Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-41)
JON FAYLE, DAVID HOLMES, DR ROGER MORGAN OBE AND
MAXINE WRIGLEY MBE
15 DECEMBER 2010
Q1 Chair: Good morning. Welcome
to this sitting of the Education Committee. I welcome David Holmes,
Jon Fayle and Roger Morgan. It appears that Maxine Wrigley is
not with us, for which I have had no explanation, but I am glad
that the three of you are here. We are holding a one-off evidence
session on the issues surrounding looked-after children. It follows
a report produced by our predecessor, the Children, Schools and
Families Committee, of which I am the sole, remaining member.
Since then, we have not only a new Committee, but a new Government
so it is important to revisit the issues that were looked at in
the previous Parliament and find out what changes have happened
since then. Later, we will have the opportunity to talk to the
Minister in the new Government to find out how their approach
will differ and whether it will be more effective than that of
the previous Government. Before we move on to looked-after children,
I want to ask you, Roger, about your thoughts following John Dunford's
review of the role of the Children's Commissioner and his proposal
vis-à-vis merging the role of the Rights Director with
that of the Children's Commissioner. If that goes ahead, what
advice will you be giving to ensure that the new role is more
effective than John Dunford found the Children's Commissioner
to have been up to this point?
Dr Morgan: There are a number
of positive good points. First, the move to establish the new
Children's Commissioner very much on a children's rights basis
linked to the United Nations convention is an extremely positive
and long-needed move. In more specific terms, it involves the
commissioner in making child impact statements of legislative
change, etc., which is also an extremely positive move. The stress
in terms of process and approach on increasing the evidential
impact and the basis on children's views is very welcome. Slightly
closer to home, I very much welcome and—you won't be surprised
to hear—endorse John Dunford's underlining of the importance
of the work specifically for children in care and other vulnerable
children in three main areas, such as the casework function, which
I have been calling "ombuds-lite"—I notice he
has used the same term. That is very welcome as a preserved activity,
even in the context of there not being an overall ombudsman function
for the commissioner. Secondly, there is the emphasis on children's
views and pure reporting of children's views, particularly from
the vulnerable end of things. Thirdly, there is the general specialism
in children in care. You asked about advice. I have one major
worry and one major element of advice. The major worry is that,
although John Dunford has clearly talked about two organisations—he
used the term "organisations"—as partners merging
into one, a move that I welcome and think is right, I am concerned
that the activities of the Children's Rights Director at the moment—whether
it is me in the future or someone else—should not be subsumed
or dissolved. I notice that various press coverage has used the
word "dissolved", which does not seem to be in the spirit
of what John Dunford was recommending. It is important to make
sure that the legislation that preserves the functions that he
has endorsed preserves specifically the role and the uniqueness
of those in the same way as it has in the move to the National
Care Standards Commission, the Commission for Social Care Inspection
and successfully to Ofsted, so preserving the role and the unit
as well as the broader functions. One area of advice is clearly
to maximise absolutely the extent to which what the commissioner
is, does, recommends and chooses to plan to do is based on the
directly ascertained views of children and young people rather
than necessarily campaigning on a small "p" political
agenda, so it is very much child-driven.
Q2 Chair: In your view, those
two aren't compatible.
Dr Morgan: I'm not saying that
they are incompatible, but that there are different lead emphases.
Sometimes, they turn out to be compatible; sometimes, they don't.
Q3 Chair: Thank you very much
for that.
We will now move on to the subject of the day—looked-after
children. When children come into care, they come with a number
of problems already. Is the system effective in turning those
problems around and preparing the children for adulthood?
David Holmes: Last year, more
than 90,000 children will have had at least one day in care. If
we think about the circumstances that those children have so often
come from, we know that a majority come into care because of abuse
and neglect. Often these children have experienced very toxic
combinations of parental mental ill health, domestic violence
and huge amounts of difficulty at home. When we think how the
care system has kept so many children safe and well looked after,
the care system does a good job. Sometimes, we measure performance
in the care system by those things that we can count; it might
be how many GCSEs looked-after children obtain. What we find harder
to measure is the difference between what would have happened
if those children had remained at home, as opposed to going into
care.
Q4 Chair: But David, that was
not really the question. I am assuming that children going into
care are no longer abused—one would hope—in the way
they previously had been, but my question was trying to ask whether
it does more than be a place of safety, with no rehabilitation
or improvement. The danger, some people would say, is that the
system lacks ambition. Your answer would seem to suggest that
you might share that view of the danger, but that we can do more
than just protect children from what would have happened if we
had left them in the care of abusive adults, and that we need
to look to do better. Other countries do better, and therefore
we could do better, too.
David Holmes: But you talk about
the system, as if the system is just one thing. In fact, the system
is huge amounts of individuals working together to try to make
children's lives better. Instead of thinking about a single system,
think about the tens of thousands of foster carers who, every
day, have a direct impact on children's lives. If you measure
success in terms of the impact that individuals can have on individual
children every day, you get a better measure of success in the
care system. There is lots of good practice, and there are also
areas where we need to concentrate much more and do more.
Jon Fayle: I resonate a lot with
what David has just said. It is very variable, however. Some children
are ill served by the care system, but many, most I think, are
well served by it. You might characterise the care population
as children, of whom at least 60%, and probably more like 70%
to 80%, have had horrific, traumatic and abusive experiences.
