House of Commons - Looked-after Children: Further Government Response to the Third Report from the Children, Schools and Families Committee, Session 2008-09

Looked-after Children: Further Government Response to the Third Report from the Children, Schools and Families Committee, Session 2008-09 - Education Committee Contents

Appendix

Government Response to Select Committee Report on Looked-after Children

The Select Committee's recommendations are in bold text.

The Government's response is in plain text.

Some of the recommendations and responses have been grouped.

Introduction

1. Improving the lives of children in care and strengthening the adoption system are priorities for the Coalition Government. Outcomes are simply not good enough. Last year only 26% achieved 5 GCSEs at A*-C grades, compared to 75% of their peers. Too many care leavers end up homeless or long term unemployed. We are committed to helping improve all aspects of the lives of children in care—placement stability, education, health, the daily experience of being in care, the successful transition to adulthood—and to seeing more children move into adoption without unnecessary delay, where that is the most appropriate outcome for them.

2. Whilst acknowledging that there have been improvements in the care system in recent years, the Government strongly supports the Select Committee's view that "outcomes and experiences of young people in care who have been 'looked after' remain poor."

3. A key reason why past initiatives have had relatively limited impact is that they tended to be centrally led and controlled and children in care remained a relatively low priority. This Government is committed to decentralising power and giving greater autonomy to local government, their partners and local communities. Change for the care system must be locally owned, driven by the sector, and should free up front line professionals and carers to make decisions and devote more quality time to these children. Crucially, children's voices need to be at the heart of all decision making.

What the Coalition Government has done

Set up the Munro report to reduce bureaucracy and red tape to free up social workers to allow greater contact time with children and families.
Made clear that central and local government must listen hard and respond to the views of individual foster carers, adoptive parents and children themselves—for example through:
- setting up a new "Tell Tim" website, which gives children in care (and their carers) a way of communicating directly with Tim Loughton, the Minister with responsibility for children in care.
- holding regular quarterly Ministerial meetings with groups of children in care and separately with care leavers.
- supporting local authority Children in Care Councils to spread best practice and drive local change in the care system.
- a Charter for Foster Carers which sets out expectations on local authorities, fostering agencies and foster carers.
- Holding a roundtable with adoptive parents to inform national policy development.
Launched a programme of work with local government and other key stakeholders to remove barriers to adoption and improve the speed of decision making, including publishing revised statutory guidance; issuing a Ministerial letter to all Directors of Children's Services (DCS) and Lead Members; holding discussions with the Judiciary and DCSs on barriers to timely adoption; giving more flexibility to local authority adoption panels to reduce delays.
Set in train a new programme of work to drive improvements in children's homes, led by the sector and the Department and based on spreading effective evidence based practice such as social pedagogy.
Funded training programmes such as Fostering Changes and KEEP, to improve the quality of care provided by foster carers, and supported the sector to promote the benefits of fostering and encourage more people to come forward by funding Foster Care Fortnight.
Issued a Ministerial letter to DCSs emphasising that foster carers should have the maximum flexibility in taking decisions about children in their care, so that they can care for children as they would their own.
Announced substantial funding to voluntary and community organisations of £1.5m in 2011-12 and £1.4m in 2012-13, to help drive local change in the care system and improve the outcomes of children in care.
Started work on a new programme, funded by the Department, to spread the use of evidence based practice for children in care or on the edge of care (such as Multi-dimensional Treatment Foster Care and Multi Systemic Therapy).
Announced that the Pupil Premium will cover all looked-after children in care for more than six months to enable extra support to be given, such as 1:1 tuition.
Strengthened the Family Justice Review to examine the effectiveness of the family justice system and make recommendations to improve speed of decisions and outcomes, including on care orders.
Issued revised care planning and care leavers' guidance to be implemented from April 2011, which is shorter, more coherent and clearer.
Streamlined and modernised the regulatory frameworks for fostering, adoption and children's homes to ensure they are clear and proportionate, and support the front line in making professional judgements.
Started to discuss a new children's services inspection framework, in line with the drive for greater local accountability and freedoms.

