Increases in the oldest children coming into the system were particularly sharp, with 15-year-olds growing by 150 per cent and 16-year-olds by 285 per cent.
If this rise in the use of care for adolescents could be linked to significant improvements in its impact on life outcomes then it would be something to celebrate, but this is very far from the case: the studies show that planned placements are relatively rare, placement breakdown relatively frequent, and a third of those aged 16 received no final order. Sadly, this is all despite the principal finding of the 2012 What is Care For? report by the Association of Directors of Children’s Services that the cohort for which care was demonstrably least successful was those entering as adolescents.
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