Care league tables get mixed reaction

The tables, published on 31 October, rank councils in England against 15 indicators for children in care.
While Prime Minister David Cameron highlighted adoption as a key area for improvement, they also show significant disparities in placement stability, educational attainment and outcomes for looked-after children and care leavers across the country.

For instance, in Doncaster, 17 per cent of looked-after children moved placement three or more times in one year, compared to only three per cent in Berkshire.

While fewer than 10 per cent of children in care obtained five GCSEs A* to Cs including English and maths in 36 local authorities, 25 per cent of looked-after children in Sutton achieved this benchmark.

The proportion of care leavers not in education, employment or training (Neet) ranged from just 15 per cent in Tower Hamlets and Oxfordshire to 69 per cent in Bracknell Forest.

Startling difference

A Department for Education (DfE) spokesman said the difference in performance for children in care between some local authorities is "startling", adding that the league tables bring such practice into the public eye.

"They respond to the pressing need for more transparency and accountability in the area of children in care," he said. "Local authorities need to see where they stand, who they can learn from and who as a sector they need to help. It’s common sense to list authorities in a way that makes that easy to do."
But Jack Smith, policy officer at the Who Cares? Trust, argued that comparing local services accurately for looked-after children is highly problematic.

"It’s difficult to directly compare local authorities because they’re dealing with very different populations," he said. "Manchester has 149 looked-after children per 10,000 children. When you compare that to somewhere like Wokingham where there is 22, it shows a real difference in the way that local authorities are using care. There isn’t one care system, there are 152 different local ones."

Smith argued that the government’s policy direction risks making the "postcode lottery" for children in care worse.

"We’re doing some work on educational routes for looked-after children and funding that’s available," he said. "Responsibility for setting the 16 to 19 bursary which replaced education maintenance allowance (EMA) has gone to individual institutions. Now there are 350 different ways of doing things depending on which college you go to. It’s a really confusing picture for young people.

"The same is true in other areas of policy. Under the health reforms, you could end up with three different clinical commissioning groups, commissioning different health services for looked-after children across one local authority."

Smith warned that plans to restrict Ofsted inspections of looked-after children’s services to a sample of councils every year could mean that variations in practice are allowed to increase.

"You won’t resolve these problems by simply publishing league tables," he said. "We want to see clear accountability for services for children in care, but there is a real risk that Ofsted’s proposals will do the opposite."

Martin Hazlehurst, manager of the National Care Advisory Service, argued that the league tables are "one driver" to improve outcomes for children in care. But he warned that the data should not be viewed in isolation.

"Whether young care leavers become Neet, for example, is down to some factors outside of council control," he said. "There is no doubt there is wide variety in performance between local authorities, but at the same time we are in a period of very high youth unemployment, and care leavers are not immune to the lack of opportunity in the areas where they live."

Automatic disadvantage

He added that more deprived local areas are at an automatic disadvantage in the league tables.
"While there are differences between neighbouring authorities, I suspect that detailed analysis of the figures will show that a lot of the best performing areas are in parts of the country with higher employment," he said. "That’s no excuse for not trying to do better, but it’s important to recognise."
Shadow children’s minister Catherine McKinnell admitted that outcomes for looked-after children are "unacceptably poor". But she warned against naming and shaming local authorities, which risks "painting too simplistic a picture" of "incredibly complex" issues.

Helen Johnston, programme director of the Local Government Association’s children and young people team, described league tables as "a bit of a blunt tool".

"You have to look at different factors that come into play in different areas, such as the increase in referrals to children’s social care," she said. "League tables aren’t able to explain the true story of what’s happening on the ground."