4. This report summarises the Government's response to the main recommendations in the Select Committee's report and the action it has set in hand since taking office. It follows the chapter headings from the Select Committee report, which, the Government believes, remains an excellent blueprint for the changes that need to take place in the care system.[4]

Tim Loughton MP

Building a care system founded on good relationships

Recommendations 31-34: Numbers in care

We are convinced that for some children, in some circumstances, care should be seen as the best available option rather than a last resort.

While some differences in care populations are inevitable, we are concerned by the huge variations in the rates of children in care across the country. Not only is this situation unfair on children and families, it seems to betray a lack of common understanding about the place of care in services for vulnerable children. The Government's commitment to investigate the causes of such variation is welcome, but a greater priority must be placed on reaching a national consensus on the rationale behind decision-making about entry to and exit from care.

We are pleased that the Government has set aside any notion of a 'target' number of children in care, but urge that there should instead be an unrelenting focus, through research, guidance and performance monitoring, on ensuring the quality and promptness of decision-making about individual children.

We recommend that the Government keep under close review the potential relationship between the transfer of care proceedings costs to local authorities and the number of care proceedings that are issued, with a view to reverting to the previous system if it can be shown that children in care are being left at risk as a result of the changes.

5. The Government believes that children should be supported to live with their parents wherever possible, and families given extra support to help keep them together wherever this is necessary. However, the Government agrees with the Select Committee that for some children the best available option is for them to become looked after by their local authority. These decisions should be made quickly and without undue delay. As the Select Committee says "better early intervention is vital in reducing the likelihood of child misery and ensuring children's wellbeing." What is of crucial importance is the skill and judgement of the professionals working day to day with children and families, and the quality of their decision making.

RECOMMENDATIONS 1-11: RELATIONSHIPS

We believe that the greatest gains in reforming our care system are to be made in identifying and removing whatever barriers are obstructing the development of good personal relationships, and putting in place all possible means of supporting such relationships where they occur.

It is imperative that constructive relationships between children's services and the family are established at the outset, maintained while the child is in care, and continued when they return home.

In the wake of Lord Laming's review of safeguarding, we hope that the important contribution made by universal and preventative services to keeping children safe will be reaffirmed. Unfortunately, even the best child protection systems will not be capable of eradicating child murder, but we are convinced that better early intervention is vital in reducing the likelihood of child misery and ensuring children's wellbeing.

Focusing the efforts of social workers on child protection cases is, we believe, a practical response to resource constraints and the prevailing public view of the profession, rather than the ideal situation. This focus fails to realise the potential of social work to effect positive change in families, and means that the stakes of interactions are too high. We urge the Social Work Taskforce to consider ways in which social workers can be freed up to work with families before problems become acute. Specifically, we look forward to their conclusions about the extent to which administrative tasks prevent social workers spending time with families.

A new impetus is needed for children's social work recruitment, particularly in the light of diminishing public confidence in the profession. We are pleased to note that the Government has, in the Children's Workforce Development Strategy published in December 2008, decided to involve the Training and Development Agency in this task, and we will maintain a keen interest in how effectively it performs.

The piloting of Newly Qualified Social Worker Status is welcome, and the success of this initiative should at least partly be judged by its effect on vacancy rates.

We recommend that the Government consider, through the Social Work Taskforce or otherwise, the practicalities and possible benefits of guidance specifying optimum caseloads for children's social workers.

While we welcome the opportunity for innovation, it is not clear to us that the Remodelling Social Work pilots have been designed to address directly the wishes of children in care about their relationship with their social worker. We seek reassurance that evaluation of the pilot programmes will provide robust evidence of ways to achieve these specific aims.

We recommend that other examples of innovative local authority practice which aim to improve children's relationships with social workers be considered and evaluated alongside the Children's Workforce Development Council's Remodelling Social Work programme.

