Supplementary memorandum submitted by
The Baroness Morgan of Drefelin, Parliamentary Under-Secretary
of State, DCSF
Thank you for the opportunity to give evidence
to the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee inquiry
into looked after children. I committed to providing further information
on a number of topics. I thought it also might be helpful to build
on the evidence I gave by briefly setting out how Care Matters
will be delivered at the national and local levels and the
impact this will have on individual looked after children.
VOICE OF
THE CHILD
The experiences of looked after children are
at the heart of the Care Matters reforms, which focus on
improving the support for these children to ensure they have a
better experience of care and achieve improved outcomes. During
the consultation on the Care Matters Green Paper, children
were very clear about what they wanted and this has shaped the
agenda, in particular the central importance of stability in children's
lives and of the voice of the child being heard in the care system.
A key priority is to give children a greater
say over their care by ensuring that their wishes and feelings
influence their care plan and are considered during their statutory
reviews. Strengthening the role of the Independent Reviewing Officer
(IRO) will be key to securing these improvements.
The Care Matters White Paper set a clear
expectation for local authorities to establish children in care
councils and to develop a pledge for children in care in partnership
with this council. These mechanisms will ensure that looked after
children are consulted about the services they receive; that they
are able to influence decisions that affect them at a strategic
level; and their views are listened to.
Looked after children will directly benefit
from the improved support and services that are being introduced
by the Care Matters reforms. This includes visits for all
looked after children, wherever they are living; extending the
eligibility for independent visitors to all children who would
benefit from one; placing the designated teacher on a statutory
footing; introduction of the personal educational allowance and
the Child Trust Fund Top-up; the presumption that looked after
children will remain in care to age 18, and perhaps beyond; and
the extension of the entitlement to a personal advisor for care
leavers.
Our emphasis on increasing stability for looked
after children relates to the key individuals in their lives as
well as their placements. Our workforce reforms include an emphasis
on reducing social worker turnover and we have focused our efforts
on improving placement stability for all looked after children.
An example of policies that are already having
a significant impact on the children is the Government's investment
in the Multi-Dimensional Treatment Foster Care (MTFC) model to
improve the chance of finding long term or permanent placements
for young children with significant emotional difficulties and
complex needs.
NATIONAL MOMENTUM
The Care Matters White Paper provides
a comprehensive examination of what needs to be changed and improved
in the care system that continues to have support from across
the sector. I am clear that we can only deliver on the White Paper's
commitments if we see through our reforms, promote innovation
and strengthen our oversight of the performance of the care system.
This will ensure that we maintain the momentum for change that
has been stimulated by the development of Care Matters.
Reforming the System
The Children and Young Persons Bill strengthens
provisions in the Children Act 1989 to take forward our reforms
to the care system. To support the implementation of these changes
we plan to revise the entire statutory framework of regulations
and guidance. This will include producing, for the first time,
a single set of care planning and review regulations and statutory
guidance to provide the necessary clarity of focus on these key
areas. Good care planning is closely linked to personalisation
of the care and support arrangements, for instance by making the
right contact arrangements that reflect the particular needs of
the individual child. These changes will be a major driver to
improve practice.
I highlighted the importance of our long term
children's workforce strategy in ensuring the workforce is equipped
to deliver. We have already made clear our intention to ensure
that training for social workers is of a high quality and relevant
to the tasks social workers are required to undertake.
In the Children's Plan we stated that we want
to improve qualifying training and continuing professional development
for children's social workers to ensure that all have qualifications
and skills that are fit for purpose. We have made good progress
towards achieving this ambition in the past year, launching a
£73 million package of support for social workers who work
with children and young people to be delivered through the Children's
Workforce Development Council (CWDC) over the next three years.
CWDC have already launched their Newly Qualified Social Worker
pilots which form the first stage of their continuing professional
development framework and which provide a protected first year
in practice. They are currently developing the further stages
of the framework, including an advanced practitioner status to
attract and reward experienced social workers to stay in field
work posts.
The Government's 2020 Children's Workforce strategy
will be published later this year.
