Extend Staying Put foster care initiative to age 25, urges charity

Under the Staying Put policy, which was made law through the Children and Families Act 2014, councils have a duty to support looked-after children who want to remain with their foster carer until they are 21.

But an election manifesto put together by The Adolescent and Children's Trust (Tact), based on interviews with children and young people, has called on the next government to extend the entitlement up to the age of 25 in order to improve placement stability.

"Problems arise when children leave foster care," the charity's manifesto ahead of tomorrow's general election states.

"To smooth transition, the government has promoted Staying Put arrangements, enabling care leavers to remain with their former foster carers after they turn 18 and until age 21, helping prepare for adulthood and limit the risks of social exclusion.

"But young people questioned about Staying Put frequently asked for it to be extended to age 25."

The manifesto makes a number of other proposals, including:

• Introducing priority assessment for children in care with emerging mental health issues
• Considering merging child and adolescent mental health services into local authority children's services
• The creation of new guidelines for local authority assessments, with a requirement to focus on strengths as well as needs
• Providing more psychological support for foster parents to give them strategies for helping children recover from trauma
• Reform of the foster care market to end profit-making from the care of vulnerable children
• Free council tax for all foster carers to be paid for by central government
• Giving all 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote

The manifesto also calls for the current "local offer" for care leavers to asylum-seeking care leavers.

"The Children and Social Work Act 2017 has improved services to care leavers, enabling continued support to the age of 25 through the development of a ‘local offer'," the manifesto states.

"Yet if you are an unaccompanied asylum-seeking care leaver, then you will not have an automatic right to this continued support."

"You will not qualify for the Staying Put scheme, benefits, or student loans. If you go on to higher education, you will be treated as an overseas student and charged fees which are three times higher than for others so university is not available to you.

"Without meaningful support post-18, yet not granted a final immigration decision and not able to work or attend higher education, we are making unaccompanied children vulnerable and open to exploitation.

"The immigration system is a mess and not fit for purpose. Vulnerable children should not be left without support because of this."

Jasmine Ali, senior policy advisor at Tact, said: "Having looked at the main party's manifestos for policies relating to children and young people in care and care leavers, we found some initiatives, but none adequately addressed what is really needed to improve their life chances.

"So we felt compelled to produce our own manifesto, in partnership with looked after children and care leavers, as a call to action for what is really needed, which is a programme of challenging policies addressing assessment, housing, education, jobs and more."