Early help schemes will not stop rise in teenagers entering care, MPs told

In a meeting focused on residential care, Ofsted’s national director of social care and regulation Yvette Stanley said the rollout of early help initiatives including family hubs, designed to support vulnerable families and children from birth to 18, would not “greatly impact” a rising number of teenagers referred to local authority children’s services.

Such young people and their families need “targeted” and “intensive” support including the creation of specialist foster care placements and children’s homes, Stanley said.

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“I’m a passionate believer in the family hubs but these families are not going to be greatly impacted, it’s about crisis support, it’s often about intensive mental health services which are really poor for children in this country.

“Very specific services and very intense intervention is needed to support not only stepping up [into local authority care] but to support stepping down safely to families. These are families that are likely to need some enduring support to enable them to keep their children safely,” she added.

Ofsted’s director of social care and education also noted that the “number of children entering the system has not increased, what we’re seeing is children coming to the system slightly older and staying in care for the duration”.

She told the committee that changes in policies around secure mental health provision and the youth justice estate means that children who would once have been transferred to such settings are now referred to local authority children’s social care.

The comments came in response to stand-in chair and Labour MP for Gateshead Ian Mearns’ questions over the “drivers” behind an overall increase in the number of children in care.

He cited research by the County Councils Network which states that 100,000 children could be in care by 2025.

Separate research carried out by the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory found that the number of 10- to 17-year-olds involved in care proceedings over the last decade has doubled.

Children’s commissioner for England Dame Rachel de Souza called for greater early intervention funding to reduce pressure on local authorities, praising £115m of funding for family hubs.

Citing improvements at councils such as Leeds and Sunderland, which have boosted Ofsted ratings from "inadequate" to "good" or "outstanding" through improvements in early help services, she said: “We need to reform the system, half of local authorities are not good. 

“I still think that we’re putting so much resource into children’s social care, we should be expecting more out of it. We should be demanding that the early help is there.”

However, Mearns highlighted that older children who “have missed out on those early interventions” are still in need of crisis intervention.

Stanley added: “You can’t invest in early intervention by increasing the volume of work that a social worker has to do.

“I do not see spare resources in the acute end that can be recycled to early help. At some point that earlier investment will reduce numbers but reducing them safely will come at some cost.”

The committee also heard calls for increased sufficiency of foster care placements and children’s homes close to "good" or "outstanding" schools to improve the outcomes for children in care.

It comes as the Commission on Young Lives, chaired by former children’s commissioner for England Anne Longfield, called on government to set up a national recruitment programme for specialist foster carers for teenagers, a new “teenager in care” package of appropriate and high-quality modes of care for teenagers established by the Department for Education, and the launch of a new “teenager at risk” helpline aimed at both vulnerable children and parents and families.