Innovation and Dissemination
Over the summer and autumn, a series of regional
conferences have taken place across England to help spread best
practice and maintain the momentum for taking forward the Care
Matters reforms. A number of regions are currently holding
sub-regional conferences.
The Committee asked a number of questions about
the pilots that we are running as a result of Care Matters.
These include adapting international models, for instance by introducing
social pedagogy to children's homes and trialling the Multi-Systemic
Therapy early intervention programme that has been developed in
America. Although I appreciate the sentiments behind calls for
us to consider rolling some of these out nationally at an accelerated
rate, it is absolutely right that we are piloting these approaches.
Pilots allow us to identify barriers that need to be addressed
and to properly assess the impact on the workforce and on outcomes
for children and families. The pilots will be carefully evaluated
and we will also be looking at disseminating emerging findings
to other local authorities during the course of the pilots.
We will identify, support and disseminate good
practice in this sector through the Improvement and Development
Agency for Local Government (IDeA) and Regional Improvement and
Efficiency Partners (RIEP). My Department has also recently established
the Centre 4 Excellence in Outcomes. Looked after children has
been selected as one of the priority areas for the Centre.
Strengthening Oversight and Accountability
The National Indicator Set contains a combination
of well established performance measures and new outcome indicators
such as the indicator focused on the emotional health and well-being
of children in care. Taken together the indicators provide a balanced
picture of the outcomes for looked after children and reflect
the priorities identified by Care Matters.
The new programme board for Care Matters
that has been established by my Department will oversee performance
across the system, with a particular focus on all of the relevant
national indicators. This board will be chaired by my Director
General for Children and Families and a range of key partners
from across national and local government and the voluntary sector.
This board will meet regularly to examine the latest evidence
and take responsibility for seeing the improvements in the care
system we are all seeking.
The Annual Ministerial Stocktake will draw the
quantative and qualitative evidence together. This will be an
annual chance to maintain the focus on this agenda, assess the
progress that has been made and consider whether there is more
that can be done to increase the pace of improvements. As I explained
to the Committee, the Stocktake will culminate in an event that
I will chair, which will hear directly from looked after children
and Care Leavers. After each stocktake, a Report will be laid
before Parliament. I hope that the Committee will contribute to
this process each year and read this Report with interest.
LOCAL DELIVERY
Improving local performance is central to driving
up outcomes for looked after children. These improvements will
need to be delivered through local partnerships from the frontline
up to the strategic management level, building on children's trusts
arrangements.
Local Reforms
All local authorities are making progress on
introducing the Integrated Children's System (ICS) and those that
are furthest along the implementation process are seeing real
benefits. ICS provides a conceptual framework, a method of practice
and a business process to support practitioners and managers in
undertaking the key statutory tasks of assessment, planning, intervention
and review, underpinned by an electronic system. ICS also offers
local authorities much richer data for analysis and to support
local planning at a strategic level.
Local authorities are already analysing their
care populations and reviewing their strategies and service provision
with their partners. The new sufficiency duty introduced by the
Children and Young Persons Bill will increase this emphasis on
strategic planning. Over time this will deliver whole system change,
so we should see for example fewer reactive placements being made
and less spot purchasing. Instead we will see local authorities
building up their stock of local accommodation and reducing out
of authority placements. We are also encouraging local authorities
to increase their use of evidence based services and interventions.
My Department funded Loughborough University
to develop the cost calculator for local authorities to assist
their service planning. Further tools are being developed to assist
local authorities.
The revised Public Law Outline and accompanying
Statutory Guidance for local authorities came into force in April
2008. A range of issues had been identified in relation to care
proceedings that were having a negative impact on children including
delays and poorly prepared applications. Amongst the key reforms
are a greater emphasis on the quality of pre-proceedings work
by local authorities and a streamlining of the court processes.
These measures will improve planning and decision making for children
coming into care and ensure that they find permanence at the earliest
appropriate time.
