Young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) by Faiza Shaheen, New Economics Foundation
Childcare by Sarah Steel, The Old Station Nursery
Education by John Dunford, Association of School and College Leaders
Families by Penny Mansfield, One Plus One
Youth Crime by Iain McPherson, Association of Chief Police Officers
Social Work by Claudia Megele, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
Child Poverty by Luke Sibieta, Institute for Fiscal Studies
Information Sharing by John Coughlan, Hampshire County Council
Positive Activities by Nick Wilkie, London Youth
Children's Health by Jo Webber, NHS Confederation
Children in Care by Niamh Harraher, Children's Legal Centre
Looked-after Children by Natasha Finlayson, The Who Cares? Trust
Inspections by David Parsons, Local Government Association
Young people not in education, employment or training (NEET)
The scourge of youth unemployment will be one of the defining challenges for our society in 2010.There are two main challenges facing any government trying to tackle the growing numbers of young people not in employment, education or training (Neet).
The first is a lack of demand in the labour market, caused not only by the recession, but also by the decline of heavy industry and manufacturing in the UK, which has led to a polarisation of so-called "high-skilled" high-paid jobs, and "low-skilled" low-paid jobs.
The second is the vocational skills system, where a growing number of qualifications are confusing employers and still not providing young people with the relevant skills they need to get a job.
In the Pre-Budget Report, the Chancellor Alistair Darling extended the training and education guarantee for 16- and 17-year-olds for at least another year, and promised to provide a job to all young people under 24 who have been out of work for six months, rather than the previous 12 months.
However, the jobs offered by the scheme are for only six months, and in the most depressed regions this will mean that young people are likely to return to the jobs queue, more demoralised than ever.
More importantly, these pledges ignore the fact that youth unemployment is not a new problem. Even before the recession youth unemployment was double adult unemployment, suggesting that it may be a consequence not of the downturn, but of our economic and education systems. Short-term measures cannot tackle these true drivers.
Longer-term remedies that have been initiated include the increase in the education leaving age to 17 by 2013 and 18 by 2015.
But, again, it is not immediately obvious how keeping young people in school for longer will either tackle the inadequate vocational skills programmes or the falling number of well-paid jobs for those young people who do not want to go to university.
Addressing the Neet problem will take much more than what amounts to a sticking plaster. The real barriers to work are embedded in our labour market. Increased levels of skills might help, if linked to local demand and in more economically buoyant areas.
But unfortunately skills are not the silver bullet that politicians would have us believe. The biggest barrier rests on the demand, not the supply side, of the labour market.
Increased levels of youth employment and a growth of relevant skills are important not only for those young people who are faced with spells of unemployment throughout their lifetime, but they are also crucial for the prosperity of our entire economy and society. It is vital then that in 2010 politicians finally start tackling the roots of the Neet problem.
Faiza Shaheen is a researcher on economic inequality at the New Economics Foundation
WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN
- Encourage businesses to hire young people - give companies a financial incentive to hire young people to compensate for the extra cost it takes to train them
- Make jobs careers - both private businesses and the public sector must be encouraged to create opportunities for young people that have a clear career structure. This will ensure that young people are not stuck in dead-end jobs and hence more vulnerable to low pay
- Create a skills system fit for purpose - vocational courses should be devised to have a bigger work-based element, and expansion of apprenticeships should be a priority
- Create decent middle-rung jobs - generate thousands of new medium-skilled jobs to give young people without academic qualifications the opportunity to do a practical and well-paid job with career prospects
- Prioritise young people in the most economically depressed areas - these medium-skilled jobs should be created in areas most in need
Childcare
The past few months have been extremely interesting for anyone who is involved with the early years sector.
What never ceases to amaze is the variety in the delivery of policy, which is laid down centrally by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF). The team at the DCSF has very good intentions, but what is frustrating is the different interpretation of these initiatives by each local authority.
Variety of policies
Last year alone we had the embedding of the Early Years Foundation Stage (so far, so good); the Capital Grant (great where we have actually managed to navigate the red tape and access it); the Graduate Leader Fund (good for as long as it lasts, but only a sticking plaster over the real issue of workforce skills and parents' ability to pay for qualifications); pilots of the two-year-old funding package (a bit early to really assess); and the real elephant in the room, the Single Funding Formula, which dictates how local authorities fund early years provision.
