Care Review: Sector responses to launch in full

The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care in England was launched by the Department for Education last month after being promised in the Conservative Party’s 2019 general election manifesto. 

• Analysis: Care Review - sector leaders set out their priorities for change

• Blog: Care Review must focus on whole systems

• Blog: ‘Once in a generation opportunity’ - let’s make sure it is!

From funding for services to prevent children entering the system to enhanced support for young people leaving care, all areas of the sector are waiting to see what will be included.

Others have expressed concern over the announcement of Frontline social care founder Josh MacAlister as chair.

CYP Now has asked charity leaders, professionals and experts in the field what they would like to see covered by MacAlister and his team:

Local authority services

Mark Russell, chief executive at The Children’s Society: 

Many children who need help from social care have suffered abuse, neglect and exploitation, resulting in unimaginable trauma and damage to their mental health. 

Yet help for these vulnerable children - including those with a social worker, in care, care leavers and asylum-seeking children - too often falls short, despite the efforts of dedicated care workers. 

Even before Covid-19, the children’s social care system was creaking under the pressure of funding cuts and rising demand. 

Support for children and young people is too often determined by funding shortages, artificial barriers and systemic flaws rather than by the help children need. 

This welcome review is a golden opportunity to tackle these issues on a broad cross-Government basis and ensure children’s rights are upheld and strengthened. 

Early help services have been stripped back by councils in many areas due to funding pressures and it’s important this is addressed. Without timely support, children’s problems are more likely to escalate and increase demand on more expensive statutory services for those at crisis point. These were stretched even before the pandemic left more children at increased risk of abuse, exploitation, isolation, mental ill-health and poverty. 

The shortage of local care placements increases the risk of children going missing and being targeted for criminal and sexual exploitation and we welcome the pledge to address this and ensure all young people have safe and stable homes. Improved support is also needed not just for care leavers, but for all children supported by social care as they transition to adulthood. 

Funding cuts have contributed to all these issues and it’s vital that the review’s recommendations are ultimately supported by the money councils need to implement them. Councils in the most deprived areas have been hit disproportionately hard by the estimated £2.2bn drop in funding available to children’s social care over the last decade - meaning there is a postcode lottery in the support offered to vulnerable children. 

The pledge to listen to children is really positive. Their voices must be at the heart of the review and include those whose voices are often not heard like those with special education needs and unaccompanied asylum-seekers who too often fall through cracks in the system. 

This review must do more than tinker at the edges; it must listen and act, radically, where necessary, to deliver real change and enable councils and their partners to make decisions with a laser-like focus on the well-being and best interests of these vulnerable children. We must give them the hope of a bright future.”

ADCS President Jenny Coles:

ADCS welcomes the launch of the long-awaited Care Review and we look forward to seeing its remit in more detail. 

The review represents an opportunity for the government to be bold and ambitious and to learn from the expertise of those who are care-experienced of all ages. 

The Children Act 1989 is clear, wherever possible children are best brought up within their own families. Some children will always need to come into care, and we need to ensure a range of placement options, high quality support services and a well-supported workforce are available when and where they’re needed. 

National investment in early help, national standards for our care system together with the capacity to deliver them, will mean fewer children need to be in care but that those who do can flourish.

Care can be a positive and for some children it is transformative but the system can do better. The Care Review must deliver on a plan to support the best possible outcomes for life. Children in our care deserve nothing less.

Judith Blake, chair of the Local Government Association's children and young people board: 

Every child deserves a safe and happy childhood in which they are loved and supported to reach their full potential. Some children will need help from children’s social care services for that to happen, and this review gives the entire system the opportunity to make sure services work as well as they should.

We are particularly pleased that the review intends to place the views and experiences of children, young people and the care experienced community at its heart. Proper, meaningful engagement will make clear the changes our children and young people want and deserve.

The review will need to look at the experiences of children in the round, considering not only the work of children’s social care departments, but partners including schools and healthcare services who have a vital role to play in supporting children and their families. 

Demand for support has increased dramatically over the last decade, and it is important that we understand why this is and whether services are adequately resourced to give children the right help at the right time.

Supporting and protecting vulnerable children is one of the most important roles that councils play. 

Councils stand ready to work closely with the review team to contribute their knowledge and expertise, and to ensure the best possible outcomes for the children they support and their families.