And you might characterise the job of the care system as seeking
to help heal, undo and assist children to become resilient in
the face of the trauma they have suffered. It is very variable,
but the longer children stay in care in long-term stable placements,
with secure attachments with long-term carers—be they foster
carers, or adoptive or other carers—the better the chance
is. Again, it is very variable from local authority to local authority,
but I feel that, generally speaking, insufficient attention is
given to the psychological consequences of abuse and the need
to try to counteract those consequences. In one of the authorities
that I work with, Sutton, there are two psychologists from CAMHS,
who are dedicated to the looked-after children population. The
work they do is not always so much with the children themselves,
but just as often with foster parents. They help them to understand
very challenging, difficult and off-the-wall behaviour, and provide
them with ways of thinking about it and strategies for dealing
with it. That kind of help for this kind of population of children
is very under-provided and, potentially, is a great area where
we could improve things for vulnerable children.
Dr Morgan: Going back to what
children themselves have told us, the majority of children we
have asked said that their life has been better in care than they
think it would have been out of care. That is not a controlled
trial; that is a perception. Despite the fact that a far higher
proportion over time did not want to come into care, overall children
regard their care experience far more positively than many people
would suspect. In fact, 90% rate their overall care this year,
in a survey of more than 1,000, as good or very good.
Q5 Chair: What does that look
like over time?
Dr Morgan: Over time, that figure
is holding. We have three years' figures and the figure is holding
fairly steady. It is not showing a dramatic increase or decrease.
Where there are issues, or problems, is that there are too many
children who are falling through the net, as it were, of what
might be regarded as a reasonable system. There are a number of
stages at which that is happening. Can I quickly identify three
or four of them? One, too many children are telling us that they
are first coming into care with too little notice, too little
information and too suddenly. Secondly, while in care, many children
are coming through—the casework that I was describing earlier—on
placement changes that are not always in their own best interests
but are increasingly triggered by the financial concerns of authorities,
which are not necessarily alongside the wishes of the child. Thirdly,
there is a lot of inconsistency in the provisions and assistance
for children leaving care. I think there is a major investment
issue for the future on how children and young people leave care
and what support they get after that. Finally, on education we
know that there is underachievement of children in care in education.
To quote two figures, 87% say that they regard their education
as good or very good this year, and 77%—10 percentage points
less—are saying that they feel that they are doing well
or very well in their education.
Chair: I welcome Maxine Wrigley, who
has now joined us.
Maxine Wrigley: Apologies for
being late.
Q6 Chair: Would you like to come
in on that?
Maxine Wrigley: I pretty much
echo what Roger is saying, in terms of the research that we carry
out. We do similar work to Roger's organisation, but our organisation
is led by young people. The trustees of the charity are young
people from care. I am the chief exec and I was in care when I
was young, from a few days old until I was 16. One of the things
that causes issues is that it is almost like there are 150 mini-care
systems in England. We talk about one, but they all seem to deliver
differently and have different characteristics. That causes problems,
particularly for people moving round the system. One of the problems
is that out-of-authority placements may mean that you are used
to one area, but then you are moved to a different area, perhaps
because of a shortage of carers. By the time you have got settled
in that area, it may be that you are able to move back to your
area, when there is more availability in the system. A fair bit
of moving around goes on, some of it unnecessarily. It is due
to shortages of good carers.
Q7 Craig Whittaker: While I hear
what David says about measurable outcomes not always being the
right things to do, do you honestly think that the current system
is aspirational enough for our young children? I am not convinced
it is.
David Holmes: It's whether or
not you measure aspiration by what the system does, or by what
individuals do in relation to the children in their care. I have
met many foster carers and many adoptive parents who have incredibly
high aspirations for the children in their care that they are
parenting. At its core, this is about the quality of relationships
between the people caring for children and those children, and
the impact that a single trusted adult, or individual, can have
on improving outcomes for a child. I take Maxine's point that
we would be better to think about this as 150 local authority
care systems than as one big system. We should think about this
as interventions with an individual child rather than what the
system does. Of course the system is important, but it is not
the only measure of success.
Q8 Craig Whittaker: But would
you not agree that the system is failing in preparing those children
for life after care?
David Holmes: I think some children
are being failed, but many others are not, and are being provided
with the care, parenting and support that they need to move on.
But, yes, there are a number of children who are being failed.
It is the variation between what different local authorities do
and between the experiences that different children have even
within the same local authority that should be a stronger focus
of attention.
Q9 Tessa Munt: Good morning. I
want to look at the number of care applications. We have statistics
that show there has been a big leap between 2008-09 and 2009-10.
Why do you think the number of children in care has grown? Are
there more children in need? Are the needs identified better?
Or is there a panic approach after recent events and those care
applications have come about as a sort of pre-emptive move? May
I have your observations?
Maxine Wrigley: I sat on the social
work taskforce, which was obviously set up as a result of the
tragic death of Baby Peter. I was also lecturing some social work
students—masters and degree students—last week. There
is definitely a feeling among people of a risk-averse culture
where social workers are damned if they do and damned if they
don't. It's a very difficult job. There does seem to be this feeling
now—"What if something goes horribly wrong again, like
with the Baby Peter case?" That has had an impact, and the
figures have shot up since then. I am not entirely sure what the
answer and the solution are, but I think there is sometimes a
knee-jerk reaction to things, like the media and how they portrayed
that situation. On the social work taskforce, we did have "Dear
Deirdre" from The Sun, who was one of the people deliberately
invited to sit on the taskforce because of her role as a journalist—trying
to portray the image of social workers better. However, the social
work students I met last week were still feeling something—all
of them admitted to wondering whether they should go into social
work, because of the public image. If you think about it, that's
not really going to be helping the children and young people.
