Care applications hit seven-year high after CSE scandals

Latest figures for the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) show a total of 1,066 care applications were received in March 2015, the highest monthly figure recorded in the last seven years.
 
The Cafcass figures for March this year were 16 per cent higher than those for March 2014. In total there were 11,127 care applications received between April 2014 and March 2015, compared with 10,620 over the previous 12 months.
 
The figures for 2014/15 are also the highest annual total in the last five years, with the previous highest coming in 2012/13 when 11,110 care applications were received.
 
Fostering specialists and Cafcass itself say that the recent CSE scandals such as those in Rotherham have had an impact on the figures.
 
Andrew Walker, practice support consultant at The Fostering Network, said the focus on CSE has made social work teams more likely to make a care application.
 
He said: “The increased awareness of major issues affecting children on the edge of care, such as sexual exploitation, has led to more decisive action being taken to ensure the safety and wellbeing of these children.”
 
Harvey Gallagher, chief executive for Nationwide Association of Fostering Providers, said heightened government scrutiny of social work has put additional pressure on already stretched teams.
 
He added: “We still have the impact of lower, or different, thresholds for care from the Baby Peter tragedy, and the further impact that a number of CSE cases have had on this.
 
“Both of those factors are significant for the way in which central government threw a focus on them and what they believed to be the failings behind them.”
 
Christine Banim, Cafcass’s national service director, also said that “a greater awareness of issues like child sexual exploitation following coverage of high-profile cases” is a driver for the increase in care applications.
 
But the experts added that other factors have also influenced the recent rise.
 
Banim said: “Demand levels are also affected through more rigorous reviewing and scrutiny within local authorities of plans for children where remaining at home is too dangerous, even after treatment programmes.”
 
Gallagher believes that a lack of support for vulnerable families, particularly where a child has returned home from care, has also contributed to more children going into care.
 
“We sometimes forget that permanence for most children in care means returning home. We have to support families and foster carers in helping children to manage this transition, and social workers to give this return the best chance it can of being successful,” Gallagher added.
 
Walker said that austerity measures have also put increased pressure on families.

The latest Cafcass figures come a few weeks after the government admitted that its 26-week target to decide whether a child is taken into care is “highly unlikely” to be met for all cases. Latest figures show that just 56 per cent were completed within the 26-week time limit.
 
The CSE problem in Rotherham first came to prominence with the publication of an independent review by Professor Alexis Jay in August 2014.