Foster care and kinship care

Lucy Peake, chief executive at Grandparents Plus:

Kinship carers play a vital role in caring for children who would otherwise grow up in the care system, yet kinship care has been marginalised for too long, receiving too little recognition, policy attention and funding. The current children’s social care system is riven with inequality, with too many children in kinship care and their carers locked out of systems that should be supporting them.  

We welcome the ambition to transform the children’s social care system so it better meets the needs of all children who are referred to it. The evidence shows that outcomes are better for children who grow up in kinship care than in the care system. It is a positive option for children whose parents are unable to care for them and we should be investing in it. We look forward to contributing to the review to ensure that kinship care is better understood, valued and supported in future.

We warmly welcome the commitment to listening to people with experience of the children’s social care system to shape the review and its recommendations, and we encourage kinship carers and those with experience of growing up in kinship care to get involved.

Kevin Williams, chief executive of The Fostering Network: 

We look forward to working with Josh MacAlister as part of a broad, evidence-based review that is supported by the government and funded appropriately. 

We believe that any meaningful review of the care system must put fostering at its heart. Foster carers are currently holding up the weight of the care system, looking after almost three quarters of the children in care in England, often without the resources, support and recognition that their vital role warrants.  

The review must recognise the social context in which the care system operates and why certain children are more likely to be taken into care. As part of this, the review must explore the societal impact of poverty, systemic inequality, structural racism and discrimination on families. In doing so, we would expect the review to come up with a series of far-reaching recommendations to address the structural issues that have led to record numbers of children in the care system. 

As a result of the review we also want to see a range of issues addressed to improve recognition of and support for foster carers and the children they care for, including a national register and standards for foster care.  

We know foster care transforms children’s lives, but foster carers, and the system in which they work, are, now more than ever, under immense and increasing pressure. 

Good foster care is reliant on a workforce that is fully supported, appreciated, trained and equipped to meet children’s needs. Confident, capable foster carers are better able to advocate for the children in their care. 

This review is a fantastic opportunity to drive positive change within the children’s care system, and an opportunity that must not be missed. We look forward to working with Josh and his team and ensuring the voice of foster carers and the children they care for are at the heart of the review.

Residential care and commissioning

Kathy Evans, chief executive at Children England:

If there is any consensus about the Care Review it is that it must be led by the views and ideas of the people who have experienced the care “system” first hand. If the review is genuinely shaped by their priorities, it is potentially huge in scope, and that is where it must go. There are many important issues in the system on which Children England is no expert, but the one we have spent years thinking and campaigning about is the commissioning ‘marketplace’ of care providers.

Navigating a way through the sheer complexity and financial power dynamics at play in that aspect of the care system is not something we should expect to find easy answers to. Parents don’t usually involve their children in the dilemmas of managing the family finances, and nor should the Care Review expect its young advisers to hold all the answers to the terrible mess that the commissioning marketplace has become. It’s a damaging mess, long in the making, with the active involvement of all three sectors (public, private and charitable). It’s all our jobs to work together to fix it.

The Care Review must be about far more than care commissioning, of course. But if it does not grasp the nettle of radically rethinking the competitive marketplace for care, and engage meaningfully with all the heated, impassioned views about private equity and profit-making within it, it will have fallen far short of what is needed to transform the future for children who need care.

Jonathan Stanley, manager of the National Centre for Excellence in Residential Child Care, and Ed Nixon, a member of Every Child Leaving Care Matters:

This care review must have demonstrable independence. It has the appearance of accommodating the inclusion and methodology that a few voices championed on behalf of a great many others, but it is in the delivery of ‘safety, stability and love’ that it will be judged.

The lead should feel able to challenge government whenever a matter is raised. There is no need to wait until the review is over, things can happen along the way.

A first challenge to the lead person will be to ensure the government rectify the proposal to remove care as a right of all children as is signalled will happen in new minimum standards for currently unregulated settings.

Meanwhile the sector should be bold and establish the means for dialogue by establishing a parallel independent care review and an independent social care experts, including experts by experience, group.

Chris Wright, chief executive at Catch22: 

Nearly 10 years ago, Eileen Munro undertook her review of child protection. She called for a more child-centred system then, but a decade on we are still working with overly transactional services and children who are passed from professional to professional, with boxes ticked and paperwork filed. Despite there being plenty of evidence for what ‘good’ looks like – still change isn’t happening. 

