Professionals admit to social care knowledge gap

A survey of 233 social care practitioners, carried out as part of a one year on progress report on the rights and entitlements of children in care and care leavers, found that 48 per cent said they had all the information they needed to make decisions.

But the survey suggests professionals’ knowledge gap may be wider than they think – upon further questioning, some practitioners who said they had all the information they needed did not know about some of the entitlements for care leavers and looked-after children.

The report by the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) for looked-after children and care leavers described the findings as “concerning” because it highlights the gap in knowledge of key professionals – it cites residential workers, personal advisers, senior care managers and corporate parenting board managers – who children look to as “a reliable source of information”.

“One social care manager said that they did not know about four of the 10 entitlements, but that they thought they had all the information they needed,” the report, a follow up to 2013’s Entitlements Inquiry, states.

The entitlements cover areas such as access to information, financial support, involving young people in decisions about their care, and ensuring care plans are regularly reviewed and kept up to date.

More encouragingly, three-quarters of professionals who took part in the original inquiry and follow-up survey said their knowledge had improved over the past year, while only 17 per cent thought nothing had changed since 2013.

Improvements were also seen in the percentage of looked-after children and care leavers who felt they now had all the information they needed about rights and entitlements, although these levels were still low at 37 and 32 per cent respectively.

Of particular concern was that 37 per cent of children in care said they did not know if they had a care plan and less than half said they had review meetings with practitioners before big decisions about their care were made.

For care leavers, 30 per cent said they did not have a pathway plan, while 15 per cent knew that the leaving care grant should be £2,000 but had received less than that amount from their local authority.

The follow-up report was run by the Who Cares? Trust on behalf of the APPG, and heard from 181 children in care and care leavers, and received submissions from 20 local authorities and children in care councils.