Care Review: Six things we learnt from the Case for Change

In a scathing attack on the current system, review chair Josh MacAlister describes the current system as “shaky” likening it to “a 30-year-old tower of Jenga held together with Sellotape”.

• Care Review lays out key reforms for ‘shaky’ social care system in first report

• Case for Change: Sector responds to Care Review’s first report

The Case for Change is the first report published by the review, which was launched in January.

It lays out MacAlister’s key areas of focus for the long-awaited examination of children’s social care in England which is due to take between 12 and 16 months to complete.

Here CPY Now examines seven things we learnt from the report:

Social work

The Case for Change describes the current system as having “a systemic overconfidence that additional top down duties or changes to legislation will lead to positive change for children and families”.

It is “bureaucratic and risk averse”, MacAlister states, citing Department for Education data which suggests social workers are spending just one third of their time with children and families.

“This is a staggering misuse of the greatest asset that children’s social care has - its social workers,” MacAlister adds, laying out plans for more face-to-face time with children experiencing a “revolving door” of social workers.

This view mirrors plans laid out by the review chair in a 2019 Blueprint for Children’s Social Care which he authored while chief executive of Frontline Social Care, sector leaders have said.

Carolyne Willow, director of Article 39, said: “The content on social worker supervision, social workers leaving direct work with children and young people and new models of social work chimes with Frontline’s Blueprint published in 2019.”

Keeping families together

The Case for Change advocates supporting families to stay together where possible.

“We have a shared obligation to help families raise their children,” it states.

The Case for Change adds that “the children’s social care system in England investigates too readily whilst not doing enough to support families, protect teenagers or care for children who are looked after by the state”.

“The system is under significant strain with support for families being cut back as money is increasingly spent on crisis intervention,” it states

Responding to the report, Charlotte Ramsden, president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, said: “For too long external influences have driven risk averse cultures and we need to challenge this.

“We have one of the safest child protection systems in the world and it is vitally important to work to keep families together where that is right for children. However, whilst by no means perfect, care can be and is the right place for some children and we must work to make it the best place possible for those who need it.”

Adoption and kinship care

The Case for Change appears to favour adoption and kinship care as options for looked-after children unable to stay with their families.

“We should find stable alternative homes for children where they cannot remain with their birth parents. Kinship arrangements and adoption can offer children permanence outside of care,” it states.

However, it also calls for greater government focus on kinship care similar to previous campaigns to boost adoption.

Lucy Peake, chief executive of charity Kinship, said kinship care has “been treated as the poor relative of adoption”, adding: “The report will offer hope to the many thousands of kinship carers across England that their value – and their struggle – is finally being recognised. The voices of the 150 kinship carers who generously contributed to the review ring out. 

“Their common experience of huge sacrifices made at short notice for the children they love, with little support, comes through strongly.”

Fostering and residential care 

The report heavily focuses on calls to reduce the “increasing role of private provision” in both foster care and residential care.

MacAlister cites Ofsted figures showing that 78 per cent of children’s homes are provided by private providers and 41 per cent approved fostering places are provided by independent fostering agencies.

The Case for Change calls for a “pragmatic re-think” of the current system, which may be based on the results of an ongoing Competition and Markets Authority investigation into private profit-making in children’s social care.

However, Jonathan Stanley, consultant at the National Centre of Excellence for Residential Children’s Care (NCERCC) said: “The analysis of residential children’s care is weak. It is not asking any questions that have not been asked continuously over the past two decades.

“Unfortunately there are some indications that the review, no matter what it says, has adopted a negative view of residential care, for example when describing foster and residential care as being carried out  by ‘strangers’. This is not how it feels to children or their workers.”

Unregulated supported accomodation

The Case for Change states that “the use of unregulated accommodation for children under the age of 18 should come to an end”.

MacAlister describes the use of such accommodation for children aged 13 and under as “a national scandal”, however, critics have raised concerns over the review’s decision to back government plans to ban unregulated accommodation for children aged 16 and under and implement national standards for such settings housing those aged 16 to 18.

The report states: “A ban that would remove the option of high-quality semi-independent homes for 16 and 17 years would be to the detriment of some young people. The review has heard from young people who want this option.”

Willow added: “Article 39 had hoped the review would distance itself from government plans on unregulated accommodation for children in care, so it is deeply disappointing that it has not championed care for 16- and 17-year-olds in care. 

“Echoing the position of government ministers, the report states it is a “national scandal” that children aged 13 and younger have been put into unregulated accommodation by local authorities. No such outrage is expressed for older children, despite other sections of the report explaining the serious harms faced by this group, enduring educational inequalities and the sometimes life-long struggles of those who have been in care.”

Poverty and equality

The review will also make a case for policy changes to tackle poverty, deprivation and inequality.

The report notes that children living in the 10 per cent most deprived neighbourhoods in England are 10 times more likely to be on a child protection plan than children in the least deprived areas.

Deprivation and, in some cases, ethnicity was a causal factor in child abuse and neglect, it adds.

“Improving children’s social care will take us a long way to solving some of the knottiest problems facing society - improving children’s quality of life, tackling inequalities, improving the productivity of the economy, and truly levelling up,” MacAlister says.

Tulip Siddiq MP, Labour’s shadow minister for children and early years said: “Rising child poverty and deep cuts to preventative children’s services by successive Conservative governments have pushed many more children into care and allowed problems to reach crisis point.”