be offences if they were over the age of criminal responsibility.  Child Safety Orders are a non-devolved matter affecting England and Wales.

Services for children and young people in Wales have been placed under the spotlight in recent years.  Too often the coverage has been negative.  There is also much good practice and successful shared working being carried out by dedicated staff upon which we need to build.  I believe that the Children Bill represents an important opportunity to move forward in the policy direction we have already set in Wales. I commend it to members.