As Volunteers Week runs from 1-7 June, one woman explains how becoming an Independent Visitor changed her life

Running across cobbles in high heels, manicured, made-up and wearing a turquoise mother-of-the-groom hat, I was late. Frank greeted me with a hug, I’d never seen him look so elegant before, wearing a top hat and tails and beaming from ear to ear. He whispered: “Thanks for being here.” It was the first of many emotional moments for me during the day. And a culmination of years watching him battle to survive in and after foster care.

Frank had hardly spoken to his parents for more than 10 years and my husband and I were now standing in for them at his wedding. I had been his independent visitor – an adult who volunteers to spend time with a child or young person in care to befriend them – and after he’d left foster care we’d kept in regular contact.

It was eight years since I’d first met Frank. He just got out of bed for our 3pm meeting but looked tired, pale and miserable. He slumped in a chair in the interview room, a grey little space behind reception at the local social services office. I was there because I had answered an advert in the local free paper asking for volunteers to befriend young people in care. I didn’t want to become an “old fogey”, out of touch and scared of groups of young people hanging around on street corners.

I’d imagined befriending an energetic 10 year-old who liked swimming, football and cycling. Instead I got Frank. He was just 16 and slept all day and walked the streets at night. He had lived in around 20 foster homes since his mother had kicked him out when he was 12 years old. Sometimes his foster placements “broke down” because he lost his temper and put his fist through a door.

Once, just when he was beginning to trust adults again, he was forced to leave a home because his carers joined an independent fostering agency whose allowances were higher than those of the local authority. For Frank, the price of “market forces” to raise standards was devastating.

Frank hadn’t been to school for years. He was kicked out of several schools – including the schools for young people who have been kicked out of all the other schools. So, by the age of 14 he ended up out of formal education and spent his time cooking, doing jigsaws and learning other skills in a social services resource centre. I asked him why he had been kicked out of school. “I hit a teacher with a chair,” he said. “Why?” Frank: “He looked at me the wrong way.”

Whether it’s a teacher, social worker, psychologist or foster carer, all “looked-after children” are surrounded by people paid to bring them up. Their parent is the local authority. Their Independent Visitor is often the only person not paid to see them. To Frank I was: “Someone who made me feel that slightly bit wanted when everyone else around me didn’t care, and those who were meant to care – my family – had let me down most of my life”.

Initially, I was quite nervous of Frank. We often went to a service station café for our chats. He loved cars and the café was his choice. On our third meeting I remembered, as we left, that I needed fuel. After I’d filled the tank, as I went to get out to pay, my hands hovered over the keys in the ignition.

Looking back, that was a make or break moment in our relationship. I’m positive he read my mind and both of us knew it was some kind of test. He’d already told me how he enjoyed driving cars without their owners’ permission, and how he prided himself on always returning them in perfect condition. I realised I had to begin by trusting him if our relationship was going to work. I left the keys in the ignition, and he has never let me down since.

Birthdays and Christmases were painful
There were other tests of our relationship. On Frank’s 17th birthday I stood outside his dingy bedsit for nearly an hour clutching a small gift. He wouldn’t come to the door or respond to my calls. I knew he was there. Eventually I sent him a text saying “thinking of you” and went to have a coffee.

Slowly I worked out that birthdays and Christmas were just too painful. For most people these are family affairs. And he had no family. I was a good substitute but never a replacement.

We marked his coming of age on the eve of his 18th birthday. After a pub dinner I asked him what would be his best birthday present. “A card or phone call from my mum”. I wondered what could make a mother so totally reject a child that they can’t even send a birthday card.

It was sometimes hard, for me, because I felt I couldn’t really help Frank. One day, after he’d left care, I met him for lunch when he’d just been evicted. After he asked me to leave him at the railway station with just a black bag full of his possessions. “I’ll be OK” he said, “Trust me”.

Young people in care don’t want sympathy or rescuing. They want attention, interest and someone to believe in them. Someone to stand on the touchline of a freezing cold football pitch on a Saturday morning, or watch them in the school play or take them out to spend their pocket money. Someone to help them discover what they are good at and encourage them to do it again. Above all they need someone reliable who turns up when they say they will.

Someone who takes them for what they are and not what they’ve done in the past as recorded in their grey file in the social services office. Someone who listens and doesn’t always criticise. Like most children, what they really want is someone to be proud of them.​

A couple of years ago, Frank met a girl and fell in love. After they became engaged, he invited me and my husband to meet her. During the meal Frank seemed unusually nervous. Eventually, with much nudging and encouragement, he said: “Would you do me a really big favour? Would you be my special people at the wedding?” He wanted us to stand behind him in church and sit at the top table. What touched me was that even after eight years, he wasn’t sure we’d say yes.

I was subsequently marched around dress shops and arrived at church gelled, painted and glossed. I’m not a fan of weddings but I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I’d never seen Frank so happy in all the years we’d known each other. He grinned from ear to ear in the photos, adored travelling in the Bentley, did the speech and made sure all the kids and grannies were having a good time. I was so very proud of him.

