The right direction. Now let’s go further and faster to transform Children’ Social Care.
Children’s social care in England needs transformation. Early and intensive support for families in crisis is hollowed out. Child protection is overwhelmed. Family networks — grandparents, aunts and uncles — are systematically overlooked when they could help to raise a child whose parents are struggling. All of this means we’re on course to have 100,000 children in care within a decade. Too many of these children are forced to grow up far from their community in homes that can’t give them the stability and love they need. The experience of growing up in care is one of the greatest disadvantages someone can face. Those who’ve grown up in care are 70% more likely to die early. Let that sink in.
It’s in this context that I was asked by the government to undertake a “once in a generation review” to think again about how we support families in crisis and care for children who can’t stay with their parents. The final report was published last year and was the result of a 14-month process of listening to thousands of children, parents, relatives and carers with first-hand experience of children’s social care. The process left me with mixed feelings — rage and hope, despondency and awe, anger and joy. The final report set out a detailed and costed plan to transform the system, putting loving relationships that hold the solutions for children and families at the centre.
Setting out his priorities for government at the start of the year, the Prime Minister spoke of the importance of loving family relationships and explained that “family runs right through our vision of a better future”. It was refreshing to hear a PM talk about love, and his government has now put some substance behind it by publishing their action plan in response to my review.
The Government’s new strategy — ‘Built on Love’ — sets out the right direction to move us away from the broken cycle we’re in. Wholesale changes to introduce intensive support for families, more expert child protection and new regional action to create more homes for children in care will get started this year. More training for social workers and new support for relatives who care for a child (kinship carers) is welcome. The increase from £2k to £3k for the grant care leavers get to settle into their own home and a boost to foster carer numbers should improve the lives of those in and leaving care in a matter of months.
The £200m of new spending on these measures, and others, will mean there’s a plan to start tipping the scales towards the kind of system children and families urgently need. The Department for Education and children’s services leaders who’ve created these plans deserve credit for that. We should be excited by these measures and the new direction they set.
Yet, without a transformative whole system reset, outcomes for children and families will remain stubbornly poor. The annual cost of our children’s social care system will rise from £10 to £15bn per year, plus many billions more from the price of health care, crime and other disadvantages these children face. Taking transformational action now will cost money — £2.6bn over four years — but it will save the taxpayer soon after. More importantly, we’d reach the tipping point to reverse these trends, meaning that 30,000 more children could be living safely and thriving with their families by 2032.
The government’s plan gets us started down the right path, but it must go further and faster to reach the tipping point. Government needs to expand the roll out of a new approach to intensive family help so that more areas across England get access to reform and investment. They need to speed up legislating to provide kinship carers with support so that more children can live well with their own families, in turn preventing more children entering an overwhelmed care system. Last year over 100,000 Ukrainians were welcomed under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, yet the current plan won’t deliver the 9,000 additional foster carers we need over the next three years.
The review concluded that the disadvantage faced by the care experienced community should be the civil rights issue of our time. The government has committed to making a wider group of public services ‘corporate parents’ for those leaving care in the future, but the they have decided not to make care experience a protected characteristic in equalities legislation. This would be a landmark change for those who grew up in care and would profoundly change the way services and society behaves towards this remarkable but extremely disadvantaged community.
For those growing up in care now, the plan falls short of introducing universal care standards, a decision that will prolong a complicated system of regulation and leave too many teenagers in homes without the care they need.
It’s rare that all recommendations from government commissioned reviews are accepted. The Department for Education has done a good job of responding comprehensively to the review, within the constraints they’ve faced. But so many who have lived through or work in this faltering system know that there’s a burning platform. Reforms will get started this year, but children and families will have to wait longer to see results. Government as a whole therefore needs to prioritise legislative time and investment for these children.
Children in the care of the state — the government’s children — need to come first. Parents across the country put their children first and our government should act no differently. Downing Street should push the Department for Education to break out of the spending review straitjacket, secure parliamentary time and accelerate these reforms at every available opportunity. If the PM wants to ensure family runs right through his vision for a better future then this is the place to start, and it would receive cross party support from Labour.
We can switch £1bn in spending to earlier help for families, support 30,000 more children to grow up at home safely, recruit 9,000 more foster carers and guarantee that all those leaving care have someone who loves them. I know this because there are places where it’s already being done right. Let’s see the government’s plan delivered, but let’s go further and faster to achieve the transformation children need. How we care for our children is a reflection of who we are as a country. Children’s social care can and should reflect England at its best.