We ask the Government to examine carefully whether independent practices might lead to greater compartmentalisation of social work tasks, rather than the continuity we believe is desirable. We urge the Government to ensure that the views of children and young people are given particular prominence in the evaluation of the pilots.

Independent Social Work Practices seem to offer the potential to address many of the long-standing problems in the relationships between looked-after children and their social workers, and we welcome the piloting process. However, if independent practices are found to create insurmountable problems, or are not deemed workable by all local authorities, other ways will still have to be found to change the structures of social work to promote better relationships. The Government must not delay in investigating other solutions that can be adopted by all local authorities.

6. The Government also strongly supports the Select Committee's conclusion that "stable, reliable bonds with social workers" are key to children's development and long term outcomes. As the report points out, high staff turnover, heavy workloads and administrative burdens "mitigate against relationships flourishing" and lead to "social workers feeling disempowered". The Government is committed to helping change this. Children in care need stability in their lives, and support from skilled and understanding social workers, foster families, and residential carers.

7. The Munro review is addressing the issue of bureaucracy, with a view to making it easier for social workers to do the job they came into the profession for, working directly with children and families, rather than being stuck at their computers filling in forms to meet bureaucratic processes. Professor Munro made clear in her first report in October 2010 that processes and procedures are getting in the way of social workers spending time with vulnerable children and families. We intend to change this so that social workers have more freedom to make decisions, more support and understanding, and less prescription and censure.

8. In her interim report, published 1 February, Professor Munro signalled a new approach to child protection which focuses on helping children, rather than on the regulations, inspections and procedures that have thrown the system out of balance. These proposals will also have an impact on children in care. Areas she has identified for potential reform include:

developing a management and inspection framework that ensures children are getting the help needed rather than just compliance with systems and processes;
revising and reducing the statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children, which is now 55 times longer than it was in 1974, so that statutory guidance is separated out from professional advice;
developing social work expertise by keeping experienced, more senior social workers on the front line so they can develop their skills and better supervise more junior social workers.

9. The Government has also committed to taking forward, and building on, the fifteen recommendations of the Social Work Task Force, working in partnership with the Social Work Reform Board. This Board is working to strengthen the education, training and support which social workers receive and simplifying the current array of standards and guidance. In time, the Board's reform programme will result in a social work profession that is better trained and supported and attracts high quality applicants who are retained for longer. Improving the skills of, and support to, social workers will mean bureaucracy and regulatory burdens on the system can be reduced, and front line practitioners freed up to use their professional judgment.

10. Proposals in the Munro review build on some of the standards that have been developed by the sector through the Reform Board, particularly the capabilities framework for social workers and changes to the career structure to enable professional development to higher levels while still working at the frontline, rather than in managerial positions.

11. The Government is also expanding the piloting of social work practices for looked-after children as part of the Government's wider agenda of public sector reform. The pilots are testing whether independent, social worker led organisations can provide a better experience and better outcomes for looked-after children, effective and innovative ways of working and increased job satisfaction for social workers. We agree with the Select Committee that "Independent Social Work Practices seem to offer the potential to address many of the long standing problems in the relationships between looked after children and their social workers." The Government wants to put the child or young person at the heart of the service delivered so that services are more responsive to individual needs.

12. However, building a care and adoption system on good relationships means much more than this. It also means building better collaborative relationships between local authorities, the voluntary sector (including voluntary adoption agencies), the courts (not least to help accelerate the processing of individual cases), fostering agencies and individual foster carers, teachers, parents and adopters and children and young people themselves. These relationships are discussed later in this report.

Recommendation 19: Placement supply

We recommend that the Government assess at a national level the supply of placements that will be needed to make the Care Matters reforms a reality. The problem of how to ensure sufficient placements cannot be solved merely by imposing a new duty on local authorities; the Government must do more to enable them to meet it without making any compromises on quality.

