Changes to local authority responsibilities
Children’s Trust Boards
The government is neither prescribing nor proscribing the need for a Children’s Trust Board. It is acknowledged that in many areas Boards are in place and are working well and local authorities may wish to maintain them.
However, it also says that other partnership arrangements could be as effective in securing the wellbeing of local children and young people. The legal obligation to have a Board will be revoked when the Education Bill 2011 receives Royal Assent. Statutory guidance was removed from 31 October 2010 as was the requirement for the production of children and young people’s plans.
The duty to improve the wellbeing of children and young people remains.
It is enshrined in the Children Act 2004. This defines wellbeing as relating to:
(a) physical and mental health and emotional well-being;
(b) protection from harm and neglect;
(c) education, training and recreation;
(d) the contribution made by them to society;
(e) social and economic well-being.
Children and young people’s plan (CYPP)
The statutory requirement to produce a CYPP has been removed. Local authorities and their partners can decide how best to provide for the needs of their area. Local partnerships are free to publish their own strategic plan as they see fit, but the format and contents are no longer centrally prescribed. Relevant partners are not be under any formal duty to ‘have regard’ to any voluntary plan.
Duty to cooperate
The government states that ‘partnership working gets results’. There are no plans to remove this principle which is enshrined in the ‘duty to cooperate’ (section 10 of the Children Act 2004) from legislation. Local authorities should continue to lead partnership arrangements that make sense for local people and services.
‘Relevant partners’ continue to be
- district councils
- strategic health authorities
- primary care trusts
- youth offending teams
- police
- probation services
- persons providing Connexions services in pursuance of section 68 of the Education and Skills Act 2008
- Jobcentre Plus.
The Education Bill 2011 when it receives Royal Assent, will remove the ‘duty to cooperate’ from
- maintained schools
- FE and sixth-form colleges
- non-maintained special schools
- academies, city technology colleges and city colleges for the technology of arts.
These bodies will no longer have to be represented on Children’s Trust Boards, and schools and colleges will be free to form partnership arrangements in the way that best meets local circumstances. The Government has also indicated its intention to, at the next legislative opportunity and subject to the will of Parliament, remove Jobcentre Plus from the list of relevant partners.
Lead member and director of children’s services
There are no plans to repeal the legislation requiring local authorities to appoint lead members and directors of children’s services. Government statements indicate that ‘in due course the statutory guidance may be reviewed in the context of wider legislative changes to reduce bureaucracy around planning for children’s services’.
