Commissioning: Infants in care proceedings
Toni Badnall-Neill
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Toni Badnall-Neill explains how commissioning can support better outcomes for very young children taken into care.
A rise in the number of newborn babies subject to care proceedings was highlighted in the Nuffield Foundation's recent report, Born into Care. This study found that between 2007/08 and 2016/17, 27 per cent of all children subject to proceedings were infants under the age of one (47,172), and of this group, 16,849 were less than one week old - an average increase of 11 per cent per year.
The report suggests that increasing financial hardship for families, the impact of a reduction in preventative services and a defensive, risk-averse social work culture may be factors in this trend. As early help services, which may have held these children within their birth families, have borne the brunt of funding cuts, the rise in infant care proceedings places has increased pressure on statutory services, especially care placements and family contact.
In Central Bedfordshire, these pressures have informed our developing placements strategy and the current commissioning of our supervised contact service; and research offers valuable learning for how commissioning solutions can help achieve better outcomes even where these services are delivered in-house.
Placements
The focus on achieving permanency for looked-after children means that the long-term care plan of many infants who cannot return to their birth families is adoption. However, Department for Education data shows more than twice as many children were waiting to be placed for adoption than there were approved adoptive families in 2016/17. Further difficulties arise when children are subject to proceedings with older siblings whose needs and permanency plans may be different, or where there is a need to assess the parent(s) and child together in the placement - the Fostering Network highlighted in 2017 that sibling groups and parent and child placements are two of its most in-demand services.
Commissioners can help in-house services develop provision for these placements by engaging closely with social workers and placements officers to understand local need and embed targeted foster carer and adopter recruitment and retention within placement sufficiency and commissioning strategies.
Where needs cannot be met in-house, commissioners can also work closely in partnership with independent fostering agencies (IFA) to help shape what is offered by external providers - IFAs are often willing to develop specific provision if they are aware of the nature and volume of demand.
Contact
Family contact arrangements for infants in care proceedings are intensive. Balancing the need for babies removed at birth to establish a bond with their birth parents with the need for them to form a secure attachment to, and routine with, their primary carers often results in care plans that include high volumes of contact (Research in Practice, 2017). Increases in infant proceedings can lead to arrangements that stretch the capacity of contact services.
These babies are often removed from very vulnerable families, where parents face barriers - for example, travelling distance, transport costs and ongoing problems - to attending contact meetings. This can have an effect on the outcome of proceedings, where quality of contact is considered as evidence of parents' ability to effectively care for their child.
Many contact services are now delivered in-house, enabling local authorities to manage requirements flexibly alongside other family support services. Where contact is commissioned to an outside provider, the child's need for good-quality, consistent family contact becomes inseparable from resource constraints. This requires cases to be closely managed so that cancelled meetings and high demand do not negatively impact on service capacity.
Key to success in managing these contracts is a close working relationship between the commissioning authority, contractors, parents and carers, which enables all parties to respond dynamically - and where necessary challenge court orders - to ensure that contact arrangements meet children's needs.
- Toni Badnall-Neill is strategic commissioning officer for children's services at Central Bedfordshire Council
REDUCING DEMAND AND IMPROVING OUTCOMES
- Commissioning for demand management is no substitute for effective early help. Services need to be offered in the right time and place for these families, including effective support for parents post-proceedings to prevent a "revolving door" of subsequent births and removals.
- Where babies cannot return to their birth families, provider markets - including in-house services - must be calibrated to meet their needs. Fostering, adoption and contact services should have a clear picture of the current and projected volume and types of need in order to match capacity to demand and offer value-for-money provision.
- Open, transparent communication and partnership working between commissioners and service providers, both internal and external, is essential to balancing user needs with resource management. Birth families are part of this partnership - a 2017 study showed that many mothers involved in repeat proceedings identified relationship-based practice as a key factor in improving their own and their children's outcomes, helping them to feel that professionals were "working with" them rather than "doing to" them.
FURTHER READING
Born into Care: Newborns in care proceedings in England, Nuffield Foundation, 2018
"Charity calls for 7,000 more foster families, particularly for teens and siblings", The Fostering Network, 2017
Contact with children in care, Research in Practice, 2017
Vulnerable Birth Mothers and Recurrent Care Proceedings, Centre for Child & Family Justice Research and Lancaster University, 2017