Better care planning

13. The importance of relationships between carers and children was rightly highlighted by the Select Committee,

"continuity in relationships with foster carers depends on preventing placement breakdowns and building long term placements into care plans; the prospects of a placement breakdown should be treated with as much concern as the prospects of a child being removed from their birth family in the first place."

14. The Government agrees. Children need long term support from a caring and loving adult if they are to thrive. But there are simply too many children in care moving constantly from one placement to another. Research shows that the more that placements break down the less likely it is that a subsequent placement will result in long term stability. Over 10% of children are still being moved over three times a year and we must and can do better. Proper assessment of the child's needs, and investing resource and support so placements have the best possible chance of working, not only helps improve outcomes, but also makes economic sense by avoiding higher costs down the line.

15. The Government has issued revised care planning, placements and case review guidance, which will come into force in April 2011. This brings together what we know works about improving the quality and timeliness of decisions relating to children in care and the timeframe for children finding permanence. The Government wants to see all local authorities give this area more priority and will encourage poorly performing local authorities to strive to come up to the standards of the best and to learn what works well from each other. The Department is currently supporting a programme to disseminate key messages to front line staff about the revised legislation framework, including "train the trainer" events in all regions.

16. From 1 April 2011, local authorities will also have a statutory requirement to take steps to ensure, so far as reasonably practicable, sufficient accommodation within their area to meet local needs. This will help reduce out of authority placements and ensure children receive the full range of universal, targeted and specialist services to meet their individual needs. Securing sufficient local accommodation is therefore a vital factor in improving placement stability.

RECOMMENDATION 28-29: COMMISSIONING

We seek reassurances that cost constraints are not compromising children's access to the most appropriate placement for them, and that children's views are given particular consideration when 'value for money' decisions are made about providers.

We are concerned that spot purchasing of placements on a large scale would indicate a failure of needs analysis and planned commissioning. We recommend that the DCSF's Commissioning Support programme explicitly addresses good practice in planning for the future needs of the in care population.

Commissioning of services

17. The commissioning of services is driven by the process that the local authority should follow under the Children and Young Persons Act 2008, whenever they are considering making a placement for a looked-after child. This is within their overarching duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of the child. The first priority must be to re-unite the child with their parents if this is in the child's best interests, and in general to work towards making sure that the child can be safely supported by their family.

18. Where it is not possible to unite the child with his/her immediate family, then the Act sets out the other factors that the local authority must take into consideration when placing a child and which should in turn drive the planning and commissioning processes. These include placement with kin, proximity to home, and school stability. The relative importance of these factors will vary depending on the circumstances of the individual child.

19. Local authorities are responsible for delivering best value in the commissioning of services. The Government recognises that, to help improve outcomes for children in care and the stability of their placements, local authorities need to improve the way in which they plan and commission services for children in care, taking account of a wide range of factors including the views of children and young people themselves. That is why the Government included (unringfenced) extra funding in the local authority Formula Grant for the two years from April 2011 to support local authorities to review and improve their commissioning processes.

Intensive work

20. The Government has made clear that, across children's services, early intervention must be a top priority. Even where a child already has very serious emotional and other needs, intensive work, or "early intervention", can help to avoid the need to take a child into care. A key priority is therefore to encourage more local authorities to commission programmes that provide intensive interventions for these vulnerable children. These include Multi Systemic Therapy (for children on the edge of care), Multi-dimensional Treatment Foster Care (for children in care) and KEEP (parenting skills for foster carers). These programmes, if implemented with model fidelity, clinical supervision and support, have been shown to improve outcomes, provide better value for money and result in fewer placement breakdowns.

21. The Government has therefore committed through the Department for Education business plan to roll out evidence based intensive fostering interventions for children in care in 20 new local partnerships. The Department will work with sector partners and early implementers to draw on the learning from the initial pilot programmes to test out new commissioning and delivery models and to develop the market for these programmes. The aim is to move towards a fully sector owned programme during the course of the Spending Review period.

