Website of the Department of Health

47.31  The Placement Information Liaison Service was set up by the CRPC on 1 October 1975 and the Placement Information and Liaison Officer (PILO) was John Llewellyn Thomas[630], who began work four months earlier. The function of the PILO was not to make professional placement decisions but to provide a "clearing house" for vacancies and placements. He would record a considerable amount of information regarding each application and he circulated a monthly report to local authorities showing how the scheme was operating and the use being made of it.

  47.32  There was a procedure also for monitoring placements out of Wales, which was agreed by the Regional Work Group, comprising all the Directors of Social Services of the Welsh County Councils.

  47.33  In August 1977 the CRPCs in England and Wales were directed to submit revised regional plans by 1 April 1979. The new plans were to be in two sections, namely:

(1)  a planning statement, to be revised at intervals of no more than three years, showing the situation of children in care of each local authority, the extent of available places, the assessment of need and the planning intentions, taking into account other facilities for children;

(2)  a directory of residential accommodation for children in care in the region, including any firm planned provision for which government approval had been given, to be amended as changes occurred.

The revised Regional Plan for Wales came into operation on 1 April 1980, following approval by the Secretary of State.

  47.34  This is not the place to give a full account of other aspects of the work of the CRPC for Wales during its comparatively short life. It must be said, however, that its working groups did visit some community homes in North Wales early on and that they concerned themselves with important matters such as assessment procedures, training and training facilities (noting the shortage of these in West and North Wales in 1975) and staffing.

  47.35  The demise of the CRPCs appears to have been part of the development of the policy outlined in the 1979 White Paper[631]. Some criticisms had been made of them by the Association of Directors of Social Services, although Wales was excluded from the criticisms. More importantly, it was being asserted that local authorities had become self-sufficient in meeting residential needs for children in their care or nearly so. There was also increasing emphasis on placing children in community homes near their own homes and the use of boarding out/fostering instead of residential care had grown substantially.

  47.36  The view of the Government was that section 4 of the Health and Social Services and Social Security Adjudications Act 1983 was in harmony with these changing circumstances. It abolished the statutory requirement for children's regional planning and replaced it with a permissive power for local authorities to combine with others to meet their joint needs for new community homes[632]. The new statutory provision placed a duty on local authorities to make such arrangements as they thought appropriate for ensuring that community homes were available for children in their care and to widen the use to which community homes could be put to include use for children not in care but for whom local authorities had welfare responsibilities. It required local authorities also to place children in their care in accommodation near their homes.

  47.37  Shortly before this, responsibility for producing Intermediate Treatment Schemes was transferred to local authorities, either on their own or in conjunction with other local authorities, with effect from 19 May 1983 under section 21 of the Criminal Justice Act 1982.

  47.38  We were told that views were expressed in the Welsh Office questioning the advisability of abandoning the CRPC arrangements in Wales. This was not a matter to be decided by the Secretary of State, however, and in the absence of a statutory requirement for its activities the CRPC for Wales does not appear to have survived beyond the early months of 1984 (the PILO left in February 1984). Moreover, we have not received any evidence of combined local authority action to provide a new community home in Wales in the following years of the period under review.

The provision of financial resources

  47.39  In the early years of the period under review local authorities continued to enjoy considerable discretion in their access to independent sources of revenue. Rates could be levied on residential and business premises at whatever level the authority considered appropriate. Central government made money available through rate support grant: the amount paid to each authority reflected its individual resource characteristics and a general view of its spending requirements and spending levels.

  47.40  Following the announcement of the standstill in local government current expenditure in 1975, to which we have already referred[633], local authorities' sources of revenue and freedom to exploit them were increasingly constrained. A regime of penalties was introduced in 1980 and strengthened in 1982: grant monies were forfeited if individual authorities exceeded the level of expenditure the Government determined to be appropriate. In extreme cases "capping" was applied from 1985, a mechanism under which the Secretary of State could prescribe an authority's level of expenditure/rate level. Local authorities' ability to set the business rate in their area was removed in 1990 and replaced by the national non-domestic rate which is now set by central government and forms part of their grant distribution system.

  47.41  In Wales the current system, as explained to us by John Lloyd, is that the Secretary of State each year determines the amount that he considers it appropriate for local authorities to spend on revenue services (Total Standard Spending - TSS). This assessment is claimed to take account of the annual assessment of need to spend, including the effects of inflation and changes in responsibilities. The Secretary of State also takes a view of authorities' capacity for making savings and of what the country can afford.

