DfE facing action over document on local authority duties towards vulnerable children

Children’s rights campaign group Article 39 has threatened legal action against the Department for Education over what it said was a misleading official document about local authority duties towards vulnerable children.

The group, which takes its name from Article 39 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, said the document, produced by the DfE’s children’s social care innovation programme, claimed to expose myths in common understandings of council legal obligations towards vulnerable children.

But it said this contained “numerous errors and misrepresentations of the statutory framework for children’s social care”.

One example it gave was that the document said councils could reduce visits to children in long-term foster care to twice a year, yet the law stated this was only permissible if the child gave their consent.

Article 39 said its freedom of information requests had revealed that children’s services regulator Ofsted disagreed with the innovation programme’s advice on council duties in respect of providing children and foster carers with their own social workers in the case of long-term placements.

It said the FoI responses revealed Ofsted had said: “The interpretation of all local authorities to date of the statutory guidance is to have two social workers – one supporting the child and the other the foster carers”, and that to reduce this to one would be “removing a significant safeguard for children in foster care”.

Carolyne Willow, Article 39’s director, said: “It is not good enough for the minister to say there have been no changes to the law and statutory guidance while at the same time leaving in circulation a document which indicates otherwise.

“Council duties towards vulnerable children cannot exist and not exist at the same time.”

Article 39 is represented by Oliver Studdert, partner in public law at law firm Simpson Millar, and Steve Broach, barrister at Monckton Chambers.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We have received the pre-action letter and will be responding in due course.”

Mark Smulian