Story updated 23 July 2024
A former social worker has been confirmed as the minister with responsible for children’s social care in the new Labour government.
Just over two weeks after Janet Daby’s appointment as a minister in the Department for Education, the DfE confirmed the scope of her responsibilities and her role as minister for children and families.
Daby’s brief is much more focused on children’s social care than that of her Conservative predecessors, David Johnston and Claire Coutinho, who were also responsible for special educational needs and disabilities, early years and childcare, online safety and children’s mental health.
These responsibilities have been placed with Daby’s DfE colleagues, early education minister Stephen Morgan and school standards minister Catherine McKinnell.
Focus on children’s social care
This leaves Daby with oversight over all aspects of children’s social care, local authority improvement in relation to children’s services, family support and parenting and family hubs, the local support centres for families set up by the Conservatives.
She will also be responsible for the “children’s unique identifier”, a policy in the Labour manifesto to give children and families their own distinct marker to prevent them from “falling through the cracks of public services” and aid information sharing between agencies.
Daby, a former fostering social worker, is also listed as having responsibility for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, a policy area not held by her predecessors as children’s minister and one that has traditionally sat within the Home Office. It is not clear whether the policy area as a whole has been transferred to the DfE.
Child protection reforms announced in King’s Speech
The confirmation of Daby’s role follows the government’s announcement of legislation to strengthen child protection and introduce registers of children not being educated in school, in last week’s King’s Speech.
The details of the child protection reforms are yet to be set out, while the government has also not confirmed how far it will take forward the children’s social care reforms initiated by its predecessor.
Those were designed to ensure that many more children are supported to stay with their families or, where this is not possible, with kinship carers; that children at risk were much better protected than is currently the case, and that those who did need to go into care received a much better experience and, as a result, better life chances than was currently the case.
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole 
Hampshire County Council 
Lincolnshire County Council 
Norfolk County Council 
Northamptonshire Children’s Trust 
South Gloucestershire Council 
Wiltshire Council 
Wokingham Borough Council 
Children and young people with SEND are ‘valued and prioritised’ in Wiltshire, find inspectors 
How specialist refugee teams benefit young people and social workers 
Podcast: returning to social work after becoming a first-time parent 
Podcast: would you work for an inadequate-rated service? 
Family help: one local authority’s experience of the model 
‘We are all one big family’: how one council has built a culture of support 
Workforce Insights – showcasing a selection of the sector’s top recruiters 
Facebook
X
LinkedIn
Instagram
I hope this will bring better results in children and families affected by decisions made by courts that aims more to separate rather than keep families together. I’m suffering having lost five children I do not even see them all because everything is dictated by social workers. I pray this changes.
Appease and please, eh! what of the systemic invalidation, the inertia, the stuckness and freeze embedded in the dramaturgy ~ Janet Daby will need all the help she can get and not simply from within the profession.
The appointment of Stella Creasy in a Ministerial role alongside Janet Daby could drive the creation of ‘citizen assemblies’ the omission of which is both a subtle and gross oversight.
Children and Families are, and repeatedly let down primarily because of the long run democratic deficiencies at local level ~ the reactions to which are obviously obvious as seen in Leeds.
But then, and as many existing senior children services managers know, there’s a profit to be made!
Shame and grandiosity are the polarised ends of a systemic narcissism inherent in current circumstances. Where’s the oversight?
I do hope the future will look better,fair, and respectful for all children who face abuse, and families who face discrimination and unfair treatment.
I only hope this lady receives support to make changes for all and this is not a political decision with alternative motives,she can not make changes without the right support.
The profession is in need of change there is no doubt about that.
I sincerely wish her all the best and she is able to withstand the difficultys she will no doubt face in all area’s of her new role.
Let’s hope one of her first big decisions is to appoint Wayne Reid as a strategic adviser – better still Chief SW.
It is at least a step-forward in having a person who understands Children’s Social Care and the issues needing addressing.
After 25 years as a Senior SW/Guardian/TM and ISW I know full well the challenges ahead. It is not just about the efficiency of Services it is also about the Funding systems and interplays with Local Authority resources/politics/agendas.
