Submission note by Family Policy Alliance
to
Members of the Select Committee
Department for Education and Skills
Enquiry into the implementation of
Every Child Matters
24 January 2004
Every Child's Family Matters
too
1. Family
Policy Alliance
Family Policy Alliance (FPA) comprises
three lead organisations (Family Rights Group, Family Welfare
Association and Parentline Plus) which provide advice and support
to families who are caring for children, many of whom are disadvantaged
or vulnerable and in need of additional support from the State
to raise their children.
Between us we support tens of thousands
of families every year, and we draw upon this collective experience
of working with families when making our submission to the Committee.
We have also consulted with a much larger group of similar
organisations who broadly support our views.
2. Every Child Matters - and
Every Family Matters too
· Parents
and other family members are the main carers of almost
all children in the country.
· This
applies not just to children who receive mainstream services,
but also those who are in need, those on the Child Protection
Register (CPR) (85% live at home) and even those
who are looked after (estimated 92% return home).
· Therefore,
any policy which aims to improve outcomes for children must be
based on the premise that parents and families are key players
and their needs and perspective must inform the design and delivery
of services.
· This
may sound obvious but given the extensive lobbying and debate
which was necessary in the House of Lords to ensure that an amendment
was accepted to the effect parents' needs were recognised on the
face of the Children Act 2004 [s.10 (3)], it cannot be assumed.
3. Why is family support policy
not working?
We start from the premise that the
vast majority of parents want to do the very best for their children,
but there are significant material and environmental
factors which militate against this - poverty, stigma, poor
housing, poor health, domestic violence, discrimination, social
exclusion are key issues. They therefore need support from the
State to help them in their child rearing tasks (reflects expectations
of Article 18 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
(UNCRC).)
Government has repeatedly stated its
commitment to providing this support to families. The latest initiative
is the Common Assessment Framework which aims to address
children's needs which are not met at a very early stage.
But sadly, to date, support has not
been delivered to many children and families who most need it
unless they are in crisis so we are sceptical about the likelihood
of this laudable goal being achieved.
The current obstacles to effective
support for families at an early stage are:
· Lack
of adequate investment in prevention:
this is not news, but given the extensive investment which will
be committed to the implementation of new proposals which flow
from Every Child Matters, including an information sharing database,
it is timely for all to pause and ask the question: is this new
investment being put to the best use?
FPA, supported by many similar service
provider organisations says it is not because the current systems
are not in themselves defective - indeed the legal and practice
framework is broadly sound - the problems stem from a lack
of implementation of current support, protection and child
welfare policies, and a lack of accountability for this failure.
Witnesses far more eminent than FPA have and will make this point
forcefully to the Committee.
· S.17
places a duty on the local authority to provide support for children
in need and their families.
S.17 (10) and (11) defines what is
meant by 'in need' in law,
but the lack of resources behind family support, means that local
authorities redefine in need when setting their eligibility criteria
for who can and who cannot receive support.
In our experience, these eligibility
criteria are set very high - closer to child protection thresholds,
so families don't get support until the home situation is in crisis
and their child potentially at risk of harm.
Whilst the Common Assessment Framework
(CAF) will clearly improve consistency of assessment between agencies,
it will not address this problem as the threshold for when
to carry out an assessment to identify need is not defined.
It is likely that the same situation will therefore persist, unless
substantial resources are put into not just training on the CAF,
but also actually carrying out the CAF guidance and providing
services identified as being needed in the assessment.
· The
difficulty for families is how to get services when they want
them. Time and again we see
families asking for help yet not receiving it until the home situation
has reached such a crisis that the children are at risk or are
registered on the child protection register- it is this registration
which unlocks the provision of family support services.
An example of this is what happened
to Michelle, a mother of three seeking help with her 10
year son's extreme behaviour problems - putting her and her other
children under intolerable stress. She contacted one of our organisations
and told us that she had begged for specialist help both for him
and for herself to address his difficulties but for years help
was refused. It was only when the family's situation became so
intolerable that she left her son at his school at the end of
the day, that Social Services took her seriously, and provided
support. By then, because of her desperate action, it had become
a child protection matter.
· Having
said the legal and practice framework is sound we should qualify
that in some respects: because of the limited resources and
strict gate keeping of s.17 services, parents who want and are
asking for support need the law to empower them all the more
so to challenge a refusal of support, they need the local authority
to be under a duty to:
o assess
their child's needs on request: the problem is there is a general
not an individual duty on the local authority
o provide
services to meet any identified needs and
o provide
access to independent advice and advocacy to support families
to challenge a refusal of services.
We lobbied on this when the Children
Act 2004 was debated in Parliament but our amendments were strongly
resisted. Why?
· This
gate keeping of services in line with a child protection threshold
has several adverse consequences for children and families:
o Children
are denied services until they are at risk of harm.
o If
support is offered in the context of child protection enquiries,
parents are often distrustful and even fearful of any support
offered because it no longer seems to be a voluntary process in
which they have choice and some degree of control. Research -
Quinton et al - shows how important parents retaining control
is for support to be effective.
For example, if one takes the example
of a family attending a parenting program or family centre, the
message given to the family is completely different if child protection
enquiries have begun than if they have not.
If the service is offered when a child/parents'
needs are first identified the message is, "I can see your
son has some challenging behaviour and we want to support you
to address these challenges, would you like to come to this parenting
course/family centre to develop confidence in your parenting skills?"