The latter, at least, appears to have gone away for a while, with the recent announcement that any implementation of the Single Funding Formula will be postponed for a year. It still does not in any way answer the questions around how nurseries should remain sustainable during tough times, when the funding still doesn't cover the true costs of delivering sessions.
It was amusing to hear children's minister Dawn Primarolo recently give assurances that the funding formula is not designed to allow the private sector to make bigger profits, or to put state-maintained nursery schools out of business.
The latter may be a real threat, but it is incredible that the minister finds it a real concern that the private sector is somehow profiting from the government's constant meddling in how it operates.
We are neither fish nor fowl: despite delivering more than 80 per cent of day care in the UK, the nursery sector is neither a true free market economy, nor a maintained public sector. Instead, our hands are tied; the DCSF might as well say "do it the way you are told (no top-up fees, for example), or not at all". If providers chose the latter there would be no-one left to deliver the policy.
While huge strides have been made in childcare over the past 10 years, 2010 should be the year to really build on that, let the sector settle down and consolidate, with no more new initiatives for some time. And whichever party comes to power must have the courage to tackle the thorny issues that seem to be constantly sidestepped.
Sarah Steel is managing director of The Old Station Nursery, which operates 12 nurseries across five local authority areas
WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN
- Make a decision on whether Early Years Professional Status is equivalent to Qualified Teacher Status and stop messing around somewhere in between
- Recognise that we cannot keep on driving up standards unless customers can afford to pay for this better qualified workforce. Keeping childcare vouchers is one way to help, but it is hard to see how much more parents will be willing to pay before we drive them back to informal arrangements
- Government should be strong with local authorities to ensure policy is delivered as intended. If this means ringfencing funding for particular activities, such as the Early Years Entitlement, then so be it
Education
The media and the general public will continue to expect improving standards of education. The question in 2010 will not be whether that should happen, but how.
In spite of some appallingly misleading headlines about failing schools at the launch of the chief inspector's annual report in November, the schools system has improved greatly over the past 13 years. But the twin problems remain of under-achievement by some young people and a large gap between the attainment of the most and least advantaged.
Achievement of disadvantaged children will not grow unless schools target resources on them and local services work more effectively together to support them.
Overlapping initiatives
The Labour government must be given considerable credit for the way it has given extra funding to schools in disadvantaged areas. Yet this has come in a series of overlapping initiatives, which has caused some schools to feel overwhelmed and others to be left out.
All the information on disadvantage is now available at pupil level, so there is no reason why funding for disadvantage should any longer be distributed with such a broad brush at local authority level. It should be given directly to schools, which would then be held to account for the way they spend it on raising the attainment of the disadvantaged children on their roll.
All political parties are looking at the funding system, so there is some hope of change, but, when funding becomes tight, it gets harder to change formulae.
In the meantime, local services must offer a more timely and efficient service to frontline institutions, such as schools. Children's trusts are a very bureaucratic way of doing this, creating an extra tier between schools and the local authority. These trusts will create lots of extra meetings, bureaucracy and paper-chasing.
As well as the distribution of education funding, 2010 will be a critical year for finance itself. The warnings are everywhere - funding is going to be tighter from 2011. We look to the government to support the funding of schools and children's services, not cut it.
Eye-watering sums of money have been poured into the banks; the extra amount needed to enable schools and children's services to respond to the challenges they face is much less and should be found, if necessary, by reducing the handouts to the banks.
Demands on schools are not confined to academic achievement. Hardly a week passes by without someone suggesting that schools should be doing more. Extended schools will increase in number and scope, with more having services co-located on one site. Whoever wins the election, the wellbeing of young people will continue to be a high-profile issue.
Schools seek intelligent accountability. The proportion of children getting five high-grade GCSE passes creates perverse incentives to concentrate on those at the C/D borderline - it is not an intelligent way of holding schools to account. We seek a better performance measure that takes account of the different challenges facing schools.
The accountability system currently incentivises schools to recruit the brightest children; that has to change too, with incentives built in for recruiting more disadvantaged children.
Finally, is it too much to ask that the safeguarding agenda becomes more proportionate? The pendulum has swung too far and has created a box-ticking mentality, losing the core purpose of safeguarding. Let's hope for a more sensible approach in 2010.
