The state of care

After several consecutive years of rising care applications, the 12-month period from April 2013 to March 2014 arrested the trend of recent times. According to the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), applications dropped by five per cent to 10,595, compared with 11,110 in the same period the previous year, following annual rises of eight and 11 per cent. Moreover, 90 out of 152 councils (59 per cent) reported a decline in care applications per 10,000 children in 2013/14.

Cafcass head of service Kevin Gibbs says the figures reflect a degree of “normalisation” after the sustained surge in applications in the wake of the Peter Connelly case in 2008. He says children’s services have placed a greater focus on early intervention to support families and avert the need to take children into care. But Gibbs cautions against assuming applications are down in every area. “There is quite a lot of local authority variation, with some areas where the figures are increasing,” he says.

Reforms to the family justice system enshrined in the Children and Families Act, which place a 26-week time limit for care proceedings, have also contributed to bringing down the number of care applications. Gibbs says some areas anticipated the new time limit by focusing more on pre-proceeding work and exploring alternatives to care, such as kinship arrangements. The current average length of care proceedings is 35 weeks, he says, a significant improvement on last year’s average of 48 weeks.