  47.42  Grant Related Expenditure Assessments (now Standard Spending Assessments) are the Government's assessment of an authority's relative need to spend within TSS. A specific amount for children's services is not identified in the SSAs for Wales, although it is in England. These assessments are the basis on which central government calculate their contribution in the form of Revenue Support Grant. The effect in 1997/1998 in Wales, according to Lloyd, was that central government support in the form of revenue support grant, national non-domestic rates and some specific grants represented approximately 88 per cent of TSS: the balance of 12 per cent was made up of council tax.

  47.43  Figures produced by John Lloyd in his written evidence suggest that (at constant 1995/1996 prices) local authority expenditure in Wales on all local authority services remained very approximately level in the 1980s but rose by 13.5 per cent in the following five years (in terms of expenditure per 1,000 relevant population). Expenditure on personal social services in the 1980s on the same basis rose gradually by about 19 per cent. A very substantial increase then occurred, largely due to the progressive transfer of funds to local government to support its new responsibilities for the purchase of community care for the elderly and adults under the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990.

  47.44  Turning to child care, expenditure in Wales in the 1980s on all children in residential care or boarded out dipped in the mid 1980s but was about the same at the end of the decade as it had been at the beginning; and it rose by only 7.5 per cent in the following five years. Expenditure on residential care, however, dropped in real terms by about a third over the full 15 years, the steepest fall occurring in the early 1980s. Expenditure on boarding out/fostering in Wales, per 1,000 relevant population, almost quadrupled between 1979/1980 and 1994/1995, but the total cost of residential care for children still exceeded it by just over 25 per cent.

  47.45  The figures for Clwyd in the same period, calculated again in terms of constant 1995/1996 prices, showed a substantial decline in expenditure on all local authority services, per 1,000 population, in the 1980s (18.4 per cent); and by 1994/1995 less than half of this "loss" had been recovered. In the same period the percentage of this expenditure directed to personal social services rose from seven to 20 but the major part of this increase (ten per cent) occurred in the five years to 1994/1995, reflecting the progressive transfer of community care funding to local government. Expenditure on residential care for children and boarding out/fostering rose by almost 30 per cent in the 1980s, despite dropping in the middle of the decade, and the rate was the same as for the whole of Wales in 1989/1990; but it then fell by 7.5 per cent in the following five years.

  47.46  In Gwynedd expenditure on all local authority services per 1,000 population was appreciably higher (886 : 719) in 1979/1980 than the average for the whole of Wales, but it fell to a similar figure in the mid 1980s and ended the decade on about 3 per cent above the Welsh average. A major increase then occurred, raising it almost to its 1979/1980 level. Expenditure on personal social services increased slightly in the 1980s but doubled in the following five years, again largely as a result of the community care changes, both in real terms and as a percentage of its expenditure on all local authority services: the percentage in the end was the same as for Clwyd. Expenditure on residential care for children and boarding out/fostering was lower in Gwynedd, however, per 1,000 population, than in Clwyd and the whole of Wales throughout the whole period of 15 years. At its low point in 1984/1985 it was only half the figure for the whole of Wales. In 1989/1990 it was £24 against £40 for Clwyd and for the whole of Wales; and in 1994/1995, the comparable figures were £29 for Gwynedd against £37 for Clwyd and £43 for the whole of Wales. We do not place great emphasis on these figures because their reliability has not been tested before us and conditions across Wales varied considerably, but the general pattern is of interest and the figures do confirm that there was reason for concern about under-spending on children's services in Gwynedd over a long period.

The argument about the scope of the Welsh Office's duties

47.47  Major criticisms advanced to this Tribunal of the role played by the Welsh Office are that:

(a)  it failed throughout the period under review to play a sufficiently interventionist part in the management and operation of county social services departments to ensure that appropriate standards were observed;

(b)  as part of (a), it failed to plan the development of social services by setting clear aims and objectives and ensuring that they were understood;

(c)  it failed to collect and disseminate adequate information about the services that were being provided on the one hand and the needs that ought to be met on the other;

(d)  it failed to monitor adequately the performance of county social services departments in such a way as to promote the achievement of aims and the maintenance of standards;

(e)  it failed to provide sufficient practical guidance to social services departments in a readily accessible form;

(f)  it failed to provide adequate resources to enable those responsible in the Welsh Office itself and the county councils to discharge efficiently their respective wide and onerous duties in respect of children's services and, in particular, the protection of children in care.