John Dunford is general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders
WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN
- All services must respond to the challenge of improving the life chances of disadvantaged children
- Services must work together more efficiently and less bureaucratically
- Education must remain a priority funding area, with funding for disadvantage being targeted more efficiently
- Accountability must be more intelligent
- The safeguarding agenda must be more proportionate
Families
Families and relationships will be centre stage in 2010 with both government and the opposition promising green papers on the issue. A shift of emphasis away from children and parenting to families is long overdue.
Better outcomes for children have to be a key public policy objective, and understanding the web of interdependent relationships that make up 21st Century families, and how to support them more effectively, is critical to achieving this.
This web of relationships is always complex and sometimes tangled. The list includes: mothers, fathers and their children, siblings, grandparents, spouses, ex-partners, step-parents and step-children. When family relationships and commitments are strong, family members flourish.
Awareness of relationships
To support a family requires knowing the "who's who" of that family. Greater awareness of the adult relationships in Peter Connelly's home could have helped frontline practitioners to safeguard him.
Equally important is understanding the "why's who". As a nine-year-old boy in Professor Judith Dunn's research explains: "Family is who you really care about ... not just who shares the same house".
To offer confident and effective support, all frontline practitioners must have the skills to use every moment of engagement with families as an opportunity to identify risk and to refer to specialist services when needed.
As important, and often overlooked, is the need for frontline staff to help family members to support one another and build on their collective strengths as a family. Working effectively in this way requires better initial training and continuing professional development. Learning how to work with adults in conflict is essential - the reality is that many children suffer the consequences of destructive conflict between their parents.
In a period of constrained public spending, this is a better use of existing resources. By missing these opportunities to work with families and prevent problems escalating, we are wasting current resources and incurring greater costs down the line.
The evidence is compelling that many of the patterns of long-term disadvantage are set early, so that the start of family life - pregnancy and around birth - is the moment for effective early intervention. Motivation is high at this time, for families and practitioners too. It is a time when practitioners and volunteers can bolster the interdependence of family relationships without undermining the autonomy of families.
Given the widespread use of the internet in people's homes, 2010 is also the time to truly harness the potential of online services - to help couples to improve their relationships or help them cope when those relationships are in trouble.
Penny Mansfield is director of One Plus One
WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN
- Think foremost about the family - understand the needs of 21st Century families
- Provide training for all frontline staff to engage better with families to identify risk and protective factors
- Harness the power of the internet in transforming services for families
Youth crime
The disproportionately negative perception of younger members of our society is a big cause for concern.
Such perceptions have been exacerbated by widely publicised youth and disorder related incidents such as knife and gun crime. It is easy to blame media embellishment but in 2010 we must all take some responsibility and combine our efforts to restore a balanced viewpoint.
The majority of young people will at some stage in their lives have contact with the police whether as a victim, an offender or simply through daily engagement such as through Safer Schools Partnerships and neighbourhood policing.
It is imperative we recognise the role police and young people can have in dispelling the myth that today's youth are all criminals and are out to cause trouble in their neighbourhoods.
Fifty per cent of all crime victims are under 18. The majority of these crimes are committed by other young people and not reported to the police. Between a quarter and a half of young people have admitted to committing a crime in their lifetime - the majority of these having been very minor in nature and committed against their peers. Very few young people offend against the wider community. Only six per cent of those who do could be classed as persistent offenders - these are the ones that usually hit the headlines.
Yet read a different way, the same statistics show that between 50 and 75 per cent of young people never commit any crime in their lifetime. Between 70 and 80 per cent of young offenders do not reoffend once they have been dealt with by the police and 94 per cent of young people never become persistent offenders.
This perspective is clearly more positive, but does not mask the fact that youth crime must be confronted. It is the six per cent of persistent offenders who should be the focus of our robust enforcement. We must be tough on those who repeatedly offend or those who commit serious offences - enforcement is, after all, a key role specific to the police.
However, there is also a place for community-based sentences such as restorative justice, involving the community in the decision making process and improving confidence levels of both young people and wider society.
More strongly than ever, the police are one of a number of agencies who are heavily involved in the prevention agenda and who, collectively, should not miss identifying the cause or reason behind offending behaviour.
It is essential that policy makers give more financial support to preventative work and recognise the benefits of early intervention and prevention - stopping offending now will impact on society in the future. There is an opportunity here that should not be missed in 2010 - working together with our local partners, joining our services, sharing information about young people and ensuring relevant support is offered by the right agency at the right time.