There are too many children who become looked after, and there are strong moral and indeed economic arguments for far more focus on prevention and early intervention to deflect children away from the system. Because when they do enter the system, far too many outcomes are unforgivably poor 

At Catch22, we firmly believe that people can thrive if they have three key elements in their lives (we call them the 3 Ps); good people around them, a safe place to live and a purpose in life. Nowhere is this more pertinent than in the context of children in care. The current care system fails this litmus test. Too often children are moved from home to home, outside their geographical base, and have no continuity of place.

Demand for homes outstrips supply in many areas,  with local authorities left with little choice but to place children “out of county”  or in unregulated homes. And with pay for the majority of residential care workers too low, it can be hard to retain staff and build the consistent, trusted relationships that children in care so desperately need. 

There are many questions that need to be answered in McAlister’s review – from why the demand for placements exceeds supply resulting in a shortage of high-quality provision to why there is wide-scale use of unregulated care and out of area moves but also and perhaps more fundamentally what more can be done to deflect children from becoming looked after in the first place. 

We also hope the review will include a focus on the children’s social care workforce. There is a real need for investment in training and recruitment to ensure the best people are working with the right tools and have a recognised career trajectory.

So although I’m naturally sceptical of reviews, let’s commit to this one delivering results we all desire.  And I am optimistic it will. Why? 

Firstly, because Josh McAlister’s experience and dedication to the sector makes him a reforming chair. 

Secondly, because he has made it crystal clear that the voice of care-experience children and young people will be put at the heart of the review. 

And thirdly because we know there are innovative  - and tried and tested - ideas for how the sector can be reformed out there. Once such example is Lighthouse, which we're proud to have incubated as an organisation here at Catch22. It is a new model of children’s home which puts education at the heart. Centred around social pedagogy, Lighthouse draws on successfully run children’s homes in Denmark and is due to open its first home in the UK later this year.

We stand ready to contribute, through the expertise of our staff working with children on the “edge of care”, in care, and who have left care, and of course the young people themselves. The system – and most importantly the children it serves – deserve nothing less.

Leaving care

Katharine Sacks-Jones, chief executive of Become: 

This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity that we have been calling for to listen to, and act on, the experiences of care-experienced people. We can and must deliver radical reform of a system that is routinely failing children with consequences lasting throughout their lifetime.  

We look forward to working with Josh MacAlister and to connecting him with young people whose perspectives are key to transforming the future experiences and life chances of all the children and young people supported by the care system. 

“We hope he will be completely open to what they have to say, with an independent focus and the time and resource to properly understand how to ensure all children are guaranteed the loving, nurturing relationships and support they deserve.

David Graham, national director of the Care Leavers’ Association:

The Care Leavers Association broadly welcomes the announcement of a review into children’s social care. Although the initial words from the chair are hopeful, actions speak louder than words and so there are several issues that need to be addressed to make the review a success.

The review must engage with and listen to the voices of people in care, care leavers and adults who have been in care. The lived experience must be central to both analysing problems with the system and to creating new approaches.

We have concerns that the review terms of reference state that it “may want to consider” support for care leavers. The review must focus on care leavers. For too long the leaving care part of the system has been the poor relation, with care and levels of support tapering off in relation to age not needed. We would want the review to explore a stage not age framework alongside a right to remain right to return option. The right care and support must be available to care leavers when they need it.

The review must look at the question “what is care for”. We must accept that some young people must be taken into care. If we can provide the right conditions for them to flourish, then the care system can have a positive experience. These must be based on equality -in the sense that levels of service, care and support should aim to replicate what a good family would provide for its children.

The review must explore the culture of children's social care. Children's rights need to be strengthened. We need to develop better ways of listening to and acting on the needs of children and young people. All practice needs to be trauma informed and consider adverse childhood experiences. And the system has to get better at lifelong planning – supporting young people all the way through care and into adulthood and beyond.

The review must celebrate the positives of care and promote good practice. We must learn from what works because we know there are many success stories out there.

The review must involve a variety of government departments. It is essential that wider life issues such as health, accommodation, justice, employment etc are explored and fully integrated into the review.

Lastly, but by no means least, the review must investigate the mechanics of how children's social care is commissioned and provided. Too often we hear that there are not sufficient placements. What causes this and how can it be changed?

Too often we hear of young people living in poor placements that cost a lot of money. This is unacceptable. Changes are required at a structural level to improve outcomes for all young people in care.

The review needs to live up to its billing and be bold and imaginative. It needs to be open and accountable. It needs to listen, And it needs to deliver not just words but positive change.