I wrote on Friday about the things I wanted to see included in the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care. This list is based on all the things children and young people have told me, and I am indebted to them for sharing their experiences with me in the hope it will make things better. About the urgency with which we need to see ambitious, brave and consistent reform of children’s social care, our fourth emergency service, to improve children’s experiences and outcomes. Children in care are ambitious for themselves: they want the same things as their peers, a fantastic education, a brilliant job, loving and supportive family relationships. We must be as ambitious for them as they are for themselves.

Now the Review has been published, I wanted to share my thoughts on some of the specific areas of focus and where we need to go further to deliver the change children have told me so often, they desperately want to see. Too many tell me they feel let down by the services designed to protect and support them, so let’s seize this chance to do better.

Stability
It is great to see the Review highlighting the importance of stability and loving relationships in the care system. The new national standards and regional commissioning structures will be crucial to ensuring that children do not have to move home so many times, and that more children are placed closer to home. I will work closely with government to push for the highest possible standards of care and a rigorous system to commission and plan for care placements. I want all children to grow up in stable, loving, safe and happy families, not in institutions – for some children that will be with a foster carer, or someone in their family who isn’t their mum and dad, and for others, it will be with adoptive parents. What I want is for children to know that these relationships will be there for them in one year, three years, five years, so that children can make plans put down roots.

Join up
The Review sets out a radical programme of transformation for the children’s social care system. Similarly ambitious plans have been outlined in the Government consultation on the SEND system, the Schools White Paper and ambitious reforms are under way with the introduction of the Health Bill. Given the significant overlap between the education, SEND, social care systems and the NHS, it is vital that we grasp the opportunity of these major reforms to work towards a more integrated support system for children. Otherwise, this will be another missed opportunity to make a real difference in children’s lives. We are pleased to see the recommendation that schools become full and statutory members of safeguarding partnerships, something I have called for previously given their important role in children’s lives.

I’d like to see a comprehensive and cohesive implementation plan that covers these four vital areas of children’s lives.

Data and tech
My office has for some time been working with practitioners and policy experts on how to improve data sharing in child safeguarding environments. I have also been supporting the DfE on pushing for the development of a Unique Child Identifier which will enable important safeguarding information from across Government to be linked, and enable services to track children’s progress, and provide them with more integrated support.

I have been clear for some time that we must ensure that the data we collect is meaningful and relevant to families and is available to all practitioners and experts who need it, and therefore welcome the Review’s continued focus on data and technology.

The Review calls for the creation of a centrally funded National Data and Technology Taskforce with the skills in place to help local areas design and build the digital services which will make exchanging information easier and quicker, and for the Department for Education to play a bigger role linking data from multiple datasets across government. These announcements represent an important step in the right direction and are ones which on the whole I support. However, I would like to see Government and stakeholders go further with more ambitious plans for implementation in the short term, including additional guidance to support practitioners in the day-to-day sharing of child safeguarding data and clearer support for local authorities and organisations looking to use existing legal gateways to design services. Whilst I am confident the Review’s recommendations will, in the long term, deliver the tools desperately needed to improve data sharing, I am clear that there must be a whole armoury of tools at our disposal if we are going to address all the long-standing data issues which affect children’s care.

Family support
I welcome the focus on investing in and improving early intervention and family support. As the Review sets out, offering support to families early on, before problems escalate, is critical to children’s outcomes. I welcome the ambition on investing in and improving early family support. This is crucial as too often children are involved in the child protection system because their families have been struggling for some time, and if support had been provided early enough, they may not have needed a child protection response.

I want to see much more support provided earlier for families – and as a first step I very much welcome moves in this direction such as support for the development of family hubs. I am conducting my own Independent Review into the family, which will report in October this year, and will further look at how we can better support families, build on what we know works and see families as relational units not just individuals.

I want to make sure too, that the children who need to be taken into care, have the best support possible. I have spoken to lots of children for whom care was a sanctuary from really difficult situations, for whom care has been a positive thing, or the right thing. Often, we hear from children that going into care has been a huge relief, after long periods of instability and worry. These children want to maintain contact with their family, but can’t live with them, often they would have been better going into care earlier. We must not lose sight of this cohort, and the need for improved acute child protection services in the drive for increased family support.

Mental health
I would have liked to see more focus on the join up between the care system and care for children with mental health needs, particularly those who need inpatient care. I have seen far too many children coming to my Help at Hand service who are being passed from pillar to post between the NHS and their local authority when they need more joined up mental health and social care support. The RCCs provide a golden opportunity to work closely with ICSs in Health to join up care more effectively.

Disability
Similarly, I don’t believe the review focuses enough on social care for disabled children. Too often, families with disabled children report feeling judged by the care system, which is focused on child protection to the detriment of providing more support for families who need help. I would like to see a further focused piece of work from DfE and the DHSC on social care, SEND and wider support for disabled children and their families. This work should link to the Building the Right Support programme, which is working to prevent children being admitted to hospital unnecessarily.

What next?
The publication of reviews are only ever the first stage in a process, and the ideas held in them only as good as their implementation. Therefore, we must not underestimate the need to act now and invest all our energy into making this vision a reality – so many children’s lives and futures are at stake. I know we can do it, I’ve seen it for myself. As well as the difference it makes when children get amazing support. We need everywhere to be as good as the best. We must have no tolerance for anything less than excellent, no patience for good enough.