Ian McPherson is lead on children and young people at the Association of Chief Police Officers
WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN
- Ensure there is tough enforcement for the six per cent of persistent offenders
- Administer a joint approach to ensure the appropriate sharing of information, activity and evaluation
- Intervene early to prevent young people getting onto the path of crime
- Deal with the cause rather than the effect
Social Work
The formation of a Social Work Reform Board will make 2010 a pivotal year for social work and social work education.
Regardless of which party wins the general election, now is the time that social work needs additional investment and resources to make the necessary changes to transform this profession. Yet there is a risk of continued and significant cuts in the Department for Children, Schools and Families' services budget and resources, as signalled in the Pre-Budget Report.
These cuts may jeopardise any changes introduced in the profession. For instance, the proposed probation year is an excellent idea that allows newly qualified social workers to gain competence in practice. But budget cuts may make it difficult to offer new social workers reduced caseloads and the added support necessary to enhance their practice.
Although social work degree courses are similar in content, there is a lot of variation in the learning experiences and outcomes from different universities. So there is a need to unify and raise the admission and completion criteria for qualifying degrees in social work. We should be able to lower the barriers to entry into social work without lowering the standards of the profession.
Social work is a complex art. Our decisions have a huge impact on people's lives. Therefore, teaching the art of social work requires the right balance of theory and placements to enable social workers to connect the dots between theory, its application and everyday practice. To ground training in practice, universities can invite managers and practitioners to share their experiences and dilemmas with social work students, while social work lecturers and trainers could make arrangements for a few days placement in duty teams of local authorities.
To breed top quality practitioners, we must bring about a culture of excellence in social work that starts from the top and runs throughout the organisation and management.
Claudia Megele is a social worker at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN
- Improve support and training for newly qualified social workers and achieve greater recognition and opportunity for senior staff, as well as the formation of a Royal College of Social Work
- Unify and raise the admission and completion criteria for social work degrees and courses
- Establish "skills labs" to enable students and new social workers to connect the dots between theory, its application and practice
Child Poverty
It now seems almost certain that the government will miss its target to halve child poverty by 2010 compared with its level in 1998.
Before the 2009 Pre-Budget Report, the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimated that £4bn of new spending on benefits and tax credits would be needed to meet this target. In the end, the Pre-Budget Report allocated a little bit of extra money for benefits, tax credits and an extension of free school meals. However, we expect child poverty to be about 500,000 above the target level of 1.7 million.
Attention will now shift to the 2020 target to eradicate child poverty, an ambitious pledge made by Tony Blair in 1999. The proposed Child Poverty Bill would give this target new significance and make the eradication of child poverty by 2020 a legal requirement. It would also establish a Child Poverty Commission to advise the government on its strategy, require future governments to publish a strategy and report annually on progress.
Focus on wellbeing
It is hard to argue against most of the aspects of the bill. However, most of these things can happen without a new act of Parliament, and indeed have already been happening. For example, the current government used to publish an annual report on its general anti-poverty strategy, known as Opportunity for All, and the government regularly publishes documents on its strategy to reduce child poverty.
An official Child Poverty Commission is likely to help policy making and enrich public debate. But it needs more independence, along the lines of the Climate Change Commission, and to be resourced adequately, perhaps in line with the Low Pay Commission.
The more worrying aspect of the bill is that it elevates income-based measures of child poverty over and above all other possible measures of child wellbeing. It is clearly ridiculous to argue that child poverty is not about income. However, there is a risk, especially in 2010, that politicians will tend to favour policy responses with immediate and predictable effects on the incomes of parents, such as changes to taxes and benefits.
A greater focus should be placed on policies that improve poor children's wellbeing or reduce the intergenerational transmission of child poverty, such as measures to tackle low educational achievement among children eligible for free school meals. An annual state-of-the-nation report on children, and a wider set of targets and indicators that covered all aspects of children's and parents' lives, would make it more likely that the policy response of future governments is more balanced and in the best interests of children in poverty.
Luke Sibieta is senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies
WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN
- Make the Child Poverty Commission independent and fully resourced
- Put greater focus on broader measures of child wellbeing and the intergenerational transmission of child poverty
- Commission an annual state of the nation report covering children's and parents' lives
Information Sharing
The spirit may be willing but the bodies are still weak.