Dr Morgan: Children I speak to
on that point—you don't get the same response from everyone,
but a large number—are saying it is because of Baby Peter.
Having said that, there is a context that I hear very frequently
from children. One thing is that there are not very many who say
that they didn't think they needed to come into care in the first
place, once they're in; there are some, of course, but there is
not an overwhelming view that they came into care inappropriately.
Indeed, there is more the view that some of them should have come
into care earlier.
Q10 Tessa Munt: From the young
people?
Dr Morgan: From the young people
themselves—earlier rather than later. There is quite a strong
view that, once in care, quite a number of people would feel that
they are in a position to return home, but usually dependent upon
some major change—very often a major change in their parents'
parenting—and they understand that that is sometimes an
unattainable goal. In terms of the numbers coming into care, yes,
quite a number talk and speculate about whether additional support
could have kept them at home, rather than them coming into care.
I cannot give you a statistic about how many, although I can tell
you from different studies or conversations how many children
say that they think more support could have kept them out of care.
But the figures are actually very different in different studies.
There isn't a constant, but what there is a constant about is
the kind of support that might keep more out of care. Children—generally
speaking, not all—are coming up with three common themes.
First is support for their parents, yes. Two, they ought to do
it themselves—one thing is support for personal problems
that the children themselves feel they have. Third is help for
them, and doing it themselves—keeping themselves out of
trouble, either at school or in the wider community. Those are
three common themes of support, help and factors that children
feel might have helped to keep them out of care, but in the context
of a view that there is not a huge number coming in—at the
moment. There are children who, obviously, come into care for
a while, but there is a time lag between that and the changes
that are taking place.
Q11 Tessa Munt: You referred earlier
to a slight resistance from young people themselves to going into
care. If they pop in and out of the care system, I assume that
that resistance is a lot less the second, third or fourth time.
Am I correct?
Dr Morgan: Not necessarily. The
resistance is a natural feeling of "I don't want to have
my life disrupted", "I miss my family, I feel homesick"
or "I don't know what the future holds"—"scary"
is a term very frequently used. In terms of coming in and out
of care, the very strong message we've got lately is young people
saying you need to put a lot of investment into support to get
you back home. Just going back out, which does sometimes happen,
isn't enough. You almost need as much investment in support to
keep you back home, to stop you having to go through the revolving
door.
Q12 Tessa Munt: That changes the
question I originally asked the two of you. The things that we're
trying to measure might be changed in the light of what you're
saying about people who are returning, or coming in and out. That
very support system is how we might measure how to keep somebody
out of care and stop them being a returner. In the light of that
new information, can I ask you the same question?
Jon Fayle: I agree with what has
been said. I think the main driver for the increase in the care
population has been media exposure and panic. The interesting
underlying question of whether that is right and whether more
children need to be in care is much more difficult. From my experience
and the experience of members of the National Association of Independent
Reviewing Officers, I'd say that we are not suddenly seeing a
lot of children coming into the system who on the face of it don't
need to be there. I haven't heard anyone say that. What I have
experienced and heard said is that they sometimes stay in longer
than they need to. There are the quite proper concerns of local
authorities to make sure that things are safe and good for when
the children should go home. Often, that is taking a much longer
time than it should. I can think of cases where children have
been in care for over a year, when really after about three months
it was clear that the crisis that led to them coming into care
was over. In response to an earlier question about aspirations,
I believe that there are high aspirations for children in the
care system, generally speaking. But sometimes they are hugely
overwhelmed by terrible bureaucracy and paperwork that sometimes
seems to be the most important thing for social workers to do.
The only other thing I wanted to say was about the other population
of looked-after children—children in custody. Strangely,
while the number of children in looked-after accommodation has
been going up, the number of children in custody has been going
down. That is a quite curious correlation. I have always taken
the view that children in custody are children in the public care.
They are not looked after by local authorities, but they are children
in public care who should get just as much attention to their
needs as others do. It has always seemed to me that it is probably
right that a lot of children in custody, who have unmet needs
and terribly traumatised backgrounds, would be better in the care
of the local authority. They would be better looked after in a
welfare system than in a custodial system. In so far as what's
happened recently may represent children who would have gone to
custody actually coming into the local authority system, it is
an enormously good thing. Whether it's true, I don't know. But
I think it's a very interesting correlation.
David Holmes: A direct consequence
of the Baby Peter case has been that local authorities have been
looking very carefully at the families and children they are working
with and reviewing whether those children need to come into care.
I am sure that much of the increase in numbers of children coming
into care is explained by cases of neglect where a decision is
taken that the child, because of the circumstances in which they
are living, needs to come into care now. It's also interesting
to compare the number of children that we have in our care system—per
10,000—with, for example, some of the Scandinavian countries,
which perhaps have double the number of children in care that
we have. That suggests that the threshold for coming into care
in this country is higher than in some other European countries.
It's a group of children with more complex needs. That's an important
point to make, because I think we need to be careful about what
we're comparing when we compare our system with systems in other
countries. I am quite sure that a consequence of the Baby Peter
case has been that local authorities are now looking very carefully
at the children in families they are working with, and reviewing
whether those children should be coming into care. However, if
you go back to before Baby Peter's death, we were actually seeing
quite a sharp increase in the number of children with child protection
plans, so I don't think we can link everything to that particular
case.
Q13 Tessa Munt: Can I get you
to give me a one-sentence answer on the idea of children staying
in care until they are 21?
Maxine Wrigley: I think it is
a wonderful idea.
Dr Morgan: I would differentiate
staying in care from having support when you need it until 21.