This is a big job, we can’t promise overnight results. There is no silver bullet. We need to be prepared for the long-haul. What we need is a children’s services transformation programme and an Implementation Board, with ministerial sponsorship and oversight, to make sure we deliver needed reform. There are places doing it brilliantly, but also nearly half of services aren’t good enough. We must learn from the best. We must have no tolerance for anything less than excellent. No patience for good enough.

What does success look like? When we can answer that yes, it is good enough for our own child. Every time.

I look forward to doing whatever I can to make this much needed reform a reality. We owe it to England’s children.

Source:
www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk

Call comes amid longstanding shortage with 25 children waiting for placement at any one time

The government should be responsible for ensuring there are enough secure placements for looked-after children to address the current shortage, the Children’s Commissioner for England has said.

In July last year, Ofsted said that, at any one time, 25 children were waiting for a place at one of England’s 13 secure homes, and 20 children from England had been placed in secure units in Scotland.

The shortage has forced local authorities to seek court orders for bespoke placements for children needing secure care, causing judges to repeatedly criticise the lack of provision nationally for children with complex needs. Under section 25 of the Children Act 1989, secure placements are reserved for looked-after children who would otherwise be likely to abscond, putting themselves at significant risk, or to injure themselves or others.

The commissioner, Rachel de Souza, made the call for the Department for Education (DfE) to address the current shortage in a report on improving provision for looked-after children, published this week. Under her plan, councils would still bear the costs of the placements.

The report, which is designed to influence the children’s social care review, made a number of proposals to improve stability and support for looked-after children and enable them to have a much greater say in how they are cared for.

Instability ‘the single biggest failure’
The commissioner said that placement instability – rooted in the lack of provision – was the “single biggest failure” in services for looked-after children, with one in four experiencing two or more moves every two years.

De Souza called for an England-wide strategy to reduce instability, with a national target to reduce this rate to one in ten children within five years, and local targets for councils to reduce their rates.

Authorities should be bound to set out how they would meet their targets in their sufficiency strategies, said the commissioner. These are required under their duty to secure sufficient accommodation for looked-after children in their area for whom a local placement would be appropriate.

De Souza also urged the care review to consider recommending that Ofsted inspections assess councils against the quality of their sufficiency strategies and the rates of instability experienced by children.

‘Trusting relationships’
The report highlighted the value of looked-after children having at least one trusting relationship, but said this was undermined by high turnover of social workers. Previous research by the commissioner has found that three in five children in care experience a change of social worker each year, with one in four having two or more changes.

“Children should be able to expect their social worker to support them over several years, with a proper handover process whereby children are able to build up a relationship before any crucial decisions are made,” the report said.

De Souza said practitioners needed to be freed up to invest time in building relationships with children in care, through reduced caseloads and paperwork.

As well as investment in the workforce, she said this could be achieved by increasing the use of automation when making records and through “shared systems” that reduced the need for social workers to fill out “duplicate referrals”.

However, the report said that, where children had a difficult rapport with their social worker, they should be able to build a trusting relationship with another professional, such as an advocate or a youth worker.

IRO role ‘not working’
Children should also play a greater role in their reviews, saying they too rarely believed they could shape the process, being greatly outnumbered by professionals, some of whom they did not know well.

The commissioner said the independent reviewing officer (IRO) role was not working, with children rarely having strong relationships with them outside of reviews, which IROs chair. She also said IROs, who are employed by local authorities, did not have sufficient independence to challenge decisions while also not being able to take sufficient ownership of outcomes for the children they were responsible for.

While the report did not make any specific recommendations to reform the role, the commissioner called for “greater connection between IROs and advocacy services to provide more independent challenge”.

Longstanding sufficiency concerns
De Souza’s report follows many that have raised significant concerns about the lack of placements for looked-after children, including from her predecessor as commissioner, Anne Longfield.

Both the care review and the Competition and Markets Authority, in its current study on children’s social care, have raised concerns about the power providers had to dictate terms to local authorities, leading to high prices and insufficient provision.

In its interim report, the CMA suggested moving towards regional or national procurement or commissioning of looked-after children’s placements to give councils more clout with providers. It will provide recommendations on the issue in its final report, due by March.

Meanwhile, the government has provided £259m, from 2022-25, to increase the capacity of open and secure children’s homes.

Alongside this, Ofsted has made regulatory changes to enable providers to register children’s homes with up to four buildings, to tackle capacity challenges.

In response to de Souza’s report, Association of Directors of Children’s Services vice president Steve Crocker welcomed her call “for the DfE to play a greater role in securing sufficiency in secure children’s homes”

He said the ADCS believed that “a wholly new and much more therapeutic approach” for children and young people with “very complex and overlapping health, education and social care needs” – the cohort who may need secure care.

“Unfortunately, finding the right placement, at the right time and in the best location for a growing number of children in our care is becoming increasingly difficult because we face a national shortage of placements of all types,” Crocker added.

He said the CMA and care review’s work would be “crucial in enabling local authorities to meet their sufficiency duties in future”, and that the extra government investment and Ofsted regulatory changes would “help ease these challenges down the line”.

