How to radically reimagine our children’s care system and support for care leavers

I will have a lifelong interest in children’s social care. As a former social worker, I cannot help but pay close attention. One of the ways I do this is through the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on looked after children and care leavers, which I chair. This cross-party group is dedicated to understanding what’s going on in our children’s social care system and how to improve it.

We have now published the findings of our latest inquiry, which takes an in-depth look at ‘community’ for care-experienced young people. I’m a big believer in the adage ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. When families are not able to look after their own children, it is right that the state should step in. But in so many ways, we undervalue the importance of community in the lives of children in the care system.

It is communities that provide the friendship and support that help all of us to be happy and to thrive. Yet many care-experienced young people told us that they often feel disconnected to their communities, dislocated from where they used to live and often stigmatised where they live now.

During the course of the inquiry, we heard from so many people: over 300 provided their views, of which over 130 were care-experienced young people themselves. As we publish the final report, three key themes stand out.

Young people talked movingly about how much stigma and shame is attached to the care system. They often feel like people blame them for being in care. That people believe they are bad kids and they will never amount to anything. The pain this causes was palpable:

“Imagine your whole life as a child trying to explain what a problem is, and 9/10 times we are not believed because of our ‘reputation’ as a care kid. It’s very hard because we want to be able to talk to people but we are so scared of being disbelieved.”  – care-experienced young person during an inquiry workshop

How can young people with experience of the care system feel part of a community if these are the attitudes and prejudices they experience?

Another key issue was the instability of the care system. We heard from young people who had moved more than ten times from placement to placement whilst in care, and others who had been placed miles and miles away from home – far from their family, friends and the communities they knew.

And, finally, we heard about the experience of leaving care. So many young people find themselves adrift in communities they don’t know very well, with very small support networks and dwindling support from the local authority on which they have relied so much during their childhood.

It is an uncertain time in children’s social care, and the pandemic has put huge pressures on families, exacerbating their struggles. We are seeing record numbers of children in the care system, as local government funding continues to shrink and shrink, and the costs of children’s social care continue to rise and rise.

In Whitehall, the Department for Education does not have much to say. Instead, it points to its independent review of children’s social care led by Josh MacAlister, founder of social work charity Frontline. Many hopes are being pinned on this review. Hopes that it will focus on the real issues, reinvigorate children’s social care and provide the government with solutions to a host of difficult problems.

Based on the findings of our inquiry, the APPG makes a range of recommendations for the review and the Department for Education to consider. Three in particular stand out to me.

One. We must tackle the stigma attached to the care system. Our report offers some ideas about how to do this: media reporting guidelines, national awareness campaigns, better training for professionals, duties on placement providers to build more community links. The independent review should bring all of this together to tell a positive and empowering story about children with experience of the care system, their capability, successes and bright futures.

Two. When it comes to placement stability, it is clear that the ‘marketplace’ of providers on which local councils rely to provide stable, loving homes for children has failed. Enormous profits are being made. Placements are concentrated in certain areas of the country. Children are not being put first. The review must recommend national intervention in this market to fix it, and we – alongside the children’s commissioner – believe it is time to consider binding targets to reduce the numbers of children being placed far away from home.

Three. For those leaving care, the review must radically reimagine how we support them, helping care leavers to ‘stay put’ in the first years of early adulthood and supporting later transitions into independence. The system is still too quick to drive young people towards independent living at the age of 18 (or even before!), rather than caring for them for longer and managing a slower transition that guarantees they have the support they need into adulthood.

As the independent review of children’s social care looks to publish its own recommendations in the coming weeks, we will need to hold the Department for Education to account and ensure that it commits to long-term reform of the care system that makes sure children feel part of the communities they grow up in.