The intellectual and moral arguments have been made and won for a more fluent and proactive approach to information sharing for children. It seems impossible to find an individual anywhere who disagrees - in principle.
But somehow, the institutional forces of the status quo still seem to conspire to put a higher priority on the protection of information (and of agencies) than on the protection of children. It might not be all bad - but it's still not good enough.
So let's capture the story so far. Every child protection review, from Maria Caldwell in the 1970s to Victoria Climbie, has pointed to profound failures of information sharing. Put simply, given the numerous agencies and individuals that can be pivotal to the protection of vulnerable children, it's obvious that there must be a premium put on communication. This ranges from the macro - agencies sharing data trends - to the micro - professionals responsibly but routinely sharing what they know about individual children.
The Children Act 2004 gave us what we hoped would be a final legislative push, putting an expectation about information sharing firmly into the statute book. The law is clearer and firmer: we must share if there is a safeguarding concern, irrespective of parental views; we should try to share at all other times, subject to parental permission.
Because it's not just about protecting children, as if that wasn't enough. It's also clear that if we work better together we can make the resources we have go so much further - more bangs for the family buck.
Undoubtedly, significant progress has been made in the past five years across children's trusts - so why lament? Quite simply because there are still too many examples at both those macro and micro levels that suggest the default position for individuals and agencies remains to guard the information.
It may be a social worker seeing herself as the last guardian of client confidentiality, the school that doesn't see its duty to understand and debate child protection threshold criteria, or the health service that can't find the wherewithal to communicate local birth data to children's centres.
In 2010, we need that default position to shift so the assumption is that we share first - ask questions later. We still have a long way to go in the evolution of a genuine, embedded culture of information sharing.
John Coughlan is director of children's services at Hampshire County Council
WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN
- Ban all confidentiality policies that aren't integral to information sharing policies
- Do more to promote the Common Assessment Framework as the main home of joint casework
- Give ContactPoint a chance. This is a managerial, not a political point. The need is clear, the rationale is sound and most of the investment is sunk. It won't lead to the collapse of civil liberties as we know them, but it might just make the difference if we have a simple shared information system
Positive Activities
We must keep remembering that both volunteering and positive activities are truly valuable when they're about personal development. Too narrow a focus on hours completed rather than lessons learnt risks leaving positive activities and volunteering mechanical and dry, hitting the target and missing the point.
Let's not design the life out of this agenda. If we don't find space for the quiet conversations and the subtle interventions we'll find ourselves impoverished - without good youth work, positive activities is just babysitting for teenagers. And good youth work works.
The Conservatives' flagship youth policy, the National Citizen Service for 16-year-olds, looks set to be a key manifesto commitment this year. Clearly the devil is in the detail.
They should not make it compulsory (on pragmatic as much as philosophical grounds) but there should be some incentive for young people to take part. The potential of bringing young people from different backgrounds together is exciting and it can be positive to see it as a rite of passage for young people.
The Challenge is the organisation that has provided the prototype. On the evidence of its first run this summer it's a strong one, well delivered by good people. The risk is that cash-strapped new administrations - in Whitehall and town and county halls - latch onto a shiny new innovation, thinking it can do more than it actually can, for less than tried and tested, less exciting programmes, and crowd out existing good work.
A three-week personal development programme such as it is, is neither new nor a magic answer. But in working across communities, focusing on quality and accessing new sources of funding it could work. At a local level the scheme must avoid the hubris of the newly powerful and work with sensible partners, which has so far been the case.
In 2010 we should at least get closer to reaping the benefits of unclaimed assets from dormant bank accounts. But there must be no specious distinction between social investment and youth - any investment in youth needs to be informed by long-term capitalisation, not just loans.
If we dole out unclaimed assets as bog-standard capital and fixed-life revenue grants we'll be stuck with the status quo everybody knows is inefficient. We need a new, specialist unit to invest these funds in young people. We've got to learn from colleagues in social investment or we'll bungle the funding opportunity of the century.
Nick Wilkie is chief executive of London Youth
WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN
- In delivering positive activities, retain space for youth work. Good youth work works. And that's about reflection and relationships as much as keeping busy
- If there is to be a new national civic service, ensure that it adds to, rather than crowds out, current, community-based work. It can be an opportunity if we choose to make it so
- Unclaimed assets will be far less valuable if disbursed as bog-standard capital or fixed-life revenue grants. We need to employ people from social investment to maximise the value of a once-in-a-century opportunity
Children's Health
We face three main challenges in advancing children's health in 2010.