Yes to the latter.
Jon Fayle: If they want to continue
where they are living until they are 21, they should be able to.
That would be great.
David Holmes: The average young
adult leaves home at 24. Why shouldn't young people in care have
similar flexibility?
Q14 Tessa Munt: Fine. Thank you.
There have been discussions around the Minister encouraging local
authorities to be more open to adoption by families of a different
ethnic background from that of the child. Is he right?
Maxine Wrigley: Yes, I believe
so. I have a very good friend who was adopted and brought up in
a white family in a very white community. He and I share the view
that there is a shortage of placements, and that, "Love is
blind"—those are the words he uses. If there are places,
and people who want to love children and children who need homes,
maybe we need to think beyond just the colour of skin.
Q15 Tessa Munt: Do any of you
have any different view from that?
Dr Morgan: Just to elaborate slightly,
what matters to individual children, time and time again, is "getting
the right decision for me at this particular time." There
is a whole range of factors, not just skin colour, ethnicity or
any of the others that we might latch on to.
Jon Fayle: I would agree. You
want to match the family to the needs of the child. Part of that
is ethnic background, but that is not the whole story, and it
shouldn't overwhelm; it shouldn't be so much the prevailing, high-priority
matching factor that other factors are missed. If you can't find
the right match that way, then find the best match you can in
another.
David Holmes: The law is actually
very clear. An adoption agency or the court, when considering
whether or not an adoption should go ahead, has to give due consideration
to a very wide range of factors, including the child's identity,
ethnic background, religion, language and culture, but you have
to balance that against other factors, including, importantly,
delay to the child in making a placement for them. I think what
is important in this debate is that while we need to speed up
adoption, we need to get matches right, and that we don't just
ignore the child's identity, because that is important too.
Q16 Damian Hinds: Sorry to butt
in, but I want to push this a little, if I may. Although everyone
said, "Oh I agree with the person who just spoke", it
sounds as though there are actually two completely different takes,
if you don't mind my saying so. I just wanted to check if I have
actually understood that phrase. What Maxine basically said was
love is blind—I am sure there are gradations—and therefore
ethnicity, I think she was saying—
Maxine Wrigley: I'm not saying
it doesn't matter.
Damian Hinds: Of course there is a role,
but you seem to be putting it quite far down the list of priorities.
It seemed a much more nuanced picture from other colleagues on
the panel. I just wanted to check with them if that was in fact
what they were trying to say.
Maxine Wrigley: I know that we're
in a situation where we have huge delays and shortages, and not
enough placements and people coming forward. We are not living
in the ideal world. For that reason, I think that it could take
more precedence.
Q17 Damian Hinds: To be clear,
you would downgrade what people perceive to be the role of ethnic
matching in the system.
Maxine Wrigley: Yes. As David
pointed out, there is a whole set of criteria that you have to
try to match around. We're having a conversation about just one
of them. Rather than not have a placement at all, absolutely.
Damian Hinds: But for the sake of argument,
isolating all other factors, you would downgrade that one in the
pecking order. I just want to check with the other panel members.
Q18 Chair: Do you think Haringey
is wrong, because otherwise you could sound like you all agree?
Haringey say that when it places children in families, the families
broadly reflect the child's racial and cultural background. In
Haringey that seemed like a pretty clear steer—it gave huge
weight to it. Is it wrong to do so?
Dr Morgan: I baulk at saying right
or wrong, because that is a factor and we can pick on a whole
range of other factors and say, "We should try and make sure
that we place a child." "Do we get on as a potential
family?" is one of the commonest questions that children
are asked—I would put that one far higher in the pecking
order, to use your term, and I would put others far lower, but
there are a lot of factors. That range of factors will have a
different profile for a different child. Children might have a
particular background, where, for example, there is a very strong
religious sense, and they have that sense themselves. So that
may well be a very important factor, which overrides some of the
other factors that we may pick out. It is back to the individual
child, I'm afraid.
Chair: I fear we are going to disappear
into complexity; we need to move on, because it is a short session.
Q19 Nic Dakin: I am focusing on
what looked-after children want. One of the things that you all
seem to be saying is that whatever family or arrangement children
are in, they want good parenting. Are we putting enough resources
into that?
Dr Morgan: Can I put a "yes,
but"? Yes—good parenting. There are, however, uncomfortably,
a significant number of children and young people in care who
have experienced a lot of breakdowns in attempts at good parenting.
Many children have experienced both a foster family and a children's
home, and if you ask them which they prefer, some will say, "I
prefer a children's home, because I've not experienced that good
parenting and I think I need something different now." Whether
you agree or disagree with that, it is an important "but"
to add to the "yes" in response to your proposition.
David Holmes: My view is that
good parenting is essential and should be an absolute priority.
But it is also worth saying that we are talking about the parenting
of children who have, inevitably, suffered multiple disadvantage,
and often they need quite therapeutic parenting—parenting-plus.
It is about how you ensure that your foster carer work force—and
we are talking about foster carers here, because that is where
three quarters of children who are looked after live—have
the skills that they need to parent children who have experienced
huge difficulties in their young lives. It is about ensuring
that they get the continuing support that they need in order to
be able to look after those children as well as they possibly
can. That is about understanding that it means being able to cope
with—maybe—behavioural difficulties, problems with
education, mental health difficulties or other health issues.
It is thinking about the support that foster carers need to parent
children who have had extraordinary experiences already in their
lives.
Q20 Nic Dakin: Are local authorities
delegating enough day-to-day responsibilities to foster parents
to allow them to deliver that?
