Children’s social care gets fifth minister in two years

Children’s social care has its fifth minister in two years, following today’s cabinet reshuffle.

David Johnston has succeeded Claire Coutinho as minister for children, families and wellbeing, after her elevation to the cabinet as energy secretary.

Coutinho spent just 10 months in post, though this was longer than her two immediate predecessors with responsibility for the sector – Kelly Tolhurst and Brendan Clarke-Smith – each of whom lasted two months, amid the turbulence of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss’s premierships. Before that, Will Quince spent 10 months as children’s minister.

Johnston’s appointment comes with children’s social care facing one of its biggest periods of reform in decades, on the back of the Department for Education’s (DfE) draft strategy, Stable Homes, Built on Love, issued in February.

Priorities for new minister

As part of this, his in-tray includes:

• Introducing controversial reforms to regulate agency social work in statutory children’s services.
• Amending the Working Together to Safeguard Children child protection guidance to allow non-social workers to hold child in need cases, in the face of criticism from Ofsted and the British Association of Social Workers that this would increase risk to children.
• Overseeing testing of the DfE’s plans to merge targeted early help and child in need services and introduce specialist social workers to lead child protection cases.
• Piloting the introduction of an early career framework for social workers in their first five years of practice, which the DfE has pledged to start doing later this year.
• Persuading councils to sign up to testing regional care co-operatives, which would absorb member councils’ responsibilities for placing children in care, amid significant scepticism among directors of children’s services.

He must also wrestle with the severe pressures in the care system for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, in the wake of a High Court judgment that ruled the government’s policy of routinely placing young people in hotels was unlawful.

However, he must balance these children’s social care duties with responsibilities for a range of other policy areas, including special educational needs and disability (SEND) and childcare, for which the government is also planning extensive reform.

An MP since 2019, Johnston’s background is in the voluntary sector, where he spent a decade leading the Social Mobility Foundation, a charity that supports young people from low-income backgrounds get into university and professional roles.

BASW concern

In response to the appointment, the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) England raised concerns about the turnover of children’s ministers.

While wishing Johnston well, BASW England said his appointment “sadly sends a message that a sustainable and consistent ministerial approach to children, their families and wellbeing is not a political priority for this government”.

“At a time of major upheaval and reform in children’s social care in England, we desperately need a leadership that is focused on the needs of children and families, not political ambitions,” it added. “The fact that Johnston is the fifth minister to take on this role in two years should worry all of us who want to see stability and support that is too often denied to the very children the minister seeks to represent.”