First, there will be an unprecedented squeeze on spending. The NHS did better than most out of December's Pre-Budget Report, but some really tough decisions will have to be made just to stand still. Sir Ian Kennedy's impending report on the role of health in children's services will play an important role in raising the profile of child health as the recession bites.
In a similar vein, the government's New Horizons mental health strategy has highlighted the importance of intervening early. Significantly, it means that for the first time a government has set out a strategy for mental health across all departments. A government-wide approach is particularly necessary when it comes to adolescents as they move from child to adult services.
Consistent implementation
Second, in the wake of Baby Peter and the Laming report, we now have just about all the policy we need on child protection.
The key will be to make sure implementation of what works is more consistent across the board. We have to avoid child protection becoming the sole focus and make sure we look at the wider issue of safeguarding.
We also need to be reassured that faced with another comparable tragedy to the death of Peter Connelly, the government of the day avoids knee-jerk reactions that focus on wholesale structural change.
The next year will be about the important work of actually making it happen. While the presentation and methods may be laid out differently according to whoever is in power after the election, political leaders should focus on keeping us on that path rather than leading off in a new direction.
However, the next big ideas in policy will be focused on the family. Key to this must be an understanding that families come in all shapes and sizes.
In some areas, such as mental health, it will be better to offer interventions that focus on the whole family. The challenge here will be to join adult, child and adolescent mental health services with others such as drug and alcohol support.
Perhaps the most depressing reading in 2009 was the government's health inequalities update report - it exposed the level at which inequalities still exist in this country.
If there is a unifying theme for the year ahead, it must be to guard against pulling back from innovative and different approaches as money gets tight. So the third main challenege is this: we simply cannot afford to retreat from addressing some of the most longstanding problems affecting our society.
Jo Webber is deputy policy director at the NHS Confederation
WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN
- Government should stay focused on the ultimate goal of collaborative and preventative policy in children's health
- The priority is not child protection but child safeguarding in the broader sense
- If there is a child protection crisis on a similar scale to Baby Peter, it needs a more measured response
Children in Care
In 2009, heightened public concern about child protection in the wake of the death of Peter Connelly in Haringey fanned outwards to encompass a much broader critique of services for vulnerable children in general. It was perceived that those in power had failed miserably.
However, it is not so much the law that fails looked-after children but restrictive interpretations of it that are driven by resource constraints.
The real challenge for policymakers in 2010 is to look beyond their next mandate and put sufficient resources in place to ensure decisions within local authorities are made with the long-term best interests of looked-after children in mind rather than short-term budget considerations.
Looked-after children can and do achieve if they are provided with the right type of support. Meaningful assessments and stable placements that meet their identified needs are critical, as is the opportunity to remain in education. The transition to adulthood should be gradual and implemented in a planned and phased way through a robust planning process that actively involves children. Good social work practice is the glue that holds it all together.
While it seems to be accepted wisdom that intensive interventions for young children are a good use of public funds, teenagers often fare badly when decisions are made about allocating scarce resources. Although on the cusp of adulthood, teenagers do require comprehensive support. It can be costly but the cost of appropriate housing, education or supportive services is a pittance when compared to the cost of future care proceedings for their children or the cost of incarcerating them.
Not all local authorities are of course created equal. Children report a patchy, uneven experience of the care system, which is frequently determined by where they live. Ofsted inspections confirm this, as do the government's own statistics. These show how the local authority in which the looked-after child lives dictates how likely they are to have had three or more placement moves, the quality of their health and their level of educational attainment. If the child is a care leaver, they also show the likelihood that they are participating in education, employment or training, or living in suitable accommodation.
So in 2010, a major challenge for policymakers is to ensure greater consistency in terms of the delivery of services to looked-after children. Right now, the quality of services for them is a postcode lottery. What policymakers need to come to grips with is why some local authorities perform so badly and what is really happening in these boroughs. Not all the good performers are wealthy boroughs. Indeed, according to Ofsted, some of the top 10 performers are in areas of great social need.
Looked-after children are let down badly in those authorities where the rot has set in, and where it is impossible to retain social workers. We know the extent of the problems. Tight action plans are now required to solve them.