Maxine Wrigley: There are some
mythologies. For example, for many years people have been under
the impression that to stay overnight at a friend's house requires
huge numbers of police checks, etc. Two Ministers that I know
of have already clarified that with a circular to local authorities
over the past decade, yet often social workers and children in
care still seem to be under the impression that staying over at
a friend's house or going on holiday with a friend involves a
huge bureaucratic process. Actually, it is a myth. We in this
room all probably know that you don't need to go through all those
bureaucratic processes at all. But unfortunately there has been
confusion, and a mythology has built up around some of those things.
To answer your question, I think that front-line carers—
who might be residential or social workers, or foster carers—so
long as they are trained and supported properly to do their job,
and are remunerated properly, should be more autonomous to make
decisions.
Q21 Nic Dakin: Are they trained
and remunerated properly at the moment?
Maxine Wrigley: No.
Q22 Nic Dakin: What needs to be
done to address that, Maxine?
Maxine Wrigley: The social workers
and foster carers that I come across seem, on the whole, to be
lovely people who have busy lives and, frankly, I think that it's
a lot to ask from a system and from a set of people. Foster carers
and residential and other social workers have a difficult job,
and I don't believe that they are trained and supported that well.
Jon Fayle: On the previous bit
of your question, Nic, I want to very much support what David
said. The absolutely critical thing—
Q23 Chair: Can you tell us what
that looks like and what we can do to make it more likely? I don't
mean to disrespect your answer, but saying that it is needed is
easy. We're trying to look at what changes—what nudges—need
to be made in the system, and what levers need to be pulled by
the Minister to make this better, rather than just saying what
we'd like and noticing how it's not there at the moment.
Jon Fayle: It's very skilled therapeutic
support for foster parents who are looking after the most damaged
children, because that affectionate, caring relationship with
boundaries offered by the foster parent is the most critical factor
in undoing the difficulties of looked-after children. In terms
of delegated responsibility, the practice that I've seen is very
variable, but I greatly believe that foster parents should have
more delegated responsibility. They often feel very powerless
in the situation. It varies a lot from local authority to local
authority, but I think that any steps that can be taken to safely
delegate much more responsibility to foster parents should be
taken.
Q24 Chair: So, would an undertaking
from the new Minister today to send a letter to every foster carer,
to be handed to everyone who enters into training to be a foster
carer, be useful? How do we break this, if Maxine's right and
they still carry on putting these restrictions on it?
Maxine Wrigley: It's better training
of social work students, making sure that the curricula are letting
them know the correct procedures. Staying overnight at a friend's
house has never been a big issue, but for some reason there is
still a perception for some people that it is, so we need more
clarification.
Dr Morgan: Yes to greater delegation.
The policy position clearly should be that a foster carer, or
for that matter a children's home member of staff responsible
for a child, should be able to make the same range of decisions
for that child—that's a big ask, and there are financial
consequences—as a reasonable parent would, unless there
is a care plan-specific reason not to. That is not an unknown
precedent. Looking at the issue of some of the delegations—the
overnight stays—and responding directly to this issue about
a letter, there have actually been quite a lot of letters. There
have been circulars and letters, and the likes of Maxine and me
pontificating ad infinitum, and information has been sent to children
themselves on challenging this one about overnight stays. I ask
myself, "Why does the issue occur?" and the only answer
I can come up with is that there is a natural risk worry—I'm
not even going to use the term "risk aversion" because
that indicates that it's somehow unreasonable—that if you
give a permission for a child in care that you might give to your
own child and it then goes wrong, you're going to be for the high
jump in some way. Just more letters won't do it, without some
degree of what I'd almost call insurance confidence to go with
it, which is also demonstrated in practice. Did you make a reasonable
decision on the information that you had at the time, which you
would have also made for your own child? It went wrong; it does
for some people's own children as well. On the other issue about
foster carer training, it is a heck of an ask to be a foster carer.
When we've asked foster carers and foster children together what
they think they need in terms of training, one top answer that
comes through is not so much training in the sense of courses
or things that everyone gets, but information, briefing and skills
to deal with the particular concerns and problems that that individual
child you're about to look after has, be they behavioural or emotional
problems, as a result of the background they've had, or medical
or more specific care needs.
Q25 Nic Dakin: Can we pick up the role
of the independent reviewing officer? John might want to start
on this. Is it drawn currently in a way that is effective in ensuring
that children's voices are heard, or would it be better to concentrate
resources on giving each child an advocate, who is distinct from
the local authority and is clearly charged to fight that child's
corner?
Jon Fayle: I believe that having
an independent and robust reviewing process for every child in
care is essential because—this may sound quite a tough thing
to say, and I don't say it in a critical way of social workers
or any individual—we know that the local authority cannot
always be trusted to act in the child's best interest. Its policies
and procedures, which the social worker is bound to follow, may
not be in the child's best interests. The child may be looked
after in a regime like pin-down, which was believed in the child's
best interest. I believe that having an independent scrutineer
of the local authority's practice and plan is essential. There
is a very strong argument for saying that it should be independent
and outside the local authority; there are arguments both ways,
but I think there is a strong argument there. In terms of advocacy
services, I believe that every child in care should have the right
to an independent advocate, but that is different from a reviewing
officer. I am glad that the new guidance, in particular the IRO's
handbook, says that every child shall have the right to an advocate.