  47.48  These criticisms could be re-stated and elaborated in a variety of ways but we think that this list sufficiently indicates the broad spectrum of complaint about the Welsh Office's activities and alleged lack of activity during the period under review. Much of it is based on views about the overall practical effect of the recommendations made in the Seebohm report[634], on which much of the reorganisation of social services at the beginning of the 1970s was based.

  47.49  Lady Scotland QC, on behalf of the Welsh Office, and Sir Louis Blom-Cooper QC, representing Voices from Care[635], submitted from their different standpoints that detailed criticisms of this kind are "fundamentally unsound" because they misinterpret the statutory functions of central government in the child care field. In effect, it is said, they elevate the philosophy and recommendations of the Seebohm report to an inappropriately exalted status, however meritorious the aspirations of that committee may have been. Seebohm was the guide but not the architect of the shape of social services over the following three decades.

  47.50  According to this argument, the Children Act 1948, with its emphasis on "localism", foreshadowed the future of child care. It placed the duty on local authorities to provide a comprehensive service for the care of children deprived of the benefit of normal home life; a duty was imposed on local authorities to take those children into care who needed child care; a statutory preference for boarding out, rather than institutional care was declared; and local authorities were required to promote the best interests of the child and to provide them with the opportunity to develop their abilities. Although the Curtis Committee[636] had considered that central government ought to maintain standards and define the requirements of child care services through various powers, the Act of 1948 itself imposed upon central government a duty to give general guidance only: the exclusive responsibility for child care was placed upon local government rather than central government. The latter exercised control only indirectly, by financing local authorities and by its ability to influence policy and practice.

  47.51  This remained the approach decreed by Parliament when the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970 was enacted. Section 7(1) of that Act, which remains in force, provides:

"Local authorities shall, in the exercise of their social services functions, including the exercise of any discretion conferred by any relevant enactment, act under the general guidance of the Secretary of State."

  Thus, there is no duty upon the Secretary of State to give guidance; and a local authority is not bound to follow it in any particular circumstance[637], provided that it exercises its discretion properly.

  47.52  It was not until 1 April 1991 that the Secretary of State was given power to issue directions to local authorities as to the exercise of their social services functions by the addition of a new section 7A to the Act of 1970[638], which provides:

"(1) Without prejudice to section 7 of this Act, every local authority shall exercise their social services functions in accordance with such directions as may be given to them under this section by the Secretary of State.

(2)  Directions under this section -

(a)  shall be given in writing; and

(b)  may be given to a particular authority, or authorities of a particular class, or to authorities generally."

Conclusions

  47.53  We accept, in general terms, the (fuller) account of the legislative history on which the argument that we have just summarised is based but, in our judgment, it does not provide a complete answer to the criticisms of the Welsh Office formulated in paragraph 47.47. The Welsh Office forms part of central government and the latter cannot absolve itself of ultimate responsibility for the fate of children in care by referring to legislation that successive governments themselves initiated from time to time, whether or not with expert advice. Central government must bear responsibility for the arrangements that it makes, by legislation or otherwise, for a vulnerable section of the population placed in care under statutory provisions. It may be said also that this residual responsibility is particularly grave in respect of children, who are unlikely to be fully aware of their basic rights, within a system under which the High Court has only a very limited power to intervene because decision making has been vested by statute in local authorities, without any right of appeal[639].

  47.54  It follows from what we have said that, in our judgment, central government could not shed or deny its responsibility for the general framework of arrangements for the care of the former children in North Wales with whom we are concerned, for the overall strategic planning of those arrangements, for monitoring them effectively and for informing itself about what was happening in practice. Even on the basis of John Lloyd's evidence[640], which did not go far enough, the Welsh Office's main task in relation to children's services was "to ensure effective implementation of legislation and develop good practice", quite apart from the Secretary of State's powers later spelt out in Part XI of the Children Act 1989.

  47.55  If further argument is needed to justify our conclusion, one has only to consider the flurry of central government activity and the major changes introduced at the end of the 1980s, with the enactment of the Children Act 1989 and the many new regulations made under it. Those events must rebut any suggestion that central government had neither the duty nor the power to act when it was thought to be appropriate to do so.

  47.56  In considering the role played by the Welsh Office itself from 1974 onwards we have had very much in mind that it was new to child care responsibilities, as we have explained earlier in this chapter, and that it did not have the ultimate authority to decide what overall financial resources were allocated to it. Moreover, the evidence indicates that to a very large extent it followed the lead of the Department of Health and Social Security (later the Department of Health) in child care matters. These considerations cannot inhibit us from identifying what, in our judgment, went wrong during the period under review but we do not attempt to pin responsibility upon individuals for specific acts and omissions because it would be inappropriate to do so on the evidence before us, bearing in mind the very frequent changes in personnel and duties that occurred within the Welsh Office.

