Children and Families Act 2014 has failed to improve lives of children and young people, peers find

A lack of focus on implementing and monitoring the impact of the Children and Families Act 2014, despite it being envisaged as a "landmark piece of legislation", has led to the Act being “a largely missed opportunity”, a House of Lords committee has concluded in a report.

The report, ‘Children and Families Act 2014: A failure of implementation’ followed an inquiry conducted by the cross-party Children and Families Act 2014 Committee to scrutinise how the Act is working in practice and whether it is fit for purpose.

The report notes that the Act was envisaged to give greater protection to vulnerable children, better support for children whose parents are separating, introduce a new system to help children with special educational needs and disabilities and help for parents to balance work and family life.

However, the investigation found that “the sheer breadth of the areas covered by the Act, a lack of due concern given to implementation, poor data collection to measure impact and a lack of joined up action at all levels, has contributed to children and their families feeling let down by the system.”

Post-legislative scrutiny, by either Government or Parliament, the report notes, is “crucial to ensure that legislation is achieving its goals, providing value for money, and improving people's lives.”

The committee shared their concerns over the disparity between the number of bills passed each year and the number of Acts scrutinised by the Government.

The only part of the Act which has received “substantive post-legislative scrutiny”, according to the committee, is support for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

The report calls on the Government to prioritise 'early intervention', including legal advice appointments for separating couples and improved post-adoption support. The report said that early intervention results in better outcomes for children, yet it remained 'absent' across many areas which the committee looked at.

The committee noted that a key mandate of the inquiry was to “consider areas which were notably absent from the Act”. One of these areas was mental health.

The report notes: “Mental health emerged early on in our inquiry as a key theme which the 2014 Act didn’t address and which was indicative of a failure to support the wider needs of children and young people.”

Contributors to the inquiry outlined the poor mental health experienced by many children and young people, and their challenges in accessing care. The research found that this was particularly the case for those in social care or with special educational needs and disabilities.

Speaking on adoption, the report noted that it was not clear that a change of law removing the requirement to consider ethnicity had changed practice. It said: “Ethnic minority children still wait too long to be adopted; a disparity which is unacceptable.

“There remains a shortage of prospective adopters who are prepared to adopt children from minority ethnic groups and those who do are insufficiently supported.”

The report makes a number of recommendations on how the Government can “realise its ambitions initially set out in the Act across adoption, family justice and employment rights.”

Some of the key recommendations include:

• Addressing the unacceptable ethnic and racial disparities in the adoption system by establishing an outcome focussed task force, accountable to the Secretary of State.
• Improving post-placement support for adopters and kinship carers including the expansion of the Adoption Support Fund, allowing it to be used for more than therapy and ensuring it is also focused on early intervention.
• Developing a safe and modern digital contact system for post adoption contact. The Committee warn that the failure to modernise contact threatens to undermine the adoption system. They urge the Government to support adoption agencies in developing and rolling-out a safe and appropriate national digital system for contact as a priority.
• Addressing the ever-growing delays in public family law cases, which began long before the pandemic. This requires improved data gathering and sharing, and top-level leadership of an often-disparate system by Government through the Family Justice Board. The Committee urge the Government to publish an ambitious target for the timeliness of public children cases, along with an associated action plan laying out how it aims to achieve this reduction and how it will measure progress.
• Producing an impartial advice website for separating couples, providing clear information on the family justice system and to reconsider proposals to make mediation obligatory, by replacing Mediation Information & Assessment Meetings and the mediation voucher schemes with a universal voucher scheme for a general advice appointment.
• Reviewing the current approach to empowering the voice of the child in family law proceedings including recommending the Family Justice Council reviews the guidance setting out the approach to judges meeting with children.
• Creating an ambition for a move towards a new dedicated 12-week paternity leave allowance and making flexible working a day one right to request and encouraging businesses to advertise jobs flexibly from the outset.
• Building robust systems for monitoring and assessing the implementation of legislation, including data collection and sharing and requiring the Government to publish a post-legislative scrutiny plan once an Act receives Royal Assent setting out how the success of an Act will be measured.

The committee noted within its conclusions that improved data collection and data sharing were necessary to track the performance of the family justice system, identify regional inequalities and ensure consistent outcomes for children and their families.

“The current absence of sufficient data on court outcomes is an evident failure of the system, and without improved data the Government is at risk of making major policy changes which have far reaching impacts on the lives of children and families without a sound evidentiary basis”, the report said.

Baroness Tyler of Enfield, Committee Chair, said: “The Children and Families Act 2014 was passed with the good intentions of giving greater protection to vulnerable children, better support for children whose parents are separating, a new system to help children with special educational needs and disabilities, and help for parents to balance work and family life.

“Regrettably, our inquiry has shown that this could have been the case, had any real focus been on implementing and monitoring the impact of the Act, without the added incessant churn within the Government.  Instead, it was a missed opportunity and has ultimately failed in meaningfully improving the lives of children and young people."

She added: “It was not until our inquiry was established that the Government gave any thought to a comprehensive post-legislative review of the whole Act, eight years after it received Royal Assent. Eight years is a long time in the crucial early years of these children.

“Throughout our inquiry, we have sought to hear directly from children, young people and their families and we are grateful for their time and insight, as they shared with us the challenges they face and how they feel let down by the very systems designed to support them.

“The welfare of children and young people should be the Government's paramount concern when developing policies in this area. We urge them not to allow another eight years to pass before they make the improvements which are so demonstrably necessary.” 

Lottie Winson