How that pans out on the ground, I will be very interested to
see, because it is not the position at the moment. But the advocacy
role is a different role, and the advocate may sometimes be arguing
for things that they don't agree with, such as, "I think
I should be allowed to smoke in this children's home." This
is where the IRO cannot do it. The IRO may think that the local
authority's plan is right, and the child needs to be away from
its parents, but the child might be saying, "No, I want to
be at home with my parents. Please let me go home." The child
needs to be able to make that view as powerfully and strongly
as possible with the help of an advocate, but it would not be
the IRO's role to make the advocacy point on behalf of the child.
Q26 Nic Dakin: So what added value
does the IRO bring?
Jon Fayle: Independent scrutiny
to safeguard the child from plans, processes and practices that
the local authority may be conducting that are not in the child's
interest.
Maxine Wrigley: Young people feel
really strongly that it shouldn't be called an IRO if they are
not independent. If they are working for the local authority,
I am not sure that there is a proper scrutiny role there. We carried
out quite an in-depth piece of research with young people about
IROs two years ago, and we did a refresher piece of work recently.
There doesn't seem to have been much change. I am aware that there
are now steps to alter things, but I think the whole idea of having
an independent reviewing officer is that they should be independent,
and that was definitely what young people wanted. The idea of
being able to have an advocate if and when you need one, as an
independent person to help you, particularly to make a complaint
or to get to what is before the level of an actual complaint,
also seems very important to young people.
Dr Morgan: The roles of advocate
and IRO, children see them very separately. An advocate, as others
have said, speaks what I want to say if I am not articulate enough
to do it. The value of an IRO is that they are somebody who can
formally and legally challenge the local authority, who can check
out for me or a child in care the rules I might not know about
to make sure that the authority is doing the right thing. That
is very different to advocacy. I have worked with children who
have said that they see the independence as an issue, and would
see independence from the local authority as beneficial on the
whole. The other key question that some children have asked, when
we are looking at all the different roles and functions around
a child in care, is, "Which ones overlap or need to be carried
out in part by social workers?" They don't see IROs and advocates
as the same, but they sometimes want to know what the definition
of a social worker is.
Q27 Damian Hinds: The 2008 Act
requires local authorities to provide both in-area availability
and a choice of placements. How realistic do you think that is?
How close are we to where we need to be, and what more can be
done to improve placements? Let's start with David.
David Holmes: It's certainly
very challenging providing a sufficient range of appropriate placements
within a local area. If you are in a London borough, you may be
talking about a very small geographical area in which to provide
those placements. We also know that staying relatively close to
home and being able to maintain friendships and stay at school
are the things that really make a difference to many children
in the care system, in terms of being able to get on with their
lives. So, the principle behind the sufficiency duty is a very
good one. However, that requires very concentrated work, on the
part of the local authority, to source sufficient high-quality,
safe local placements. That is a huge challenge, but it is a challenge
that is shared, and one where there is scope for better commissioning
practice and more sharing about what works. But it is also important
to continue that supply of placements—to make sure that
we continue to recruit foster carers, to make sure that we retain
the ones that we have got, to make sure that they are properly
supported and trained, to make sure that we have residential care
available for those children who need it and to make sure that
we continue to have a flow of adoptive parents coming through.
This is about having all the building blocks to make the system
work.
Q28 Damian Hinds: What proportion
of children do you think are offered a choice?
David Holmes: In practice, I imagine
that few children are actually offered a choice. However, if you
were to ask looked-after children which they would rate more between
a choice of placements and one very good placement that is right
for them, I am sure they would go for the good placement. I don't
think choice is everything. This is about making sure that you
have a supply of placements that reflects the assessed needs of
your local care population.
Dr Morgan: I endorse that. Very
few say that they have a choice of placement. To slightly rephrase
your question, children ask the same question, but they put it
as: "Can I have a choice of at least two placements?"
It is not much of a choice if there are not at least two. Very
often what is said is, "We've found you a placement."
That is a kind of standard phrase. "Can I also have a back-up,"
might be another question, "if the first one doesn't go too
well and if I don't settle too well?" Can I just give you
a couple of statistics? Sorry to throw these around, but I am
excited because we have just finished the 2010 monitoring of the
care system by children and young people, which I will send to
the Committee when it has been finalised[1].
Although very few say that they have a choice, 83% said this year
that they think they are in the right placement for them. That
still leaves quite a number—17%— who are not. The
issue of placement moves is important. The median number of placements
that each child in the survey had been in this year was three,
over their care to date. Not over the total in a care history,
but over their care to date, which covers very variable periods
of time in care, that was the median number of moves. Seven out
of 10 said that they thought that the last move that they had
made was in their best interests. So, there is an issue around
the combination of choice and stability. I may be anticipating
a future question, but, incidentally, just over half thought that
the last time they had had to change school because they had changed
placement was in their best interests, too. Sometimes the choice
is not only of an initial placement, but also comes up when there
are placement changes. I don't have an answer, other than to say
that there is a supply problem, to how commissioning can generate
that range of placements. All I can say is that children are very
much saying that the best way of trying to get it right first
time, rather than having to change it a number of times, is to
have information for both sides—for the child and for the
placement itself—and to have a gradual introduction, as
well as not forging ahead with a placement that is not actually
going to work because the signs of arguments and of not getting
on are already there.
Chair: The quality
of answers is fantastic, and I am enjoying all of them. Can we
make them as short as possible for what remains of this session?
Q29 Damian Hinds: Three seems
very high for a median number of moves in a year. There were 1,300
children in England last year who had five or more placements,
which seems a shocking statistic. Maxine, what is your take on
how to reduce that?
