
Written by Officer for Child Protection Professor Andrew Rowland, and Policy Manager for Child Protection and Ethics Grace Hastie.
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill (which you can read in full) was published on 17 December 2024 and will now progress through Parliament.
It is positive to see the publication of a Bill that focuses on children and the legislation does address several key issues. There are opportunities for the Bill to go further, however, and the RCPCH will engage with MPs and Lords to make the most of this opportunity to improve the health and wellbeing of children and young people.
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Following the UK general election in July 2024, the Government signalled its intention to bring a Children’s Wellbeing Bill to parliament. This proposal followed the pre-election manifesto commitment to ‘break down barriers to opportunity’, by addressing the challenges that limit the ambitions and potential of children and young people.
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill was published in December 2024. The inclusion of ‘schools’ in the title reflects the focus on education throughout the Bill, as both important partners in child protection and as the primary subject of much of the legislation.
Aside from schools, the Bill has a welcome emphasis on social care, information sharing and safeguarding. Several aspects of the Bill require further information, however, and there are some significant omissions where opportunities to improve the health and wellbeing of children have been missed entirely.
The below sets out four key areas of focus for the RCPCH within the Bill and outlines next steps.
1. Single Unique Identifier (SUI)
The Bill sets the foundation towards a single unique identifier for children and young people, which will be followed by regulations to determine the form and function of the SUI. The Bill also outlines an information sharing duty that is intended to give health, education and social care professionals confidence about the information they can share for safeguarding and child protection purposes.
The RCPCH has consistently called for a SUI, sometimes referred to as a consistent child identifier (CCI). The implementation of a SUI will mean that health, education and social care agencies use the same number to describe the same child in all of their records. In turn, this allows information to be more efficiently shared between different agencies, giving a much greater understanding of a child’s needs and any emerging risks. This is invaluable for both wellbeing and child protection purposes. It also has important research and public health implications for the future, both of which are positive developments.
The introduction of an information sharing duty is similarly positive. Professionals who work with children sometimes hesitate in sharing information about a child because they are unsure if it meets existing information-sharing thresholds. The information sharing duty should provide this clarity and confidence, leading to earlier intervention for children.
The RCPCH will continue to work with the government and partner organisations on the design and implementation of the SUI and information sharing duty.
More information about the SUI is available in the RCPCH position statement.
2. Looked after children and care leavers
The Bill makes several positive provisions for looked after children and care leavers. For example, the legislation places a duty on local authorities to publish a kinship local offer. This is intended to describe the support available in the local authority area for children living in kinship care arrangements and for kinship carers, which is a welcome step.
The Bill also requires local authorities considering care proceedings to offer a family group decision-making meeting (unless in exceptional circumstances). This is a good approach, though in practice it must be clear when family resources have been exhausted so that timely alternative support can be put in place. The needs of the child must also be kept central throughout the decision-making process. For example, timescales that are in the best interests of a child must not be allowed to inadvertently slip as a result of the family group decision-making requirement.
The requirement in the Bill for local authorities to provide staying close support for care leavers, if needed by the young person, is welcome and must be properly resourced.
Finally, the Bill requires local authorities to publish the arrangements they have in place to support and assist care leavers in their transition to adulthood and independent living (referred to in the Bill as a ‘local offer for care leavers’). The intention is that care leavers will know what services are available to them, and professionals will be able to signpost to offers.
The local offer for care leavers is a welcome requirement that is already good practice in many areas. Close working between local authorities and other services, such as NHS transition planning, will be key to its implementation. Subsequently, an evaluation of local offer provision will be important to address significant variation in service quality between different areas.
While these are broadly positive developments, the RCPCH notes that more placements for looked after children are urgently needed. This includes placements with therapeutic interventions to meet the needs of the most complex children. The Bill does give the Secretary of State for Education the power to establish regional care cooperatives (RCCs), which is intended to help increase availability by reducing the number of bodies seeking to procure accommodation. More must be done, however, to address this pressing issue and meet the needs of children and young people.
3. Multi-agency child protection teams
The Bill places a duty on safeguarding partners (local authorities, police and health) to establish multi-agency child protection teams. The teams must include a social worker, police officer, healthcare professional and person with education experience. Safeguarding partners will be able to include additional members in the multi-agency child protection teams to suit local need.
The teams are intended to improve coordination and cooperation among safeguarding partners and other relevant agencies. Their specific child protection activities will be set out in regulations.
The RCPCH notes that these provisions are subject to delayed commencement until 2027 and that the government intends to engage with the child protection sector on the implementation of the multi-agency child protection teams.
As such, prior to commencement, the RCPCH urges the government to clarify how multi-agency child protection teams will work with existing networks such as designated health professionals. This is vital to ensure that the multi-agency child protection teams complement ongoing work and maximise their own impact.
Relatedly, the Bill does not specify the nature of the ‘health professional’ in the multi-agency child protection team. This must be amended to mandate the inclusion of a senior doctor with child protection expertise in the team, who will provide essential clinical expertise and decision-making authority.
4. Equal protection from physical assault for children
The law in England and Northern Ireland sets out ‘reasonable punishment’ as a defence for parents who physically assault their child. As such, children in these countries are the only group of people in the UK who are not fully protected from physical assault; their safety is subject to an unjust and ambiguous legal framework.
Regretfully, the Bill does not currently address equal protection. This is a significant omission where the Bill could have, should have and must go further. The facts in favour of removing the reasonable punishment defence are overwhelming: there is no evidence that physical punishment links to any positive developmental outcome. On the other hand, the evidence shows that physical punishment is a major barrier to children’s health, wellbeing and safety. For example, children are more likely to experience deleterious physical and mental health outcomes, develop adverse behaviours and be subject to abuse.
The removal of the reasonable chastisement defence is not intended to penalise parents. Instead, it will allow child protection professionals to support parents and caregivers to adopt more effective and less harmful forms of discipline.
To truly fulfil their opportunity mission, the government must amend the Bill to remove the reasonable chastisement defence in England. The omission of equal protection in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is, as it stands, a significant missed opportunity to protect the health and wellbeing of children and young people.
More information about equal protection is available on this website.
Next steps for the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
The Bill will now progress through Parliament and, at the time of writing, is at the Committee stage in the House of Commons.
Our policy and public affairs teams will make the most of opportunities to influence the development of the Bill. They will engage with Parliamentarians of all parties, ministers and civil servants to advocate for the health and wellbeing of children and young people.