Time to deliver Care Review reforms

On 23 May, 2022, the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care was published, a government-commissioned report into how the children’s social care system could work better for everyone involved, but especially the children in it.

The review recommended a radical reset of the children’s social care system and urgent investment of £2.6 billion. Eight months later, the government responded with a report called Stable Homes, Built on Love, recommending a number of reforms, pilots and a spend of £200 million. The view from many is that the response from the government has been too little and too slow.

Two years since the review was published, 1,760 more children are in care, in a system that after decades of under-investment was already struggling to cope. We now have more than 84,000 children in care and simply not enough suitable places for them to live. That means instability and children being sent to live wherever there’s a bed available, often forced to live apart from brothers and sisters, and everything they know – their school, family and friends.

Our own research – part of our Gone Too Far campaign – shows on average a child in care is moved more than 18 miles from the people and places that matter to them. Some children are moved more than 500 miles, with 800 children from England moved to Scotland and Wales in 2022.

We know from the young people we work with the negative impact that instability has on a child’s wellbeing and educational attainment. And latest figures from the Department for Education show how outcomes are getting worse: children in care, on average, continue to make less educational progress in secondary school than non-care experienced pupils, and the past year has seen a rise in the proportion of children in care who have been suspended or expelled.

As well as the cost to the young people, there’s the financial burden placed on local authorities struggling to meet the costs of rising demand. This is compounded by the fact that 85% of children’s homes are operated by private providers, making average profit margins of 22.6% (£45,000) per child. Council spending on private children’s home places has more than doubled in the past six years.

The current state of children’s social care is what led the Education Select Committee to launch its own inquiry into the government’s response to the care review. This is something we at Become have been calling for since Stable Homes, Built on Love was published, and I was among the first to give evidence to the committee this February. We look forward to its findings, due to be published before the summer. Given it’s the year of a general election, we hope the final report will include robust and decisive actions for the next government to improve the lives of the thousands of children in care.

We have set out in our manifesto the key reforms that are needed. We want young people’s voices to be at the heart of the care system so changes made are meaningful and truly reflect their experiences. Young people have told us they want an end to the instability in the care system, that maintaining important relationships must be a key consideration in all decisions.

They want an end to the care cliff, which many young people face when they turn 18 and are expected to leave care and become independent overnight. And they want to be better supported by all the public services with which they have contact.

Care-experienced children and young people deserve the same opportunities as any other young person. Two years on from the Care Review and we are still not seeing the ambition or urgency required to deliver this. The time to care is now.

Katharine Sacks-Jones is chief executive of Become