  47.57  Three other general considerations need to be mentioned here. The first isthat almost the whole of the sexual and physical abuse with which we have been concerned occurred in the period between 1974 and 1990 before the Children Act 1989 came into force. Secondly, it is clear that central government and local authorities did not have in mind that there was a significant possibility that children in residential care generally were being abused by staff until the second half of the 1980s. Moreover, on the basis of the evidence presented by the Welsh Office, it was not until September 1986 that the Welsh Office became aware, through an anonymous letter addressed to the Prime Minister, that there were allegations of mistreatment of children in social services establishments in Gwynedd; and it was in August 1990 that the Welsh Office was first told of alleged sexual abuse at Cartrefle in Clwyd[641], having heard before that only of an isolated case at Little Acton Assessment Centre in March 1978[642]. Thirdly, the evidence of the Inspectorates is that inspections are not a means by which either sexual or physical abuse is likely to be detected and the investigation of such abuse is not a purpose of them[643].

  47.58  In our comments on the activities of the Welsh Office (and of central government) we do not forget that we have the obvious advantage of hindsight. Nevertheless, we have to consider why it was that widespread abuse occurred (and has been alleged to have occurred) within a comparatively short period of 15 years or so following major reorganisation of local government and social services.

  47.59  An inescapable conclusion must be that the scale of reorganisation at the beginning of the 1970s was too great in too short a time span. We have outlined in Chapter 3 of this report the legislative and administrative background to the period under review; and the Welsh Office's part in it is set out at the beginning of this chapter. Important consequences were that the Children's Department of the Home Office ceased to exist and that it was not replaced by any equivalent specialist section in the Welsh Office. At the same time local authority Children's Departments headed by a Children's Officer disappeared and the specialists within them were dispersed. The emphasis was on "generic" social work and the continuing need for specialists in the field of children's services was either overlooked or, at best, insufficiently heeded.

  47.60  Defenders of the Seebohm report[644] will argue strenuously that this dissipation of expertise was not a necessary consequence of that Committee's recommendations[645]. The fact is, however, that it did occur and that it was aggravated by the radical reorganisation of local government that followed immediately after the creation of the new county Social Services Departments. At the same time effect had to be given to the many changes in responsibility for the residential care of children introduced by the Children and Young Persons Act 1969, most notably in the responsibility for the former approved schools and remand homes. The difficulties caused by the scale and timing of the changes were illustrated by the demand for ten year development plans addressed to the newly formed social services departments of obsolescent county councils before new shadow county councils were in place.

47.61  In the context of these changes we have been particularly dismayed by the absence of any clear guidance to either the old or the new county councils in relation to the conduct and management of the former approved schools. None of the relevant county councillors or officers had any experience of approved schools but Clwyd Social Services Department was required to take over responsibility (in effect, from the Home Office) for a substantial number of troubled boys at Bryn Estyn from all over Wales (and some from elsewhere); and the Department was expected to continue to run the home, with education on the premises, as a facility for the whole of Wales. In our judgment, the need for clear guidance and active development work to support Clwyd (and Denbighshire for a short period before that) ought clearly to have been foreseen. In their absence it was predictable that the Principal and staff would be left to decide the regime for themselves, despite the need for changes to adapt the former school to its new status and to meet the requirements of a wider range of children in care.

  47.62  In the event Bryn Estyn became the worst centre of child abuse in North Wales over a period of ten years, undetected by outsiders; and it was closed shortly after the demise of regional planning because of lack of demand for places rather than its own shortcomings.

  47.63  A further compelling conclusion is that for over half the period under review children's services were given insufficient priority by central government and by the Welsh Office; and, in our judgment, it would not be an exaggeration to say that they were neglected. In the following two chapters of this report we look in detail at those activities of the Welsh Office that were specially relevant to residential care and boarding out, dealing with the Inspectorates in Chapter 48 and other activities in Chapter 49. It is necessary to stress here, however, the overall failure of the Welsh Office both to give an effective lead in the implementation of existing legislation and to inform itself adequately of what was happening on the ground, that is, in the individual county social services departments, in field social work practice and in the residential homes.

