The Social Worker of the Year Awards 2024 have opened for entries. Eighteen categories are up for grabs this year in the England-based scheme, alongside the overall social worker of the year prize. New this year is an award for practitioner-led research, which is open to social workers and managers who have carried out research or helped build a research culture within their organisations. Organising charity Social Work Awards Ltd has also replaced the previous digital transformation in social work category with one for technology-enabled lives and innovation in practice. This is for social workers, teams or local authorities who have sought to improve the lives of people with lived experience through the use of technology. Meanwhile, the charity has dropped the previous supporting children in education prize. Entries are open until 12pm on 3 June, after which entries will be shortlisted by the awards’ judging panel of social work experts, people with lived experience and former winners. You can enter the awards here and read the entry rules here. The full list of categories is below:
Source: www.communitycare.co.uk The number of initial enquiries from potential foster carers in England has fallen to its lowest level in five years. According to latest figures from the Department for Education, 125,195 initial applications were received by local authorities and independent foster agencies in 2022/23. This is the lowest number of applications to become mainstream foster carers – which excludes family and friends foster carers - since current recording began in 2017/18, the statistics show. A peak in initial enquiries was seen in 2020/21 when 160,635 were received. In 2022/23, local authorities received around a quarter of the number of initial enquiries received by independent foster agencies which had 99, 375 enquiries. Of applications received by independent foster agencies and local authorities in 2022/23, 3,680 were accepted. Meanwhile, in the same year more households deregistered (5,125) than were approved (4,080). There were 275 households that were both approved and deregistered within the same year. “The largest proportion of newly approved carers in 2022 to 2023 were in their 40s and 50s. “Of the carers who deregistered this year, the highest proportion were aged 50 or over, at 64%. Those aged 60 or over made up 30%. “These proportions have remained similar for the 4 years that we have collected data on carers’ ages,” the report states. At the end of March 2023, there were 43,405 fostering households in England, including family and friends foster carers. Source: www.cypnow.co.uk Cambridge City Council has become the 80th council to recognise care experience as a protected characteristic as care-experienced young people across the world were celebrated on Care Day 2024. Care Day is one of the world’s biggest celebrations of children in care, with charity Become leading the initiative in England and sharing messages from young people to challenge stereotypes. Katharine Sacks-Jones, chief executive of Become, said: “On Care Day we’re putting our hands up for care-experienced young people, to challenge common misconceptions and – especially in the year of an election – call on the public and MPs to show they care.” The work of young people across the UK has been celebrated in the week leading up to Care Day (16 February), including children working with Foster Wales who collaborated with former Children’s Laureate Wales,’ Connor Allen, to create a piece of poetry sharing their life experiences and educate the public about the reality of fostering. Elsewhere, awareness is being raised as Become, in partnership with Young Hackney’s Children in Care Council, invited MPs to a screening of its film ‘Gone Too Far’, which highlights the realities of young people in care being moved far away from their friends and family. Local authorities and professionals across the country are supporting Care Day on X, using #CareDay. Meanwhile, Cambridge City Council has become the 80th council to recognise care-experience as a protected characteristic. This makes it the first three-tier local government to do so, with the city, county and combined authority of Cambridge and Peterborough passing the motion. Councillor Bryony Goodliffe, Cambridgeshire County Council children's portfolio holder, said: “Care experienced people are often hidden and we need to make sure they are seen. I look forward to working with Cambridge City Council to ensure that in Cambridge and Cambridgeshire we value care experienced people and work together to ensure that their best possible future is achieved. “At Cambridgeshire County Council we have been working with the care leaver local offer to develop national guidance to support public sector organisations to incorporate care experience into equality impact assessments. We look forward to sharing this with all councils and organisations as we work together.” Source: www.cypnow.co.uk Funded by the Department for Education and delivered by the National Children’s Bureau, a new Children and Young People’s Advisory Board on children’s social care in England is being established. On behalf of the Department for Education, the National Children’s Bureau is establishing a new Children and Young People’s Advisory Board which will help shape the next stages of major reforms to children’s social care set out in the Government Strategy ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’. The new Advisory Board will be made up of two groups of children and young people aged 11-17 and 18-25 whose lives have been affected by children’s social care. It will bring together those with lived experience and a passion for changing things for the better at a national and local level. The Advisory Board builds on NCB’s leading expertise in giving children and young people meaningful opportunities to contribute to policy, and also provides an opportunity for those taking part to develop new skills. The Advisory Board will initially run until