There is also a problem in that their has been for many years a lack of recognition of the role of Social Workers, the workloads they carry along with the expectation that their whole life should be directed towards the children in their care. The ‘Out of Hours’ Services are a bit of a joke as they do little apart from field and then record calls. We need an out of hours Service that is active and attends, allowing SW’s to have normal family lives.
We need managers who are skilled and able to advance their workers and help them develop their insights.
I could go on but I think the point is made that the system is broken and there is a lot of work to do.
Tom I totally agree with your comments.I understand this lady comes from a social work background therefore let’s hope she has an understanding of the difficuiltys faced by the service and social workers has well as recieveing plenty of support for the good of all.
For many years I to have found it difficult to understand the purpose of the out of hours service, who do nothing to support the day time staff.It appears the norm that a social worker may be involved with a case from 8.30 to sometimes 10 or 11 o’clock at night,then back in the morning to complete paper work.
Is it no wonder social workers experince emotional and physical burn out!!!
What exactly is the out of hours role? I have never understood.
The work force is mostly newly qualified social workers who are being managed by some managers who lack social work knowledge, experience, skill and in some cases little or no communication skills.
Some belivie it is a step up the ladder when they have not yet gained the required experince or competance to develop a team of professional social workers.Some belivie bullying is a form of management.This management style serves no purpose.
Roles are now over laping because some services are under staff.Social workers are then expected to take on the role of other services, this further impacts on social workers workloads and impacts emotional and physical burn out for social workers.
So much needs to change.It is worrying to observe a profession looseing skilled,committed workers who belivie in the profession and who have taken the time to train.
We may all need such a service at some time in our life’s should we not invest in the profession?
I agree that the out of hours service is a bit of a joke. As a manager for 10 plus years in that service we do do more than take calls, however we are severely restricted in all aspects of our role by the lack of social workers in the team. 3 social workers to cover a whole County is insufficient to do anymore than the very basics of work. We find it extremely frustrating that we have to request police to do,what is basically a sw role without the training and often coming up short in the plan we, or the locality teams would have in place. We also do not have access to many of the resources which daytime teams do, this also restricts what support we can put in place to aid the day teams in cases we do work. Time and again we have , and will continue to express what a valuable asset the team could be but funding, as always, appears to be a stumbling block to make it an effective and quality service.
Firstly, I would like to say ‘Well Done on your appointment’. We are hopeful that you will make a positive improvement to The Social Care Service.
Time to make Social Work have value and respect, for too long Social Workers have been vilified and neglected and whilst I am pleased that a Social Worker had been appointed for Children’s and Family, please don’t forget Adult Care, where the goal posts change when transitions are needed.
There is a lack of experience and skills, newly qualified sw becoming managers after a year, bullying is rife. Experienced workers being passed over if their faces dont fit,clicky managers, services that dont work together, Lack of services, 14 years of Conservatives pillaged money and market forces. Let’s hope Labour make some changes.
I live and work in Lewisham where Ms Daby is the MP. She was a superb local councillor but her voting record as an MP doesn’t match her local one. Sadly she has become a machine politician with a voting record social workers might raise and eyebrow at. That said she might surprise us by rediscovering the qualities that made her such an effective local councillor.
Of course it is always better to have an understanding of children’s lived experiences and the experiences of being a social worker who has worked in frontline and have had the challenge of working in such a dogmatic system. I am sorry but I don’t see that Janet has any of these experiences and already, from what I see she is following the same route as most MP’s. She claims to have 15 years experience as a ‘front line social worker’, I dont see how she can put claim to this as Janet has worked 10 years in fostering and the rest in social work consulation, this is so far apart from the pressures faced by the real front line social workers who work under so much pressure to meet timescales rather than have opportunities to enhance and improve children’s life experiences.
I still hope the appointment of Ms Daby brings with it some hopes of change.However to fully understand the demands faced by all frontline social workers,it makes sense to have experince of what is really happening on the frontline from the initial referral to the completion of child in need, child protection, the court process,supervision orders,care orders or the looked after process.
It should be Someone who is able to give open and honest feedback about the challenges faced by social workers in a meaningful and effective manner.
Someonewho who represents all sections of the workforce in an equal and professional manner to restore the image of the profession. Someone who understands the value in attracting different minority groups to provide a reflective workforce.
Someone of a minority background with Social Work experince,and understanding of the issues faced by black ,Asian and minority children, family’s and employees who in my opinion remain invisible.