Ofsted’s national director for social care, Yvette Stanley, said it would back a “national commissioning strategy for secure placements”, based on an assessment of the needs of children across the youth justice, care and mental health systems.

Children ‘placed over 100 miles away’
She added: “As well as ensuring there are enough places, stability in revenue and capital funding is needed to maintain and upgrade buildings, so they can meet the needs of the children now in the system.

“Placements also need to be in the right places. In some cases, we are seeing children placed over 100 miles away from their homes, which has a real impact on family and community bonds.”

In relation to setting targets for stability, Stanley said data alone can be “a blunt and inaccurate measure of progress”, but that “well-designed, measurable targets” could, with other actions, “be motivating and lead to positive change”.

She said that Ofsted would be “happy to be part of the conversation that considers different approaches to make sure this is a priority”.

In relation to Ofsted inspections assessing councils’ delivery of their sufficiency strategies and the rates of instability experienced by looked-after children, Stanley said she sould be happy to engage in discussions.

However, she added: “Sufficiency of placements is central to our work, but we look at this through the lens of individual children’s experiences, rather than an evaluation of strategies, policies and procedures. At a local level the number of these children will be small, so planning needs to be joined up regionally and nationally.”

The current framework for Ofsted’s inspections of local authorities asks councils to provide a range of relevant information including their sufficiency strategy, and associated commissioning plans.

Source:
www.communitycare.co.uk

​Foreword by Dame Rachel de Souza DBE

This paper is dedicated to all the children in care who have spoken to me as Children’s Commissioner. These children have shared with me their experiences – good, bad and sometimes traumatic. Lots of the children and young people I meet are grateful for the love and support they have been given. But all too often they can be angry and frustrated about the challenges they face and the way they have been treated. These children in care have told me their thoughts and personal experiences in the hope that I can bring about change for the children who follow in their footsteps. And, I have been constantly impressed by the reflective and sanguine way children in care can discuss their experiences.

As Children’s Commissioner I want to put children’s voice at the heart of everything we do. I am motivated by all the children I have met and the stories they have shared. That is why, ‘The Big Ask’, my survey of nearly 600,000 children last year, offered children the opportunity to tell me their hopes, aspirations, and challenges. What was striking was that for children in care they were the same as all other children. They wanted to feel safe, stable, and loved; to maintain the vital relationships with friends and family; to be able to pursue their own interests and make plans for the future, and to be helped and supported when things go wrong. It is these essential elements of a good childhood which are too often missing for children in care and on the edges of it, and it is these fundamentals I want to focus on.

We have a unique opportunity now to change and reform the lives of children in care. With the Review of Children’s Social Care, the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Green Paper, the Schools’ White Paper and reforms to Integrated Care Services all taking place at the moment. This provides a unique opportunity to address these important issues ambitiously, cohesively and in a child-centred way. And my Office continues to contribute to all these ongoing pieces of work.

The case for change couldn’t be stronger – we are failing to give children loving, caring and stable homes; we are failing to get children into good schools which can support them, and we are failing to get children vital mental health care to help them recover from trauma. In some cases, as we have been reminded so tragically recently, we are failing to make the interventions that could save a child from trauma, serious harm and even death.

Quite simply, we can and must do better and I will be relentless in pushing for the changes we need to see. This paper focuses on the changes I believe are needed.

I do not pretend this is easy to get right every time, but when we are talking about the lives of children no failure rate is acceptable. We need to focus on the experience we want for every child and commit to building a system that can deliver it. We need to acknowledge that the system must do better and then commit to working together to get it to where we want to be. We must celebrate the good the great social care is doing across the country and use this as a foundation from which to build.

The Social Care Review can be the catalyst to bring about the bold and radical changes children want to see, but it will take all of us to make it a reality for all children within five years.

Full details and download here

Latest figures show continued sharp decline in care leavers, children entering care and looked-after asylum-seeking children

The number of children adopted from care fell to its lowest level in 21 years in 2020-21, Department for Education (DfE) figures show.

Their number fell by 18% on the year to 2,870, the lowest total since 1999-2000. Delays in family court proceedings during Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the latest annual decline in adoptions, but the number has fallen each year since a peak of 5,360 in 2014-15.

The DfE figures also showed the number of children entering and leaving care both fell sharply, by 8% to 28,440 and by 6% to 28,010, respectively, their lowest levels in nine years. But, as the number entering care still outnumbered those leaving, the number of looked-after children increased for the 13th year running, to a record high of 80,850. The rate of looked-after children per 10,000 children remained at 67, the same as the year before.

However, the number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) in care fell by a fifth, a second consecutive annual drop, to 4,070, its lowest level in six years.

​Adoptions taking longer
The long-term decline in adoptions from 2014-15 followed two court rulings in 2013, re B and re B-S, which stated that adoption orders should be made only when there was no other alternative, such as placing a child with birth relatives.

It now takes two years and two months for a child to be adopted on average, which has increased steadily since 2018, when it was one year and 11 months. In 2021, the average time between a child entering care and being placed for adoption was a year and four months. It then took a further 10 months, on average, for an adoption order to be granted and the adoption to be completed.