  47.64  An illustration of the lack of leadership is the way in which forward planning was allowed to wither and die. It began inauspiciously with the demand for ten year plans from dying authorities and it appears that it became, at best, a flawed source of information rather than a coherent planning process with the result that it was abandoned in or about 1987. Rather similarly, regional planning was abandoned on the supposition that each county in Wales could provide for its own residential care needs but we have not been told of any audit by the Welsh Office to establish whether the overall provision of residential care was both adequate and available. Instead each county was left to pursue its own course in relation to residential care, despite their widely disparate needs, with the result that Gwynedd, for example, ended up with four homes that appeared to be indistinguishable in terms of their residents and purposes.

  47.65  Another striking omission was the failure of central government to take any effective action before the Children Act 1989 to regulate private children's homes. Public concern about this matter was such that the Children's Homes Act 1982 was introduced as a Private Member's Bill. It made provision for the registration, regulation and inspection of private children's homes (including independent schools accommodating 50 children or less, if not approved under section 11(3)(a) of the Education Act 1981[646]); and it prohibited the placement by a local authority of a child in care in an unregistered private children's home. However, these provisions were never brought into force, in contrast to the provisions of the Registered Homes Act 1984 (governing private homes mainly for adults and elderly people), which were nearly all brought into effect on l January 1985. Instead, the provisions of the Act of 1982 were re-enacted, with some amendments, in the Children Act 1989 and did not come into effect until 14 October 1991.

  47.66  Even more striking was the failure of central government to take steps to ensure that adequate facilities were made available for the training of residential child care workers. We deal with the training aspect of the Welsh Office'sactivities in Chapter 49, but its importance in relation to the quality of care provided in children's homes and the elimination of physical abuse cannotbe over-emphasised. Knowledge of the need for this training did not begin with reports such as that of the Wagner committee[647]. As long ago as 1967, the Williams report[648] recorded that the overwhelming majority of residential care staff were untrained (98 per cent in old people's homes and 82 per cent in children's homes).

  47.67  Despite various initiatives and the very substantial decline in the number of children's homes, the position remained highly unsatisfactory in both England and Wales throughout the period under review. Sir William Utting reported in 1991[649] that only about 80 per cent of Officers-in-Charge of children's homes had a relevant professional qualification and about 44 per cent of assistant Officers-in-Charge. The percentage of other residential care staff in these homes with a professional qualification was 22. In Wales, in the same year, SSIW reported[650] a broadly similar picture: nearly three quarters of heads of children's homes and just over half of second tier managers had relevant social work qualifications; only a fifth of the other care staff were qualified.

  47.68  A number of explanations have been advanced for the limited monitoring activities of the Welsh Office during the period under review. Thus, it was said by David Evans, the former Chief SWSO and then Chief SSIW, that frequent inspection of individual homes was thought to be inconsistent with the policy of the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970, which placed the responsibility for conduct of the homes upon local authorities together with a wide discretion. Limited resources within the Inspectorates and other Welsh Office departments was another explanation.

  47.69  Commenting on SWSW inspection resources in the mid 1980s John Lloyd acknowledged that the level had been lower than senior officials "had felt comfortable with". In 1987 it had also been necessary to discontinue the previous arrangement under which individual inspectors had been assigned to maintain close liaison with particular social services departments. It was said also that the policy of "disengagement" was an additional reason for limiting monitoring activities in the interest of reducing bureaucracy. Yet another explanation was that emphasis was being placed on seeking alternatives to reception into care. These explanations do not, however, excuse the failure of the Welsh Office to acquaint itself adequately with the state of children's services in North Wales in order to ensure that the existing legislation was being effectively implemented and that children in care there were safe from harm in a wide sense.

  47.70  Much of the relevant history of monitoring by the Welsh Office of Clwyd and Gwynedd Social Services Departments will be discussed in the next chapter of this report but its weakness is underlined by two specific examples that can usefully be referred to here. The first relates to Clwyd and Bryn Estyn, which was visited quite frequently by SWSOs, who gave priority to it as a former approved school that had previously been visited by Home Office inspectors. Despite the frequency of these visits, few significant improvements were made in the regime before it closed. An inspection of Bryn Estyn on 12 April 1978 revealed, according to the report, 28 incidents of absconding involving 27 boys in three months. David Evans said that this would have been discussed with Arnold but could not explain why the follow up letter to him of 20 April made no mention of it. We received no evidence that the matter was pursued in any other way. It is notable also that, when HMIs paid visits to Bryn Estyn at the instigation of the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Wales, they did not achieve the objective of securing effective involvement by Clwyd Education Authority in the provision of education at Bryn Estyn, despite its inadequacies[651].