Adolescents Coming into Care
I was asked to provide further information about
trends of adolescents coming into care. According to statistical
collections the number of children aged 10 and over becoming looked
after has remained stable between 2003-04 and 2007-08 at roughly
48% of all children becoming looked after; the number of 16 and
17 year olds becoming looked after has actually increased from
6% of the total to 10% of the total over the same period. This
does not suggest a trend of reducing numbers of adolescents coming
into care. We will be publishing findings from a research study
on adolescents and neglect soon.
Nevertheless, we are aware of cases in which
local authorities are purported to exercise their powers inappropriately,
for example by providing accommodation and other services to adolescents
under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 instead of under section
20 of that Act. We will address this head on in the revised statutory
guidance. This will make it clear that where there is an assessment
that a homeless young person needs to be provided with accommodation
by the local authority in almost all cases they should be supported
as a looked after child.
Safeguarding and Exploitation
Safeguarding the needs of sexually exploited
young people is vitally important. I committed to provide further
information on the safeguarding arrangements.
We are producing new guidance on safeguarding
children and young people from sexual exploitation to replace
our current guidance, Safeguarding Children Involved in Prostitution
which was issued in 2000. The new guidance applies to children
and young people under the age of 18—boys as well as girls—and
reflects our current understanding of the inter-related nature
of different forms of sexual exploitation.
The guidance sets out an inter agency approach
to developing and implementing local policy and procedures and
covers all the important elements that practitioners will need
guidance on. This includes the roles and responsibilities of different
organisations involved in safeguarding and promoting the welfare
of children; action that can be taken to prevent and reduce sexual
exploitation; how to manage individual cases and what needs to
be done to identify and prosecute perpetrators.
Consultation on the draft guidance closed on
10 October and we aim to publish the new guidance by the end of
the year. We will also ensure that the updated guidance on Missing
from Home and Care, covers the particular needs of both those
young people who are in care because they have been trafficked,
and those young people who have been groomed whether they have
been persuaded away from either their home or care.
The MTFC programmes for adolescents I referred
to earlier in this letter specifically address the issues for
young people who are being sexually exploited and enable them
to reduce their risk taking behaviour.
Involvement of Health Services
Concerns were raised about whether local health
bodies prioritise children's issues. Section 10 of the Children
Act 2004 provides that local authorities, NHS bodies and other
partners in their area must co-operate in the making of arrangements
to improve the well-being of children. My Department is currently
revising the statutory guidance on Promoting the Health of Looked
After Children, this will be issued under Section 10, which means
that both the local authority and the NHS must have regard to
it.
All Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) must work jointly
with local authorities to produce a Joint Strategic Needs Assessment
(JSNA) in relation to health. The statutory guidance on the development
of Joint Strategic Needs Assessment makes it clear that the needs
of vulnerable groups such as looked after children should be taken
into account in the development of this assessment.
Since April 2008 all looked after children have
been screened for emotional and behavioural difficulties. This
is done through annual use of a Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire
(SDQ), conducted for each looked after child by their carer. This
should be followed by action at the local authority and individual
child level where problems are identified. We are also rolling
out specialist training for foster carers and residential care
staff in responding appropriately to children.
Local Performance Improvement
Without trying to micro-manage local authorities
and their partners, we must be able to examine at the national
level whether we are seeing consistent improvements in outcomes
for looked after children. That is why we are significantly strengthening
our oversight of the system, working with our partners.
Performance must be closely monitored at the
local level if we are to deliver improved outcomes for looked
after children. There is a robust framework that supports this:
The positions of Director of Children's Services
and Lead Member for children's services have established clear
lines of accountability within the local authority;
There will be a new programme of inspection,
led by Ofsted, of services for looked after children and safeguarding
services for children inspecting each local authority area once
in a 3-year period; and,
Performance against all national indicators
will be considered and reported annually by the Audit Commission
as part of Comprehensive Area Assessments. In addition local authorities
agree specific targets for the statutory education indicators
(including three for children in care) and up to 35 indicators
that are included in their Local Area Agreements.
Local authorities and their partners will examine
the impact of their reforms and assess whether they have the right
priorities to maintain the necessary focus on the needs of looked
after children.
I look forward to reading the Committee's Report
and welcome your contribution to improving the lives of looked
after children.
November 2008
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