In its latest adoption strategy, published in July, the government said it wanted to cut waits for children with a placement order to less than 18 months, saying it was “unacceptable” that 1,000 children were waiting longer than this. The government has made this one of its key targets for the next three years.

“For children with a plan for adoption, the quicker we can move them out of care and into a permanent family, the better,” said Sue Armstrong Brown, chief executive of charity Adoption UK. “Waiting in care can mean multiple moves to different homes and a high level of uncertainty. This can pile trauma on top of trauma.”

The latest figures show that the average age of a child at adoption rose by three months in 2020-21, to three years and three months, the same level as in 2018. Adoptions for Asian/Asian British children and Mixed/multi-ethnic group children leaving care fell by a higher-than-average rate in 2020-21, of 25% and 24%, respectively. In its strategy, the DfE highlighted the long waits faced by children from ethnic minorities and prioritised recruiting more adopters from ethnic minority communities.

“We know the pandemic has had a significant impact on agencies in securing permanent homes for children,” a DfE spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that adoption numbers had recovered since the turn of the financial year in April.

“Data from the Adoption and Special Guardianship Leadership Board shows that, as of June 2021, the adoption system is recovering, with adoption orders and special guardianship orders back to pre-Covid levels,” they added.

More special guardianship orders
The number of children leaving care on special guardianship orders (SGOs) increased by 2% in 2020-21 to 3,800, following a 4% dip in the year to March 2020. This meant that a third more children left care on SGOs, around one in seven, than were adopted in the year to March 2021.

Most SGOs were granted to relatives or friends – 88% – with the rest mainly to other former foster carers. The average age of children leaving care on an SGO increased by three months to six years and one month.

Dr Lucy Peake, chief executive of charity Kinship, welcomed the increase in special guardianship orders but urged the government to offer more support to such arrangements.

“Despite significantly more children leaving care on a special guardianship order than an adoption order, support is often not available even where children have complex needs,” she said. “Seventy per cent of kinship carers we surveyed stated that they didn’t get the support they needed from their local authority.

“We want to see a government strategy that values, recognises and financially invests in kinship carers who sacrifice so much to give children the love, care and support they deserve.”

Andy Elvin, chief executive of fostering charity TACT, also called for the government to offer as much support to special guardianship arrangements as it did for adoption.

“Despite successive governments, back to Blair, having a myopic focus on adoption, it is clear that the direction of travel is that more kinship arrangements will be created alongside more foster carers taking SGOs,” he said. “It is about time that serious focus and resource was put into supporting kinship families. Occasional one-off grants aren’t investment, they are window dressing.”

Children spending longer in care
The number of children leaving care lagged the average for 2018-20 during the first Covid-19 lockdown in England from April to August 2020, but it matched the long-term trend from September 2020 onwards. DfE said the annual decline is likely to have driven an increase in the average length of time care leavers had spent being looked after, which rose by 79 days year-on-year.

Katharine Sacks-Jones, chief executive at charity Become, raised concerns about the increasing number of children who are forced to leave the care system when they become 18. In the year to March 2021, 38% of children that left care had their looked-after status removed on their 18th birthday, , up from 31% in 2017-18.

She called on the children’s social care review to “reimagine the concept of ‘leaving care’ to ensure care-experienced young people are offered the support they need and deserve as they move into adulthood”.

The number of children entering care lagged the average for 2018-20 consistently across the year to March 2021, with the largest year-on-year decline in January 2021, the start of the third national lockdown.

Elvin said while the fall could be due to lockdown measures, it might also be a sign of “better preventative work with families or increased use of kinship arrangements”.

But Cathy Ashley, chief executive of the Family Rights Group, expressed concern about the growing number of children in care overall.

“Many professionals feel overstretched and overwhelmed and too many children and families do not get the direct help they need early enough to prevent difficulties escalating,” she said. “The lack of resources, poverty and deprivation are making it harder for families and the system to cope, and this has worsened during the pandemic.”

Charlotte Ramsden, president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, said: “Referrals to children’s social care reduced significantly during the periods of national lockdown which was a worry for us, however, local authorities up and down the country worked hard to make sure they were there providing support for those children and families who need it the most.

“We are only now seeing some of the emerging signs of the impact of the pandemic with families presenting greater complexity of need, but the lasting impacts will remain with us for years to come. It is essential that we have both the capacity and resources to meet these needs as quickly as possible.”

Sharp fall in asylum-seeking children in care
The number of asylum-seeking children fell by 20% on the previous year, likely driven by travel restrictions during the year.

Following the drop, asylum-seeking children accounted for 5% of all looked-after children in March 2021, down from 6% a year earlier. However, numbers remain higher than the period between 2004 and 2015.

Kent and Croydon had the most asylum-seeking children in their care in March 2021, with 291 and 211 children, respectively. This reflects Kent being a major port of entry and Croydon being where a Home Office asylum intake unit is based. Most asylum-seeking children – 52% – were in the care of local authorities in London or the South East in March 2021, a decline on 56% the year before.

The situation has seen Kent stop taking asylum-seeking children into its care twice in 2020 and 2021, and Croydon’s level of unaccompanied children implicated in its significant financial problems.