Whereas…
If it is 'offered' to a parent/family
as part of a child protection plan the message is more like, "We
think you are not able to discipline your son; he is clearly out
of control and you haven't been able to meet his needs (or worse,
you have neglected/emotionally abused him) so we are going to
give you a last chance to improve your parenting of him by coming
to this parenting course/family centre, but if you don't improve
we will take him into care".
It doesn't take a PhD in psychology
to work out that the first feels supportive whereas the second
feels frightening and coercive - such an approach is likely to
adversely affect the potential benefits of the support offered,
and it is contrary to the core principle of partnership in the
Children Act 1989.
4. So what would make family
support policy effective?
· Rationalise
the confusing philosophical tensions and policy contradictions
which exist between government departments
e.g.
o Contrast
DfES policy of supporting families with Home Office policies which
tend to view families as the source of the problem and be punitive
rather than supportive in seeking solutions - parenting orders/Anit
Social Behaviour Orders under Anti Social Behaviour Act 2003,
or the proposal to take children into care following refusal of
asylum s.9 Nationality and Immigration Act 2002.
· DFES
must invest in family support -
there is an opportunity now to do so when introducing CAF, but
there will need to be a key period of double funding to
address the needs of both young people whilst
rolling out an extensive early
intervention program for younger children and their families.
· Amend
the law to place a duty on
the local authority to:
o assess
the needs of children (and their families) when they are in need
as defined in s.17(10) and (11) and
o provide
services to met those identified needs
Again, this would be consistent with
Article 18 UNCRC
· Respect
and listen to parents and treat them as equal partners in promoting
good outcomes for children.
After all they are better informed than anyone in knowing what
their children need and in the vast majority of cases will continue
to be responsible for caring for their children.
This is the strong message from recent
research on Family Support and also from those we have consulted
with over the last year. FPA has consulted with:
· More
than 30 voluntary organisations and individuals who are directly
involved in the design, delivery and evaluation of direct services
which support families who are caring for children, and
· families
who are in receipt of these services.
Together we have set down some key messages
about the way in which family support services should be delivered
- these can be summarised as:
· Parents
need to be able to say what they need to support them to care
for their children, and to be heard and respected
and
· There
needs to be clarity as to the respective roles of the parent and
the professional to provide the basis for a mutual trust between
the parents and the agency
which delivers support services.
For ease of reference, we call this
the 6 R's for Family Support Services:
· Reachable
services - accessible local
services available from a range of providers, integrated
to avoid going over painful stories and sorting out incomplete
agency records, and which don't have long waiting lists, are culturally
sensitive etc.
· Recognition
- of the family's view of their need. They often do not
know what they are entitled to receive and do not have
any clear understanding of when or how their need for support
is being assessed.
· Response
- to the needs of the whole family. Families have a good
understanding of what works for them. Professionals should listen
to the family's wishes.
· Respect
- the family's expertise about their child's needs.
Their culture and their skills need to be valued and respected.
Families want to take responsibility for the challenges of parenting.
Therefore, although they welcome support in their parenting role,
they want to retain autonomy, choice and control about how
to use services
to benefit their children (unless
this would in itself place the child at risk).
· Referral
- to services which meet their expressed need, or signposting
so as to put a package of services together. Front line service
workers should be interactive with families and able to signpost
effectively and give information about a range of services. They
therefore need training and adequate time to listen to what families
want and help them work out what is available.
· Review
- to check whether the support provided is useful. This
will identify whether another service is needed or should it be
used in a different way - through the individual case and also
the overall service evaluation. Parents want their needs to be
met so as to enhance their care of their children.
Finally, INVEST in services over
the longer term. The greatest impediment to children achieving
the five outcomes is poverty and material deprivation. Until
this is addressed, some children will continue to fail to achieve
these goals and a number will be at risk of avoidable harm.
Short term or fixed term funding as
the experience of the Children Fund demonstrates does not build
the necessary foundation for sustained service development and
delivery. Not does it secure the skills within the workforce to
enable professionals to work alongside parents and carers.
5. Why the information sharing
database won't work:
· A
local database will not assist the support of children whose families
are transient and unaccompanied refugee children. It needs to
be national.
· Information
about agencies' involvement with children and families would be
useful if operated nationally except that the data it contains
is likely to become rapidly out of date. Whose responsibility
will it be to update information? What about the DPA/HRA compatibility?
· Flagging
causes of concern is fundamentally flawed for the following
reasons:
o There
is no definition of cause for concern so there will be
no sense of uniformity across the country and across professions
about when a flag should be logged. If it is pursued, it must
be defined and linked to a clear duty to assess the need for support.
o It
is not linked to the existing legislative framework to provide
support to children and families.
Therefore, if a concern is logged by one professional, it will
not trigger a corresponding response from another to take action.
It will create an erroneous 'comfort zone' for professionals who
have logged without achieving anything for the child.
o It
is likely that flagging concern will alarm families rather than
support them especially as there is no corresponding duty to provide
support. It will undermine the partnership and trust
between the family and State to work together to achieve good
outcomes for children. And this is already identified by research
as the key factor in protecting children who are at risk of harm.
Finally, we oppose its implementation
on the basis that it will be hugely expensive to set up and maintain
and the resources and funds could be much better spent on much
needed assessment and service provision.
Bridget Lindley and Leonie Jordan
Family Policy Alliance
24/01/2005
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