  47.71  The second example is provided by Gwynedd's record of expenditure on children's services. Despite the fact that, by 1984/1985, Gwynedd's rate of expenditure on residential care for children and boarding out/fostering was only half the comparable average rate of expenditure elsewhere in Wales, this disparity was never probed by the Welsh Office and was not investigated by SWSW. When an inspection did take place later (in 1988)[652], covering children in two of the four remaining community homes in Gwynedd, neither this disparity nor the complaints of Alison Taylor[653], of which the Welsh Office were aware, was within the scope of the inspection.

  47.72  To sum up, in our judgment there were serious failings by the Welsh Office in providing the leadership, guidance and monitoring that were necessary to ensure effective implementation of the new legislation relating to children in care that came into force at the beginning of the 1970s and the development of good practice. At least some of those failings were attributable, in part, to wider government policies; and there were other aspects of personal social services policy, such as the All Wales Strategy for the Development of Services for Mentally Handicapped People, in which the Welsh Office gave a positive lead. For the future, however, the lesson must be that special attention will need to be given to the welfare of children in care in Wales by the Welsh Office and the Welsh Assembly[654] in the wake of further local government reorganisation; and the limited size and resources of the 22 new authorities will be important factors to be considered when a child care strategy is formulated.

Footnotes:

612   See section 64 and Part II of that Act.

613   Welsh Office Circular 17/71 dated 3 February 1971.

614   Report of The Committee on Local Authority and Allied Personal Social Services, Cmnd 3703, 1968, para 647(c).

615   Welsh Office Circular 75/71 dated 19 May 1971.

616   Caring for People, Cm 849, presented to Parliament in November 1989, para 11.43.

617   J D Shortridge.

618   See, however, the reference to a separate branch dealing with children in the next para.

619   See para 47.13.

620   See section 7 of the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970.

621   See Appendix 6, paras 36 to 42.

622   Welsh Office Circular 195/72.

623   Para 7 of the Circular.

624   Welsh Office Circular 99/77.

625   Welsh Office Circulars 142/75 and 228/75 and see the next section of this chapter.

626   Central Government Controls over Local Authorities (Cmnd 7634) presented to Parliament in September 1979, Department of the Environment, HMSO.

627   See eg "Working Together" Welsh Office Circular 26/88.

628   Section 36 (4) of the Act of 1969.

629   Section 19 of the Act of 1969.

630   See para 28.25 for a summary of his career.

631   See para 47.24.

632   Replacing sections 31 to 34 of the Child Care Act 1980 with a new section 31 with effect from 1 January 1984.

633   See para 47.24.

634   Report of The Committee on Local Authority and Allied Personal Social Services (1968, Cmnd 3703).

635   Formerly NAYPIC Cymru, an organisation for young people in Wales who are in care or who have left care but remain under local authority supervision.

636   Report of the Care of Children Committee (1946, Cmnd 6922).

637   See De Falco v Crawley Borough Council (1980) QB 460; Laker Airways v Department of Trade (1977) QB 643; but see also R v Islington Borough Council, ex parte Rixon (1996) TLR 238.

638   Section 50 of the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990, brought into operation on 1 April 1991. The same section added section 7B to the Act of 1970, empowering the Secretary of State to order local authorities to establish complaints procedures. See also sections 7C and 7D dealing with the holding of inquiries and the Secretary of State's default powers, which were added at the same time.

639   See A v Liverpool City Council (1982) AC 363.

640   See paras 47.20 to 47.23.

641   See paras 15.05 to 15.18.

642   See para 12.10.

643   See paras 48.04, 48.05, 48.13 and also the comment of Sir William Utting quoted in para 48.29.

644   See footnote 23 to para 47.48.

645   See, in particular, paras 161 to 164 of the Seebohm report.

646   See Appendix 6, para 39.

647   Residential Care - A Positive Choice, 1988, HMSO.

648   Caring for People - Staffing Residential Homes, 1967: the report of a committee of inquiry established by the National Council for Social Services and chaired by Lady Williams.

649   Children in the Public Care, 1991, HMSO.

650   Accommodating Children: a review of children's homes in Wales conducted by SSIW and Social Information Systems Ltd, November 1991.

651   See paras 11.28 to 11.41.

652   See paras 33.52 to 33.55 and 36.47.

653   See paras 49.57 to 49.70.

654   References to the Welsh Office (in the future) and to the Welsh Assembly are made in this report in this form for convenience. The full titles are the Wales Office and the National Assembly for Wales respectively.