This Home Office has sought to tackle the concentration of aslum-seeking children in a few authorities by relaunching its voluntary national transfer scheme, in July this year, so that responsibility for children is distributed more evenly between regions.

Anti-trafficking organisation Love 146 said the 20% annual fall is likely linked to a 15% drop in the number of children arriving in the UK and claiming asylum during the same period.

But it expressed concern that the Home Office had placed some asylum-seeking children in hotels over the past year despite the decline in numbers. The Home Office’s use of hotels as temporary accommodation for asylum seekers has increased since March, with 70 children in such places in September this year.

“This highlights the significant need for trained specialist carers, particularly as the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic starts to lessen and routes for unaccompanied minors to seek asylum in the UK start to re-open,” a spokesperson for Love 146 said.

Source:
www.communitycare.co.uk

​Ofsted have today released their annual fostering in England statistics, highlighting that many vulnerable children are currently missing out on the care and support they need due to a lack of foster carers. 

We know that one of the biggest challenges facing the fostering sector currently is how to secure the future recruitment and retention of enough, high-quality foster carers. As we emerge from a global pandemic, ensuring there are sufficient numbers of skilled and knowledgeable foster carers is even more pressing. 

The Ofsted figures show that overall, there was a net increase of just 45 local authority carers and a net increase of 960 independent fostering agency carers across England from 1April 2020 – 31 March 2021. They also show that 18% of all foster carers are family and friends foster carers who are typically only approved to care for specific children.  

The Fostering Network identified a need for at least 7,300 new foster families in England this year, which means we are falling far short of being able to meet the needs of all children in care. All children and young people in need of foster care should be placed with a foster family who is able to understand what that child needs to thrive, build relationships, learn and develop while supporting them to navigate the challenges that often come from being in care.  

Kevin Williams, CEO of The Fostering Network, states: ‘We all know that creating stable and loving environments for children in care is vital. Ensuring there are sufficient foster families, through both recruitment and retention strategies, should also be vital as this is key to securing good matching and stability.’  

The Fostering Network supports its fostering services members with their recruitment and retention activity through initiatives such as Foster Care Fortnight, but more needs to be done at a national level to help services attract and keep carers to ensure no child has to miss out on a stable, loving home. With the release of the State of the Nation report due next month, The Fostering Network will be highlighting in more detail the challenge the sector is facing around sufficiency and calling for change across a range of factors which feed into this.  

Source:
www.thefosteringnetwork.org.uk

Local authorities have 'inherently weak' position in market and shift to national or regional commissioning of placements should be considered, says Competition and Markets Authority.

Profits for large children’s social care providers are higher than would be expected in a well-functioning market, as the lack of placements leaves councils in an ‘inherently weak’ position.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said today it had found that the largest children’s home providers charged an average weekly price of £3,830, with an average operating profit margin of 23%. For independent fostering agencies, the average weekly price for fostering was about £820 per week, with an average operating profit margin of 19%.

In the interim report from the competition watchdog’s study into the children’s social care market, it said that such levels of profit were the result of councils’ weak bargaining position relative to providers.

This was because placements were insufficient and councils often had to find somewhere for a looked-after child in a hurry. Each individual authority was also responsible for too few children to be able to accurately forecast demand and shape the market.

To tackle this, the CMA suggested moving towards regional or national procurement or commissioning of looked-after children’s placements. This could take the form of national or regional bodies advising councils or taking direct responsibility for placements.

However, it raised concerns about calls to restrict providers’ profits and prices on the grounds that the fundamental issue was a lack of supply, and this may reduce it further.

Private equity warning
The CMA also raised concerns about the impact of private equity ownership of providers, particularly among children’s homes, because of the high and increasing levels of debt they were carrying.

This could lead to providers failing and exiting the market, creating instability for children, in an echo of what happened in adult social care with the collapse of Southern Cross in 2011. To address this, it suggested creating a financial oversight regime of the kind introduced in adults’ services, and run by the Care Quality Commission, following Southern Cross’s collapse.

The report also called for the regulatory regime around children’s services to be reviewed to enable providers to increase supply.

While it said that it wasn’t a case of regulatory standards being too high but of some regulations “unwittingly creating barriers” to meeting children’s needs. This was in the context of the regulatory regime in England having been in place for about 20 years during which the market for children’s care had changed dramatically.

‘Failing system’
Andrea Coscelli, chief executive of the CMA, said: “We are concerned this is a failing system, with children not being placed in the right homes while providers are being allowed to charge high prices and make big profits.

“Vulnerable children rely on these services, but too many are being placed in accommodation that does not meet their needs. And despite many placements not being suitable, local authorities, funded by taxpayers, are paying more than they should to provide them. The levels of debt we have seen being carried by private equity-owned firms is also a real concern due to the effect a firm in financial distress could have on the children in their care.

“We are now considering ways to tackle these issues, including recommendations to the UK and devolved governments, and are inviting comments on these. Our priority remains identifying the best ways to ensure children can get the right care.”

The study was launched in March after the head of the children’s social care review, Josh MacAlister, called on the CMA to investigate insufficiency of placements and providers’ profit levels.