Maxine Wrigley: I think it is
a supply problem. As Roger said, if there are not enough people
out there wanting to offer the placements and being supported
and trained properly so that they are able to offer placements,
how can children have choice in placements and how can they have
good placements? There is a supply issue in the stock of placements.
Moving placements is traumatic if you have to move school as well.
You can see why there are issues in educational attainment, if
that happens several times. Children and young people have said
to us time and time again—this echoes Roger—that they
want information pre-placement, during the placement and post-placement.
Other young people can then know that the family have a dog and
go to Scarborough for the holidays. Those kind of things are useful
to know and can set the ball rolling before they go and see a
placement. A lot of people do not know until they get there, and
in a way that is heartbreaking for everyone if it breaks down.
There needs to be a better quality of information before the placement.
Q30 Damian Hinds: I know we are
short of time, but I want to touch on care with relatives and
friends. There is a formal part of that, because one in 10 settings
is formally with friends and family, but a large swathe are informal.
Between the two, there is quite a difference in the level and
type of local authority support. What are your thoughts on whether
there is room for a halfway house, with the best of informal and
the formal, but with more support? What progress has been made
on improving local authority support for those informal settings?
If we start with Jon, as we skipped him last time.
Jon Fayle: Again, there are 150
mini-systems, so it is very difficult to generalise. My general
experience is that relatives and friends are not well cared for
by the system. They are not properly supported and not given finance.
Sometimes they are asked to care for a child by a social worker
and then abandoned. Is there a halfway house between being informally
in care and a completely informal arrangement? I think that notion
would be worth exploring, to try to find some regulatory framework
to create that halfway house and give those relatives the support
and protection that they need to do the job properly.
Q31 Damian Hinds: Are there any
differing thoughts on that from the others on the panel?
Dr Morgan: Children have a strong
message. Always look to see if there are family or friends, but
always check them out, as you would anyone else. Do not assume
that because they are family or friends it is okay. As a caution,
watch it and be very clear whether it is a private arrangement
or a publicly made arrangement. That has a heck of an implication
when you start getting to entitlements for leaving care later
on.
Q32 Chair: I just wanted to pick
on one thing. The Children's Workforce Development Council will
have its core functions brought into the Department. Can we have
very quick answers on whether that will make it even harder to
recruit decent people, or will it lead to an improvement?
Dr Morgan: As a declaration of
interest, I am a member of the CWDC, although I do not think that
is why I say this: what is important is not losing the functions,
rather than the structure itself. There is always the risk, as
I was saying earlier in relation to my own functions, of them
dissolving.
Q33 Ian Mearns: The case of Baby
Peter seems to have had a profound effect on the whole system
in terms of how people view things. Do you think it might have
affected the lives of looked-after children and the support that
local authorities can give them? Are there long-term implications
from that? Secondly, how do you view the prospects for local authorities
in being able to commission long-term preventive work to address
individual family circumstances? Do you see them deteriorating
where children end up being looked after as a preventive measure
because of a shortage? There is an end to ring-fencing for a whole
range of budgets and that could be a potential implication.
David Holmes: I think that we
know from generations of work with families who are experiencing
difficulty, that if you intervene early in a family and do as
much as you can to support the family, whether that means providing
family support or removing the child, the long-term outcomes for
the child will be better. It is false economy to cut early intervention.
I know that across the country local authorities are looking
very carefully at their budgets, but cutting early intervention
is a mistake. On top of that, you must question the implications
of the Baby Peter case. The best thing that can happen from very
tragic cases like that is that we become even more robustly child-focused
and try to make the very best decisions that we can at the right
time for children who need state care.
Dr Morgan: There is, I agree,
a false economy in cutting back on support, not only early support
but returning from care support as well. In a time of austerity,
there are obviously major concerns about the sustainability of
saying that. A lot of what children and young people identify
is needed in the system is not necessarily additional money. It
is also getting a number of things done in a particular way.
We have used things like information. We have used things like
notice and choice, very much listening to the child's views.
That process does not necessarily require additional money.
Q34 Craig Whittaker: Surveys in
September show that only 25% of those in care at the age of 18
are in employment or training. That also shows a huge amount
of NEETs. That compares incredibly badly, even with a short time
ago in 2006, when it was 33%. Why do you think it has fallen
so sharply?
Dr Morgan: It is difficult to
look at it over time for two specific reasons. Children in care
under-achieving was mentioned earlier. It is becoming an increasingly
competitive market for getting jobs these days. The second issue
is about asking children and young people about their perception
of how they are seen outside. Time and again I hear that people
from care—either in care or care leaders—are feeling
that there is a prejudice against those from care in two areas,
one of which is accommodation and the other is employment.
Q35Chair: Can I challenge you on that?
Surely when employers interview someone, one of the questions
that they won't ask is, "Have you been in care?" I
don't understand what you are saying.
Dr Morgan: It is a known factor
for many that they are from care, whether we are talking about
interviews, promotion prospects or college places. Knowing that
you are from a care background is a known factor. There is a
dilemma. I am sure that Maxine may well want to come in on this
from personal experience. "Do I or do I not say that I am
from care? Do I try to keep it a secret?" A lot of children
try to keep it a secret that they have been in care or that they
are from care. That is not the best platform to start selling
yourself for employment or, indeed, accommodation.
Maxine Wrigley: We carry out polls
of general attitudes to care as work for the Prince's Trust and
the Who Cares? Trust. Attitudes to care have got better over
the past 10 or so years. The public generally understand more.
The public say that they would give jobs and treat these people
the same. However, it is not perfect as yet and we still hear
about people who don't want to tell people that they are from
care. My experience when I was living in a children's home was
that I was really embarrassed to go into the children's home.