March 2025 and is open to a wide range of children and young people with diverse experiences of children's social care. This includes any child or young person who has had a social worker, as well as those who are looked after or care leavers. During December and January, NCB will be recruiting young people to the board, drawing on its extensive network, with the first meetings taking place early in 2024. If you are aged between 11 and 25 and children’s social care has been a part of your life, then find out more on the NCB website. Anna Feuchtwang, Chief Executive of the National Children’s Bureau, said: “We are at a turning point for children’s social care. The government’s strategy, Stable Homes, Built on Love, commits to wholescale reform, including steps to rebalance the system towards earlier help for children and families. It is absolutely essential that this work is systematically informed by the real-life experiences of children and young people themselves, and I am delighted that NCB will be supporting this new Board to do so.”I Interested in finding out more? Visit our website where you can apply to take part. Source: www.ncb.org.uk/ A former Welsh children’s laureate has partnered with Foster Wales to challenge perceptions of young people in care through a new mural in South Wales. The mural depicts a poem written by care-experienced teenagers with the help of former laureate Connor Allen, and was unveiled in Bridgend on Friday (8 December). It was painted by Cardiff based graffiti artist Bryce Davies. The poem shares the teenagers’ life experiences in the hope of educating the public around the realities of fostering: Our Voices Fostering and adoption is not the same You always think you are to blame People think your parents don’t love you But most people don’t have a clue There’s a stereotype it’s just trouble we make And that’s something that we all hate There are stories behind our scars Yet we hide our feelings in jars So listen to our stories, Respect our choices These are our lives, These are our voices The young people also hope their poem will encourage people to think about fostering a child aged 11 or older. Molly, aged 14, co-wrote the poem and is in foster care in Bridgend. She said: “As young people in care, we get judged before people even get to know us, people think we’re just troublemakers who do drugs and get pregnant underage. It’s just not true. “Having a foster carer who sees through false perceptions and recognises my past, but still continues to support and encourage me to make positive steps forward is helpful for my wellbeing.” There are nearly 5,000 children in foster care in Wales and many of them have experienced extreme hardship and adversity. However, when asked, they reveal that it is the negative perception of wider society that hurts them most, according to Foster Wales. Allen, who helped the teenagers write the poem, said: “I'm blessed to be working on such an important project with Foster Wales that allows crucial voices to be heard. I hope they’re proud of their poem which reflects their true experiences.” Foster Wales is the national network of not-for-profit fostering services, comprising the 22 local authority teams in Wales. Source: www.cypnow.co.uk/news Care News: Councils say they are ‘held to ransom’ by private providers of children’s care29/11/2023
One child cost a local authority £63,000 a week and the number of placements has shot up to more than 1,500 from 120 five years ago Councils have claimed they are being “held to ransom” by private care providers, as it emerged the taxpayer has been paying as much as £63,000 a week for single children’s social care placements. The extraordinary bill – equivalent to £3.3m a year for one placement – came in new figures from local authorities in England released on Wednesday that showed the number of placements for the care of vulnerable children costing over £10,000 a week has risen to more than 1,500 – equivalent to at least £780m a year. There were only 120 such placements five years ago. The councils have provided no further details about the single £63,000-a-week outlay but the Local Government Association highlighted it as an example of how the market for children’s social care placements is “broken”. The president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) said it demonstrates “profiteering”. “Local authorities are the sole purchasers of placements, yet are often held to ransom by private providers due to lack of sufficiency meaning costs can be thousands of pounds a week for individual placements for children in their care,” said John Pearce, the ADCS’s president. “It cannot be right that the largest 20 independent providers of children’s social care homes made more than £300m of profit last year, every penny of which came directly from the public purse.” The exorbitant costs being charged by some private social care providers emerged as another major council effectively declared itself bankrupt. Nottingham city council followed Birmingham city council in issuing a formal notice that it cannot balance its budget this year. Nottingham cited the increased demand for children’s social care as a reason behind its financial peril. The latest warning came after the Guardian reported last year that one council was charged £60,000 a week to look after an autistic teenager with a mild learning disability. She had a history of violence and was looked after by six dedicated carers. The LGA is now calling for urgent funding for children’s social care in the upcoming provisional local government finance settlement. It warned the lack of investment in the chancellor’s autumn statement “risked councils’ ability to provide the critical care and support that children rely on every day”. “The astronomical costs of care placements mean there is less money available for councils to spend on earlier support for children and families,” said Cllr Louise Gittins, chair of the LGA’s children and young people board. “These findings are