The CMA has launched a three-week consultation into the interim report, closing on 12 November, after which it will do further work evidence gathering and analysis before completing its final report by March of next year.

‘End or limit for-profit provision’
On the back of the report, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) called for an end to – or at least a limitation of – for-profit  provision in children’s social care.

ADCS president Charlotte Ramsden said: “Meaningful change is needed and ADCS calls on government to implement legislation which prevents for-profit operations or as a minimum caps the level of fees chargeable in fostering and residential services, similar to that in Scotland.

“Local authorities would be able to reinvest some of this money and develop more in-house provision and earlier intensive support, closer to the communities in which children grow up. The system must be driven by children’s needs, not maximising profits.”

‘Extremely high profits and concerning levels of debt’
In response to the report, the Local Government Association (LGA) said it reflected concerns it had been raising for years.

“Our members are increasingly concerned about the balance of provision, in particular the growth and market share of the very largest providers which limits councils’ ability to manage the market and ensure the availability of placements to meet the needs of the children they care for,” said Anntoinette Bramble, chair of the LGA’s children and young people board.

She added: “The CMA has confirmed our recent findings that private equity providers are making extremely high profits and carrying concerning levels of debt that risks the stability of homes for children in care, which is paramount if they are to thrive. We continue to call for oversight of the market to avoid a ‘Southern Cross situation’ in children’s social care and to ensure the quality of provision.”

In a reference to a number of recent court cases in which placements have not been available for children with highly complex needs, she said such “harrowing cases” were “unacceptable” and a solution could not wait until the outcome of the CMA review next March. She urged the government “to work with us urgently to address these challenges”.

‘Without reform, children’s outcomes will suffer’
The Independent Children’s Home Association (ICHA) also welcomed the report.

“It lays bare what we already know that the current state of the market is due to many complex factors and no single solution will bring about the change required,” said deputy chief executive Elizabeth Cooper. “It also brings a sense of urgency suggesting that without reform, children’s long-term outcomes will suffer.”

She added: “We recognise and share the CMA’s concern regarding leverage and the potential for the collapse of large residential provision if economic conditions change and look forward to future recommendations that enables enterprise to continue in a sustainable and reassuring way.

“Finally, we strongly support the call for a review of regulations to enable more diversity to enter the market and better reflect the current conditions in which we operate.”

The National Association of Fostering Providers (NAFP) also welcomed the report but urged the CMA to do further analysis of fostering services in order to “dispel myths” about independent fostering agencies.

“There are significant differences between fostering and residential care,” said NAFP chief executive Harvey Gallagher. “Trying to cover both in one narrative does not give an accurate picture of each sector’s challenges.”

He said the report implied that most children’s placements were “spot purchased”, leaving councils in a weak position, however, in fostering most placements were made using pre-tendered contracts.

Gallagher added that issues to do with the appropriateness of IFA placements were often beyond agencies’ control.

He said: “The most appropriate care for a child is often more about the carer having the particular skills and experience to meet that child’s needs. Too often, IFAs are sent referral information that misses vital information, contains old information or is completed by someone who does not know the child.”

Source:
www.communitycare.co.uk

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Local authority and children’s services leaders have called for greater scrutiny of private sector children’s social care providers in a bid to minimise the risks posed by a large operator collapsing.

The Local Government Association (LGA) said it would like to see the creation of a role to monitor the financial health of large children’s social care placement providers, while the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) wants to see changes to the regulatory system to require providers to be registered instead of settings.  

The concerns were raised in responses to the Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) call for evidence on the children’s social care market study. Launched in March on the request of Care Review chair Josh MacAlister, the CMA market study – responses to which have just been published - could lead to a full investigation later this year.

In their submissions, both organisations said they were concerned about the growing influence of private equity (PE) investors in the children’s social care sector.

The LGA cites research that shows private equity-owned provision “carries a higher financial risk profile than other types of providers”.

It states: “Four of the seven largest groups of independent providers carry more debts and liabilities than tangible assets, with all of these being PE-owned. In total, six of the 20 groups of providers (the largest in the market) in the study reported negative net assets, with all but one of these having PE ownership.”

The LGA highlights that the collapse of adult care home provider Southern Cross in 2011 led to a legal duty for the Care Quality Commission to monitor the financial health of the “most difficult to replace” adult social care service providers – but that no such duty exists for the children’s sector.

“We would like to see a role introduced to oversee the financial health of large children’s social care placement providers to prevent a ‘Southern Cross situation’ in children’s social care, and also incorporate consideration of how mergers and acquisitions impact on quality of care and the experiences and outcomes of children,” it states.

In its submission, the ADCS echoes growing concerns about the role of private equity in the residential care sector and its impact on the stability of providers.

It states: “For some time, ADCS members have been concerned about how private equity is driving rapid changes in the ownership, financial models and service delivery in residential services for vulnerable children.

“The proportion of the market controlled by just a small number of providers, along with multi-million-pound mergers between providers who are diversifying across the sector and buying up smaller firms, increases the risk within the system. The risks associated with the impact of provider failure are significant and only increase as ownership continues to contract.”

The ADCS highlights that the current regulatory framework is nearly 20 years old and focused on the performance of individual homes rather than “the efficacy of the increasingly common large provider chains/organisations or the contribution they make to children’s outcomes”.  