I used to walk round and round the block until the neighbours
weren't looking, because I thought that they would think that
I was some kind of youth offender or that I had been naughty.
I thought that the general public thought—and this is still
fairly true, and there is a mix-up—children came into care
because they have done something wrong.
Q36 Craig Whittaker: So are the
two of you seriously saying that one of the biggest causes of
children at 19 not being in education or having a job is perception?
Maxine Wrigley: No, I'm not saying
that that's the largest cause. I'm saying—it's a salient
point anyway—that basically there is an element of shame
and discrimination in children's lives.
Q37 Craig Whittaker: Let me revisit
the question. Could you explain why you feel that there had been
a decline over the past nine years for those children who aren't
in education or in jobs at 19?
Dr Morgan: I gave you two factors;
the other was underachievement. I would like to think that employers
would very positively want to employ young people from care because
they are underachieving and therefore have greater prospects of
development, learning and performance after that. Unfortunately,
that is a rather more altruistic view than is generally taken.
If you're underachieving, that shows up in your qualifications,
certificates and achievements, and that is a major drawback in
securing employment. From what children and young people have
told me, I can't proffer a trend statement, but I think that that
has been a fairly consistent picture over the past three years.
David Holmes:
I think that it comes back again to the parenting issue. A key
transition point for any young adult is support to get into employment,
education, training or whatever it is that they need at 18-plus.
These children are in state care, and it should be a priority
for the state to ensure that every support is given to get them
into employment. There have been some good pilots, the From Care
2 Work programme and apprenticeship schemes, and we need to look
at those really carefully, find out what's working and what isn't
working in them, and prioritise getting these children jobs.
Q38 Craig Whittaker: Let's
talk about underachievement. What we do see in the education system
is that the attainment levels of children in care go down, and
that there is a huge crevice between those in care—or those
who have been in the care system—and those who aren't. What
can we do to put that right?
Maxine Wrigley: The children and
young people we speak to consider that getting an education is
the single most important matter, above and beyond better spending,
which I thought was quite shocking. They basically want to get
a better education, with out-of-hours support, and extra support
so that they can stay behind and do extra activities and generally
just have a little more support with homework and education. If
your life's in a mess and you're feeling unstable you're very
likely to not focus on your school work. Education is an area
in which children and young people want to do well.
Q39 Craig Whittaker: Do you feel that
carers have the skills to give that support? Foster carers, for
example.
Maxine Wrigley: Often they don't.
There are foster carers who perhaps didn't have the best education
themselves, so we can't say, "You can't be a foster carer
unless you've got a degree," but at the same time people
perhaps need to support the carers more to help them to do homework
with the children more.
Dr Morgan:
Catching me up when I've missed something, perhaps because I've
had personal problems or been out of school for a while—a
very constant issue—isn't necessarily something that purely
a designated teacher can do, although designated teachers are
getting a positive report from children and young people at the
moment. But yes, it is carers having the skills to be able to
pick up, for example, that you have dropped badly back in reading,
which is something that can really set you to fail consistently
thereafter. You change schools—that might be positive for
some reasons and negative for others—and you end up on a
different course or with a different teacher and a different approach,
starting at a different place in the book, or in a different book.
"Catch me up" is a term that I'm afraid I've invented,
but which summarises the kind of issues that a lot of children
are raising.
David Holmes: Helping foster carers
to support the learning of looked-after children is crucial. My
organisation has just done a project called "Fostering Education",
which focused on five to 11-year-olds in foster care and on helping
them with literacy. It was a quick intervention, which worked,
and is the sort of thing that foster carers need to have available
to them.
On that point about catch-up, these children
have experienced a lot. They might not be ready to do their exams
at 16 or 18. We need to make sure that the support is there so
that they can catch up and take those exams when they're ready.
Q40 Craig Whittaker: I want to
take up what Roger said earlier about those involved in the criminal
justice system. Do you think there is a lot more scope to manage
looked-after children by managing their behaviour throughout the
process rather than to help reduce the numbers?
Dr Morgan: I think there is. I
wish I could give you the answers to exactly who is doing what.
We're actually planning a consultation with children and young
people on specifically that issue of what might build up—resilience
and recovery—in relation to criminal activity.
Q41 Chair: Perhaps Jon can tell
us.
Jon Fayle: I can't tell you yet,
but I can tell you that—with another hat—we are commissioning
major research from the University of East Anglia precisely around
the issue of the over-representation of looked-after children
in the criminal justice system. What it's looking like is that
occasionally children are sucked—accelerated—into
the criminal justice system by the looked-after children system.
Behaviour in children's homes that otherwise would not be regarded
as criminal is reported to the police and the whole thing starts.
There is some of that, but we think that that may be just anecdotal
rather than systemic. But a lot more can be done. There are better
ways of dealing with challenging behaviour in children's homes—and
foster homes—through restorative justice, most obviously,
but also the protocols between the police, children's homes, social
services departments and youth offending teams about how to handle
the issue. We can try to decelerate and divert children whose
behaviour might be seen as criminal and get it out of the criminal
arena. We think we can make a lot of sensible proposals around
those areas to try to ensure that care is a buffer against criminalisation
rather than what it occasionally is—an accelerant.
Chair: Thank you. That's a very positive
note on which to end. Thank you all very much for a really fascinating
session. Please do stay in touch with the Committee. If you have
any thoughts or if you want to follow up with any recommendations
on which you think we should press Ministers, we'd love to hear
from you. We will now take evidence from the Minister himself.
1 Not Printed Back
|
