Children and Young Persons Bill 2007

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• Overview of the Children and Young Persons Bill
• CYP Bill Impact Assessment
• CYP Bill Equality Impact Assessment
• Care Matters: Time for Change

Additional materials

Policy Papers

• Disabled Children narrative
• Family and Friends narrative
• Voice of the child and corporate parenting narrative

Policy Statements

• Policy statements for the CYP Bill

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The Children and Young Persons Bill (CYPB) introduced in the House of Lords on 14 November 2007 fulfils commitments made in the White Paper, Care Matters: Time for Change. The Bill passed from the Lords to the Commons on Tuesday 25 March 2008.

The Bill will strengthen the legislative framework underpinning the care system - ensuring the right structure is in place to enable children and young people to receive high quality care and support. It will also ensure that those entering the care system are able to share the same aspirations as those in supportive family homes. The CYPB is only a part of the Care Matters reform package and will be supported by regulations and an update to the Children Act 1989 Guidance, as well as proactive partnerships with local authorities to share and develop good practice.

The CYPB will:

• enable the Department to test out a new model of social work provision by allowing local authorities to pilot ‘Social Work Practices’;
• improve care planning by strengthening the role of the Independent Reviewing Officer to ensure that the child’s voice is heard when important decisions that affect their future are taken;
• improve stability for children by ensuring that children are placed in the most appropriate accommodation, so that where it promotes a child’s welfare, local authorities will have to give preference to placing a child with a relative, place the child near to their home, with their siblings if they are also in care, and ensure that their education or training is not disrupted;
• ensure every school has a designated teacher for children in care who will promote and encourage children’s achievement;
• ensure children in care, including those who enter custody, are visited regularly by the responsible local authority;
• require local authorities to take steps to secure sufficient suitable accommodation within their area. The inspection regime for children’s homes will also be amended to ensure swift and decisive action against substandard homes;
• make ‘independent visitors’ - who befriend children - available to all children in care who want one;
• ensure young people up to 18 are not forced out of care before they are ready by giving them a greater say over moves to independent living and ensuring they retain support and guidance as long as they need it;
• provide more support for care leavers, including an entitlement to a £2,000 bursary for those who go on to higher education and extend the entitlement to a Personal Adviser to support young people who wish to continue (or resume) an education and training pathway up until the age of 25; 
• help ensure short breaks are provided to help parents caring for disabled children by giving them breaks from their caring responsibilities;
• help improve the support for family and friend carers, enabling local authorities to provide better financial support to carers and make it easier for family carers to obtain orders granting legal permanency;
• improve the Department’s ability to safeguard children by extending the ‘sunset clause’ which enables the introduction of a private fostering registration scheme and amending the procedures for reporting on child deaths.
  
  

For more information about the Children and Young Persons Bill, please email cyp.billteam@dcsf.gsi.gov.uk or telephone 020 7273 5907.