Niamh Harraher is a solicitor with the London office of the Children's Legal Centre
WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN
- Ringfence money within local authority budgets for teenagers - make them a priority
- Move beyond naming and shaming underperforming councils and put in place tight action plans for them to improve their record
- Ensure in action plans for improved performance that there is transparency and good communication between departments
- Put the parent back into corporate parenting - do not let looked-after children settle for less than what those in power would wish for their own children
Looked-after children
Care placements break down when children who should have been taken into care earlier, and whose mental health needs have not been met, display challenging behaviour that is incredibly difficult for foster carers or residential workers to manage. Too many carers and residential workers don't have the skills, training or support they need to keep the child in the placement. We have minimum standards, but not maximum aspirations.
Specialist therapeutic provision is the right choice for the most damaged children but costs more, so is often bypassed in favour of cheaper options, setting everyone up for failure. If looked-after children lose out when councils set their budgets, we will be creating a social timebomb. Investment in the best quality care makes sense from every perspective.
Another challenge is sufficiency or having enough placements to create choice. Many authorities no longer have their own children's homes, although the tide is turning with the widespread interest in social pedagogy. We must reconfigure and re-invest in residential care, making it a positive option for children who would prefer it or for whom fostering is not an option. Until we have sufficiency of care placements, the inhumane practice of sending children to live in other parts of the country - away from everything they know and are attached to - will continue.
Whichever party is in government after the election needs to take an enforcing approach to making sure councils eliminate this practice.
To recruit and retain sufficient foster carers, we need a national framework for foster carers' fees. Foster carers need to know they are respected and remunerated as part of the team of professionals that wraps around a child in care.
Both the government and the Conservatives have prioritised the reform of social work and indeed, when a child has more than 20 disillusioned social workers on their journey through care, is it any wonder that their lack of trust in adults is compounded? We must speed up the momentum of the transformation of the social workforce in 2010.
Most young people who leave care still do so too early. Foster carers need to be supported to keep their young people until they are 21, and all those who have been in care should receive local authority support up to 25. We need more specialists within leaving care teams, whether it's mental health support, or professionals to help young people with life skills like managing money or employability.
The intense focus on poor outcomes in recent years has created a climate where care is sometimes seen as a worse option than leaving a child in a damaging family environment. I hope 2010 will see care speed up the pace at which it is reforming itself - as well as its image.
Natasha Finlayson is chief executive of The Who Cares? Trust
WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN
The introduction of a national framework for fees for foster carers and a full-scale, social marketing campaign run by the government to recruit more foster carers
Massive investment in residential care and a transition towards the social pedagogic approach becoming standard practice
More programmes to help foster carers improve the literacy of younger children, because literacy is the bedrock of educational attainment
Inspections
2010 should be a watershed year for inspection bodies and for Ofsted in particular.
The recession changes everything. From sustained growth in public spending over the past decade, we are facing a lengthy period of spending constraint and real-term cuts.
In this environment, continuing to work efficiently and focusing money on frontline services depends on councils being freed up from unnecessary burdens of inspection and regulation.
The National Audit Office has estimated that the cost of monitoring and inspecting local government alone is in the region of £2bn, most of which could undoubtedly be better spent. Spending public money on a process that merely ticks boxes for central government is not acceptable. What is needed is a reduction in the overall volume of assessment at a local level.
This is not to suggest that all inspection should be scrapped.
Having external evaluation of how public money is spent and how public services are run is vital, particularly in areas dealing with the health and welfare of vulnerable groups such as children.
Ofsted undoubtedly shares the aim of right-minded people everywhere: that children should be protected from harm as much as possible. Councils are rightly looking to inspectors to offer measured judgments in future, which focus on children's welfare and not the completion of back-office bureaucracy.
Those inspectors need to have the ability to offer constructive feedback on the ground so that any problems can be identified and tackled swiftly, and the risk of children coming to harm minimised.
Local government has made massive leaps forward in both efficiency and the standard of its services. 2010 needs to be a year when councils are given greater freedom to help their local people, and when inspection is focused on where it can make the most impact.
David Parsons is chair of the Local Government Association's Improvement Board
INSPECTION MUST BE ...
- Committed to supporting improvement
- Focused on areas of greatest concern
- Cost-effective
- Properly co-ordinated
- Passing judgments based on an expert understanding of the field involved
