Child protection in England needs to be radically changed to avoid putting tens of thousands more children into care, says the head of a major review.
Josh MacAlister of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care said the system is designed for crisis intervention and families in difficulty need help much earlier.
The results for many children are “unacceptably bad,” he added.
The government announced that it would make initial changes to improve services.
But both Labor and the British Association of Social Workers have blamed government austerity measures since 2010 for eliminating early support services for vulnerable families.
The review of council-run children’s services in England follows the killings of young children Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson, who died in separate incidents in 2020. The trials of her killers have highlighted the inadequacies of the system for protecting vulnerable children.
A separate report on the shortcomings in both cases is expected shortly.
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“I always walked with a black garbage bag,” says Henri Imoreh, who was moved from one ward to another five times in her first few weeks in care at the age of 14.
Youth worker Henri, now 27, says the type of early intervention recommended in the report could have changed her life. Being in foster care “felt like a never-ending storm,” she says.
It interfered with her education, she was bullied and got into fights.
“Where’s the support for families right at the start when they’re struggling?” She asks.
She says, “There were so many moments in my childhood where my mother was suffering and nobody offered support… Maybe we wouldn’t have gone into the nursing home and maybe our stories would have been different.”
Mr MacAlister, the former teacher who led the government-commissioned review, told the BBC: “I’ve walked away from that feeling of a mixture of inspiration at times – to see what families could do and what children could achieve despite the circumstances – but also anger.
“Some of the things that are going on in the system are outrageous and unacceptable.”
Mr MacAlister said an additional £2.6 billion in funding would need to be made available over the next five years to convert the system to earlier interventions.
Without that, he said, the number of children cared for – which has already risen to a record 80,000 – would grow.
“Carry on as we have been and we will have almost 100,000 children in care by this time over the next decade and the cost per year will be £15billion [up from £10bn]… and it’s not going to get better results for anyone.”
He suggested some of the money could be raised through an unexpected tax on the 15 largest providers of residential childcare and foster care, which he says have “emerged from market failures very well” by capitalizing on demand.
The report’s key recommendations include:
- new child safeguarding experts to ensure senior staff are directly involved in frontline decisions
- Family centers in schools and the wider community to provide “low-stigma, really intensive care”.
- a new law to protect care leavers from discrimination
- Facilities for juvenile offenders, which are described as “totally unsuitable for children”, should be phased out
Another important recommendation is additional financial support for relatives who take care of a child to avoid them being placed in children’s homes or foster families.
“Children have told us that when they leave care they would like to stay with their grandparents or that uncle or family friend,” says Mr. MacAlister.
But too often relatives’ housing is inadequate or there is insufficient budget to cover the cost of accommodating an additional child, says the report, which argues that relative carers should be paid the same amount as foster parents.
Lisa, whose baby granddaughter was adopted last year, wished she could have taken her in instead – but she says the social workers handling the case were “negative and picky” and not on her side.
She already has a special guardianship warrant for the baby’s older brother, but when she applied to have the second child, she was told one condition was to quit her job to focus on her granddaughter’s emotional well-being.
Losing her income would have plunged the entire family into poverty, so Lisa had no choice.
“It was the hardest decision I’ve ever made … I think I’ll bury whether it was the right one or not.”
Lisa says special guards need better help.
“We are an afterthought. We don’t get the support that foster parents get. We don’t get the support that adopters get – and yet we are the most successful placement for a child. It makes no sense.”
In a statement, ministers said they were committed to “major reforms to improve the lives of England’s most vulnerable children and families”.
Some of the first measures set out by the government include:
- Family hubs for ‘essential early support’
- an expert National Implementation Board to oversee “transformative change”
- a recruitment campaign for foster parents
- more funding for councils to keep vulnerable children educated
“This is the beginning of a journey to change culture and dramatically reform the child welfare system,” said Education Minister Nadim Zahawi, who promised detailed plans for “bold and ambitious changes” within months.
Labor called the poor outcomes for children in institutions “a source of shame for our country and our government”.
“A decade of Conservative governments has taken away the early support services that children and families rely on,” said Helen Hayes, Labour’s shadow secretary for children and early years.
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