My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (Ed Balls) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.

Today the Government are publishing a comprehensive action plan in response to Lord Laming’s report, The Protection of Children in England: A Progress Report.

Ministers announced to Parliament on 12 November that we had asked Lord Laming to prepare an independent report of progress being made in the delivery of arrangements to protect children, and to identify any barriers to effective, consistent implementation and how these might be overcome. On 12 March, Lord Laming published his report, which the Government welcomed and to which we responded immediately, accepting all his recommendations and taking swift, decisive action to begin to take them forward.

Lord Laming’s report confirmed that robust legislative, structural and policy foundations are in place and that there is a widespread consensus that our Every Child Matters reforms set the right direction. He underlined the progress that has been made and the positive difference that people working with children, particularly those most at risk, are making every day. But he was also clear that there needs to be “a step change in the arrangements to protect children from harm”. He challenged us all—central government, local government, national and local partners, and the public—to do more.

Lord Laming’s report set out a comprehensive set of recommendations to ensure best practice is universally applied in every area of the country, to strengthen national and local leadership and accountability, and to provide more support to local leaders and for the front-line workforce. The Government began immediately to act on his recommendations:

we appointed Sir Roger Singleton, from 1 April, as the first ever chief adviser on the safety of children to advise the Government on strategic priorities and the effective implementation of safeguarding policy;

we committed to establishing a new national safeguarding delivery unit to drive continuous improvement in front-line practice across all services, and provide support and challenge to every local authority and every children’s trust as they fulfil their safeguarding responsibilities;

we confirmed that we would revise the statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children, to reflect Lord Laming’s recommendations to strengthen policy and practice, including in relation to serious case reviews;

we announced that we would strengthen the challenge role of local safeguarding children boards (LSCBs), clarify the relationship between children’s trusts and LSCBs, and that LSCBs should in future be independently chaired;

we committed to opening up the child protection system to greater public scrutiny by requiring every LSCB in the country to appoint two members of the general public to its board;

we announced immediate measures to improve support for front-line social workers, address recruitment and retention, and to begin to raise the morale of the profession;

we appointed Francis Plowden to lead an independent review into court fees in public law cases brought under the Children Act 1989 to establish whether they are a barrier to social workers taking legal action to ensure the safety of a child; and

we confirmed that we would be reviewing the range of safeguarding targets and publish a new framework for safeguarding targets in autumn 2009.

Today’s action plan sets out the Government’s detailed response to Lord Laming’s report, addressing every one of his 58 recommendations, to deliver the step change which he has called for. Sir Roger Singleton has advised us on the development of this action plan and has written to me welcoming our response to Lord Laming and setting out his future role and priorities as chief adviser. Sir Roger will submit his first annual report to Parliament, reporting on progress nationally including the delivery of the actions we are setting out today, in April 2010. I am establishing a new ministerial subgroup of the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Children, Young People and Families which will meet quarterly, with Sir Roger, to keep progress under review.

Sir Roger has announced an expert group to support him in his role as chief adviser and he will work with us to establish the new cross-government national safeguarding delivery unit, which will be operational by July 2009. We will also be establishing a partnership network to work with the unit and the chief adviser to pursue specific issues impacting on effective front-line safeguarding practice.

Earlier this year, we established the social work task force to carry out a “nuts and bolts” review to boost the confidence and capacity of the social work profession. The task force is today publishing its initial advice. It covers how we should implement Lord Laming’s recommendations on social work, how we should reform the integrated children’s system, and the key challenges which the task force sees in reforming and renewing the social work profession over the coming months.

I strongly welcome the task force’s advice. We are already investing £73 million in social work reform and I am announcing today a new £58 million social work transformation fund to provide an immediate boost for social work training and support as well as recruitment and retention, with a particular focus on those new to the profession by:

sponsoring 200 university places from September so that the brightest and highest achieving graduates, from any discipline, can sign up to conversion courses to become part of the social work profession;

a new recruitment campaign specifically targeting potential returners to give the current work force a boost from qualified social workers who may have left the profession. The campaign will start this month with former social workers able to access information online and, from July, through a new helpline to help social workers link up to LAs with vacant posts. Our aim is that there should be 500 social workers back in the workplace as early as this autumn, supported by refresher training where they need it;

rolling out the successful newly qualified social workers (NQSW) pilots so that all new social workers joining statutory and voluntary services this September, and all overseas children's qualified social workers who need it, can receive high-quality supervision and protected time for training to support them in becoming confident and competent in their first year of practice;

funding a new practice-based masters in social work to start in early 2011 so that social workers can continue to further knowledge, skills and expertise; and

a new advanced social work professional status programme to create senior practice-focused roles to keep excellent and experienced social workers in children’s services. LAs working with the CWDC will begin assessing candidates in October so that they can be in post and start making a difference on the front-line by early next year.

Keeping children and young people safe is our top priority and it must be the responsibility of us all. Today’s action plan confirms this Government’s commitment to implementing Lord Laming’s recommendations and our determination to do everything possible to make the arrangements in this country for protecting children the best in the world.

Copies of the action plan, advice from the social work task force and Sir Roger Singleton’s letter to me are being placed in Libraries of both Houses.