Care Review response: Government reveals £200m plan for children’s social care reforms

The Department for Education has today (2 February) published some details of its response to the year-long review, chaired by Josh MacAlister, which put forward more than 80 proposals to reform the system, backed by a call for £2.6bn in funding over five years.

The full response has been published alongside an implementation strategy that includes some measures proposed by MacAlister such as an increased focus on early help for families, greater support for foster and kinship carers and the introduction of an early career pathway for children’s social workers, and details of three related consultations.

• Care Review backs regional approach

• Review of children’s social care system prioritises family help

The majority of proposals, including a new early help model for families, trialled across 12 local authorities and backed by £45m, will be evaluated over two years before being rolled-out more widely.

Claire Coutinho, minister for children, families and wellbeing, told CYP Now that DfE’s strategy is “about starting a much more widespread transformation”.

“What we're doing at the moment is a bit of a fact-finding mission, making sure that actually these proposals we want to put forward work really well together, but the hope is to do more once we've been through this two-year period,” she said.

The report puts forward a two-year plan, based on this evaluation, which it says aims to drive forward six key “missions” on which the reforms are centred.

Five of the six “missions” are expected to be met by 2027:

• Mission 1: By 2027, every care-experienced child and young person will feel they have strong, loving relationships in place.

• Mission 2: By 2027, we will see an increase of high-quality, stable and loving homes available for every child in care, local to where they are from.

• Mission 3: By 2027, we will strengthen and extend corporate parenting responsibilities towards children in care and care leavers across the public sector.

• Mission 4: By 2027, we will see an improvement in the education, employment and training outcomes of children in care and care leavers.

• Mission 5: By 2027, we will see an increase in the number of care leavers in safe, suitable accommodation and a reduction in care leaver homelessness.

• Mission 6: We will work closely with health partners to reduce the disparities in long-term mental and physical health outcomes and improve wellbeing for care-experienced people.

The plan has also been shaped by a safeguarding review of the murders of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson in 2020, and a report by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) into profits made by private children’s social care providers.

All recommendations put forward by the CMA in its report, including developing regional bodies to support local authorities in obtaining suitable placements for children and increased financial oversight of private providers have been accepted by government.

Further recommendations taken forward include a £9m package of increased training and support for kinship carers alongside an increase in payments to foster carers above inflation as part of a £24m drive to boost recruitment and retention within foster care.

Coutinho said: “We're looking at how we can make the recruitment and welcome into the foster care world better.”

This will include targeting foster carers from minority ethnic backgrounds as well as those able to foster siblings and children with special educational needs, she added.

The strategy also includes the roll-out of a pilot scheme for two regional care co-operatives encompassing between 10 and 12 local authorities – a proposal put forward by MacAlister – in a bid to create “a more co-ordinated commissioning” model for both foster and residential care.

“We will work with local authorities to co-design and co-create regional care co-operatives (RCCs) in two areas with a view to rolling out after testing and evaluating the best approach in conjunction with the sector. While RCCs will signal a radical shift in the care system, they will need to build on the measures laid out at a local and sector level in order to boost sufficiency and ensure children can be matched to homes more effectively,” the report states.

The report also highlights a series of reforms for the children’s social care workforce including the creation of a new child protection lead practitioner role within local authority children’s services.

Practitioners will have “advanced, specialist training, and will work in a fully joined-up way with other services such as the police, to better identify and respond to significant harm”, according to the report.

“The change will mean services work more effectively to protect children from harms that happen outside of the home, such as criminal exploitation and serious violence,” it adds.

It also announces that local authorities will be supported to recruit up to 500 new child and family social worker apprentices as well as plans to reduce over-reliance on agency social workers. 

DfE has launched a consultation on proposals around the use of agency social workers by local authorities.

The consultation will run alongside two others including one seeking views plans to implement a new Children's Social Care National Framework and Dashboard designed to “set out clear outcomes that should be achieved across all local authorities to improve the lives of children and families, raising the quality of practice across the country”.

A third is being held over views on the strategy as a whole. 

All three consultations will close on 11 May.

Coutinho said: “Children in care deserve the same love and stability as everyone else. Yet we’ve seen from the two tragic murders of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson that more needs to be done to protect our most vulnerable children.

“Our wide-ranging reforms will put strong relationships at the heart of the care system. From supporting our brilliant foster carers, kinship carers and social workers to getting early help to families and improving children’s homes, we want every child to get the support and protection they need.”

Key recommendations suggested by MacAlister that have not been taken up by the government include proposals to scrap the role of independent reviewing officers and making care experience a protected characteristic in law.

The publication has received a “cautious welcome” by sector leaders who say that while the report signals good intentions to improve the system for children, it needs more information on timeframes after two years and greater levels of funding to be a success.