by Conrad Landin
in Cardiff
CHILDREN will be exposed to a “postcode lottery of protection” if new Tory legislation is passed into law, family court workers yesterday.
An emergency motion passed unanimously at union Napo’s annual general meeting said the government’s Children and Social Work Bill gives local councils power to slash and privatise support for vulnerable youngsters.
The Bill is due to be heard in the House of Lords later this month.
Family courts rep Nicky Kenny told the AGM the new laws would leave children “open to abuse of a different kind from the private profitmaking services.” Youngsters would be “exposed to the profit-making organisations that probation clients have become accustomed to,” she said.
“With no consultation, this government is deciding that those protections are all dispensable. It’s not about improving services but farming out the resource-intensive, difficult work.”
Tory Children’s Minister Edward Timpson has said the Bill will “allow great social workers to try out new approaches and be freed from limiting bureaucracy, all in the interests of achieving more for children.”
But the British Association of Social Workers has argued that it “fundamentally undermines a rights-based approach to meeting children’s needs.”
The association says removing the requirement to meet statutory obligations for social work “enables local authorities to incentivise private and not-for-profit providers to bid for parts or all of children’s social care pathways.”
Basic social care for children is one of several “statutory” services which councils currently have less ability to cut when their budgets are reduced.
conradlandin@peoples-press.com