indicative of a broken market for children’s social care placements, but it doesn’t have to remain this way.” In March 2022, the government’s competition regulator concluded that “the UK has sleepwalked into a dysfunctional children’s social care market” and warned about the risks of private equity funding in private children’s social care. Source: www.theguardian.com Private sector fostering agencies are being called on to “transition to not-for-profit operation” by a group of trauma experts. The Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma wants to see all fostering agencies “prioritising child welfare over financial gain”. Instead, it wants to see profit redirected into “quality care and comprehensive support for foster children and their families”. But the Centre, which is an umbrella organisation for child trauma experts, warns agencies against cutting back on pay and conditions for children’s professionals involved in fostering and carers, as they transition away from profit making. It says that “social workers, therapists, foster carers and staff should be properly rewarded for the intense and difficult work they do. This includes proper pensions, health care and future proof savings to assist young adults as they exit the care system”. The Centre’s chief executive Sarah Naish said: “This is not about cutting payments for those working so hard with our most complex and vulnerable children. It’s about reducing the glut of overpayments from those who merely desire it, back towards those who need it. “In this way, local authorities will be able to afford quality homes and spaces in which our children will thrive.” More than four in five independent fostering agencies in England are profit making. Meanwhile, in Wales 79 per cent of children cared for by private fostering agencies are fostered outside of their local area, with six per cent moved out of Wales entirely. The Welsh government is putting in place plans to ensure only not-for-profit residential and foster care can be commissioned in Wales. By 2027 for-profit fostering organisations will not be permitted to operate in Wales through the measures. This stance in Wales is a “pivotal moment” for the rest of the UK, says the Centre. "The heart of fostering is neither commercial nor transactional. It's about providing spaces of healing and growth for some of our society's most vulnerable members,” added Naish. “Redirecting the focus from profit to people is not just necessary; it's ethically non-negotiable.” Source: www.cypnow.co.uk £11.7m in DfE funding will go to 79 authorities, with apprentices trained through existing university programmes Half of councils have been given a share of £11.7m to recruit 461 social work apprentices to bolster their children’s services workforces. The Department for Education funding will go to 79 of the 153 authorities, who were chosen following an application process. The trainees will be employed, and based, in their children’s services departments, and follow existing three-year university social work apprenticeship programmes, with councils then deciding whether to hire them on qualification. The measure is part of the government’s children’s social care reform agenda, set out in the Stable Homes, Built on Love strategy, which was consulted upon earlier this year. It is designed to tackle the significant shortages in the children’s social work workforce in English councils, with vacancies hitting 20%, and the proportion of agency staff 17.6%, in September 2022. The apprentices supplement the DfE’s funding for 450 trainees to go through the Frontline programme annually and for the Step Up to Social Work scheme, which runs every other year and is expected to train 700 students in 2024-25. Both fast-track schemes are geared towards training practitioners to work in local authority children’s services, and sit alongside generic social work undergraduate degrees, master’s courses and degree apprenticeships and the Think Ahead scheme, focused on training people to work in adult mental health*. The DfE announced the apprenticeships at the same time as confirming that it was going ahead with introducing rules limiting councils’ use of agency social workers, though in significantly amended form. “A strong social care workforce is key to achieving our ambition to reform the children’s care sector,” said children’s minister David Johnston. “Children’s social workers play a vital role in helping the country’s most vulnerable families, which is why we’re boosting training opportunities and strengthening rules on using agency staff.” *The article has been updated to set out a comprehensive list of routes into social work in England. Source: www.communitycare.co.uk Ellen Broome, managing director of CoramBAAF, explains how making care a protected characteristic would place a duty on organisations to take the needs of care-experienced people into account. In July, the children’s commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, opened a consultation on whether care experience should be a “protected characteristic” under the Equality Act 2010. This follows news that 55 local authorities so far have voted to make care experience a protected characteristic. The momentum for change has emerged out of the growing recognition that care leavers face poorer outcomes in physical and mental health, education, employment and housing, as well as an increased risk of premature death and contact with the criminal justice system. Crucially, many care-experienced people themselves say that discrimination has contributed to negative outcomes in their lives. The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care recommended that care experience should be a protected characteristic, and CoramBAAF was disappointed to see that this was not part of the government’s reform plan announced in February 2023. However, with change at the local level now outpacing national policy and practice, there is an urgent need to explore the risks, barriers, challenges and