There is little focus on – or scrutiny of – the financial stability of parent companies, no single record of who owns the services that deliver care for children available for authorities to refer to as corporate parents, nor a mechanism for recording or managing the risk of provider failure, it adds.

Moving to a system that registered providers instead of settings “would allow the flexibility needed to make emergency/crisis placements while also allowing authorities to tailor the care and support around the individual needs of children and young people”, it added.  

The CMA received submissions from 35 organisations to its study. A decision on whether to hold an investigation will be made by September.

Source:
www.cypnow.co.uk

The government has announced an additional £51m to support care leavers and young people transitioning to independence.

The funding will extend existing Department for Education flagship schemes Staying Put and Staying Close for an additional year.

The package includes:

• £33m for the Staying Put scheme, which helps looked-after children stay with their foster carers after their 18th birthday
• £3.6m to extend the Staying Close pilot, which gives extra support for young people leaving residential care
• £12m for councils to continue to provide personal advisers to support care leavers up to the age of 25
• £2.7m to provide intensive support to care leavers at high risk of homelessness, as part of the government’s Rough Sleeping strategy.

The DfE is also set to provide more than 5,000 more laptops for care leavers through the Get Help with Technology scheme, which will help to prevent loneliness and isolation among this group of young people. The laptops and routers will mean they can more easily keep in touch with their personal advisers and wider support networks, as well as helping them access support services such as for education, mental health support and searching for employment opportunities online.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said: “Every young person in care deserves to live in accommodation that meets their needs and keeps them safe – anything less is unacceptable, and so continuing to prioritise children in care or leaving care is absolutely vital.

“The measures build on our shared ambition across government to level up outcomes and opportunities for everyone, but especially the most vulnerable – by providing safer homes, reducing isolation among young people leaving care, and by making sure they have a strong support network to rely on as they take steps into adult life.”

"This new funding will help care leavers as they navigate the sometimes perilous transition into living independently, whether that's through advice from a personal adviser or rapid support if they find themselves with no roof over their head,” he said.

"Taken together with the recent exemption from the shared accommodation rate, this is a real step forward for care leavers."

Meanwhile, a report by charity Barnardo’s reveals the extent of unsafe, unsuitable and unhealthy accommodation offered to vulnerable young people when they leave care and how this differs from that offered to children.

Its survey of 2,000 adults found that only one in five received no support from parents when they first moved out of the family home to live independently. Interviews the charity did with 23 care leavers about their experiences found an overwhelming proportion reported having little or no choice about where they moved after leaving care, many found the whole process of finding somewhere to live and moving in to be "scary" and did not feel ready to live independently.

Its No Place Like Home report calls on the government to provide more support for the Staying Close scheme, double to £4,000 the ‘setting up home’ grant, and develop robust standards for semi-independent accommodation.

Barnardo’s chief executive Javed Khan said: “Many young people leaving the care system enter adulthood without a strong support network, leaving them particularly vulnerable.  

“Having a safe and stable home is one of the most important factors in helping care leavers to recover from past trauma, gain qualifications and secure stable employment. Yet our research has demonstrated that care leavers are too often expected to live in conditions that are unsuitable and at worst unsafe. 

“The government has a unique opportunity to improve the system for care leavers, through the Independent Review of Children's Social Care. We must also make it easier for young people to stay with their foster carers up to the age of 21; and when they do live independently, accommodation must be safe and appropriate to meet their needs.” 

Source:
www.cypnow.co.uk

Children’s charities have stepped up their campaign to call for an end to private care companies profiteering from fostering.

The campaign group Fairer Fostering Partnership (FFP) has launched a social media push using the hashtag #forchildrennotprofit, to promote commissioning care placements using not-for-profit and charitable fostering agencies, rather than commercial fostering firms.

The group is concerned that commercial fostering organisations are owned by private and venture capital companies that make “significant profits for shareholders”.

Instead, the FFP believes that any profit from foster care should be re-invested into children’s services.

“Excessive profit has no place in the care of vulnerable children,” says the group.

It adds: “FFP members work purely for children, not for profit, and in a financially strapped sector funded by taxpayers helping thousands of vulnerable children in care, it is important that local authorities and foster carers are able to make an informed choice as to which fostering providers they work with."

FFP members include Action for Children, Barnardo’s and The Adolescent and Children’s Trust (TACT).

TACT chief executive and FFP chair Andy Elvin said: “All our members’ resources are invested in meeting the needs of vulnerable children and young people, and not in making a profit from them.

“This transparency and accountability is welcomed by local authorities and foster carers alike, but we need to continue promoting the message that excessive profits are being made by some agencies at a time when there is less money in the system. That clearly can’t be a good thing for children in care.”

This week the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) also raised concerns about the use of profit-making companies to provide children’s care.

Its 2021 position paper says there is a “worrying increase in the number of large organisations, backed by private equity investors, entering into children’s residential and fostering services”.

It adds “the ability of private equity companies to extract huge profit from the care of children is concerning, as is the level of debt and the implications that financial failure would mean for children and young people”.

Source:
www.cypnow.co.uk/