opportunities that making care experience a protected characteristic could bring. As part of CoramBAAF’s annual Members’ Week, we hosted a panel discussion on whether being care experienced should be a protected characteristic. We were joined by the care leaver champion and campaigner Terry Galloway, and chair of the Commission on Young Lives, Anne Longfield, as well as representatives from Cambridge and Plymouth City Councils, both of which have voted in favour of making care experience a protected characteristic. Galloway spoke of living in 100 different placements before he left care at 16 and of the premature death of his sister at the hands of her boyfriend after her own children were taken into care. He argued that the care system isn’t designed to address the challenges that young people face, highlighting that half of all prisoners and a quarter of homeless people come from the care system. Using an analogy, he explained an understanding of the challenges faced by people with disabilities is built into the design of road crossings. “There is a dropped kerb for wheelchair users and there are audio and tactile signals for people who are visually impaired people. This is what we need for young care-experienced people to have equality and public services that have been designed for them.” We heard some shocking examples of the discrimination faced by care-experienced young people, including Claire Wilden, a care-experienced consultant with Coram Voice. She spoke of how her intelligence had been underestimated at school and how she was turned down for jobs because it was assumed that, as a care leaver, she would be unreliable or could leave the area at short notice. She also highlighted how those in care are often seen as problematic and recalled a parent turning her away from their house for fear that she would be a bad influence on their children. She said: “I didn’t choose to be born when I was, making me this particular age. I didn’t choose to be on the autistic spectrum, providing me with this label and stigma about my disability. Similarly, I’ve had no choice about being in care. If the government can prevent me from being discriminated against due to my age and disability, why not my experience in care?” Protecting rights While equality legislation hasn’t eradicated discrimination or stigma in other areas such as disability, age or gender, it sends an important message that the rights of care-experienced people of all ages need to be protected. It offers more visibility and organisations would have a duty to take the needs of care-experienced people into account. It will also be important to define key policy areas where we would like to see change such as housing and employment. Change is being driven at the local level because councils are seeing first-hand the challenges care-experienced young people face. However, this could lead to massive variation in practice across the country and there is a need to address the unfairness this may create. CoramBAAF will be looking at the local authorities that have voted to make care experience a protected characteristic. The clear evidence that care-experienced people face systemic inequalities over the course of their lives offers a strong case in favour of enhanced legal protection under the Equality Act 2010. In the face of local reform and at the greater voice of care-experienced people themselves, the government should extend equality and anti-discrimination legislation to people who have been in care. www.childrenslegalcentre.com Source: www.cypnow.co.uk/ Merlin Entertainments, which runs Legoland and Alton Towers, has become the latest signatory of the UK Care Leaver Covenant, a national inclusion initiative which supports young care leavers to live independently. The covenant is made up of private, public and voluntary sector organisations that have pledged to support those leaving care in the UK. To mark it signing up to the covenant, Merlin has created a dedicated careers programme for care leavers named Merlin Illuminate. It will see care leavers offered extra support with job interviews as well as access to a range of virtual events to offer tips on CVs and career development. A podcast series on interviews and CV creation will also be launched. Care leavers will be offered discounted tickets to Merlin UK attractions through the Care Leavers Covenant app, and work experience at key events, such as the Blackpool illuminations switch-on. The company will also organise a mentor day marked by an annual lighting up of some of Merlin's attractions including the London Eye, the company has said. Chief operating officer for resort theme parks and midways for Merlin Entertainments, Fiona Eastwood, said: "We want to ensure that as a company we are shining a light on these young care leavers, aged 16-25, who may not have a support network. “Our ‘Merlin Illuminate’ programme is designed to offer advice, knowledge, and help provide practical routes to employment.” Johnny Mercer MP, cross-government care leaver lead who helped to launch the campaign, added: “It’s fantastic to have Merlin on board with the Care Leaver Covenant, joining the hundreds of other signatories that have committed to support this vulnerable cohort of young people. "The launch of Merlin Illuminate is another example of brilliant work that is being undertaken across the country to ensure that care leavers have the right support in place to access employment opportunities." Matthew Gordon, chief executive of Spectra and delivery partner for the Care Leaver Covenant, said he was “delighted” to have the company sign the covenant. “Since the covenant launched, it has been important to recognise our young people as whole people, who want to do meaningful work, who want safe and warm homes, and who want to access popular culture and entertainment like their peers. The Merlin Entertainments offer really speaks to this approach," Gordon added. Source: www.cypnow.co.uk |
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