RECOMMENDATIONS 16-17: FAMILY AND FRIENDS

We are pleased to note the prominence being given in Care Matters and in the Public Law Outline to family and friends care as an option of first resort. An increase in these placements will be neither possible nor desirable, however, without more consistent and equitable services and support for family and friends carers. The specifications of support for foster carers recommended elsewhere in this Report should include these carers, taking into account the distinctive task and context of family and friends care.

We recommend that the Government's promised new framework for family and friends care take full account of the very many children who are supported in this way outside the legal boundaries of the care system, while having needs comparable to those within it. We ask the Government to give careful consideration to ways in which those carers and children might be supported more thoroughly and consistently, including through the benefits system, without bringing children formally into care solely as a trigger for support.

Family and friends / kinship care

22. The Select Committee rightly highlights the importance of improving the placement of children with family and friends. The law is clear: children should live with their parents wherever possible and, when necessary, families should be given extra support to help keep them together.

23. The Government issued in March 2011 revised statutory guidance on family and friends care. It aims to help ensure that children and young people who are unable to live with their birth parents and are living with relatives or friends receive the support that they and their carers need to safeguard and promote their welfare. The guidance explains the current legal framework as it relates to family and friends care. It gives guidance to local authorities in relation to the delivery of effective services to children and young people living with relatives in informal arrangements, or with relatives or friends who are approved as local authority foster carers, or who hold a residence order or special guardianship order in relation to the child.

24. Many carers complain that they struggle to obtain information about criteria for entitlement to local authority services, including financial support and welfare benefits. The essence of the guidance is therefore that local authorities should have to have a policy about support for family and friends care. The guidance does not prescribe what the content of the policy must be or how much should be paid in the way of financial support. It does however require the local authority to determine its own approach and make that information available to actual or potential family and friends carers, so that they can make appropriate decisions about the arrangements which will best suit their needs and those of the child.

RECOMMENDATIONS 12-16, 18: FOSTER CARE GENERAL

Foster care approval processes should be reviewed to ensure that they are capable of identifying and assessing the most important personal qualities. Important as training is, fostering agencies must require that those who look after children possess the personal qualities needed to deliver genuinely warm and secure family life.

We ask the Government to enforce rigorously the requirement for foster placement agreements.

Care Matters adopts too narrow a view of 'support' for foster carers, concentrating mainly on developing their own training and skills. Important as this is, foster carers should also be able to expect a detailed specification of the practical and financial support that will be provided to them and their families to maintain placements and help children develop, including the education and health services that will be available.

We recommend that the Government strengthen its guidance about planning for long-term foster care, and include in this guidance the financial and other support that should be available to help maintain long-term placements.

Local authorities need more persuasion and reassurance to delegate responsibility for everyday decisions to carers who know a child well, so that their life in care can be 'normalised' as much as possible. Guidance should encourage a presumption in favour of delegation, and care plan reviews should be used as an opportunity to consider whether more responsibility should be delegated to the carer of the child concerned. Specifically, the Government should reconsider the process for allocating Personal Education Allowances to encourage greater involvement of foster carers.

Foster care

25. Around three quarters of all children in care are placed with foster carers, who typically do an excellent job for the children they care for and are in many ways an unsung army. Foster carers are often in an unrivalled position to build enduring stable relationships with their foster child and can make a lasting difference to their lives. We need to promote foster care, whether it is offering a home to children who need it in an emergency, caring for a child who will be returning home to their family after a short period away, or providing a more permanent placement for a child.

26. We need more people to come forward to foster. The Government is determined to get rid of what the Select Committee calls the "highly bureaucratic and risk-averse culture", which can put off potential carers and impede some foster carers from providing the children they care for with the love and support they need—in some cases it can make them want to leave fostering altogether. In particular, the Government wants to ensure more foster carers have the delegated authority to make those day to day decisions that parents take for granted. Social workers must ensure everybody is clear about the decisions that can be taken. We must get rid of what a foster carer described to the Select Committee as "parenting by committee". The Minister responsible for children in care (Tim Loughton), wrote to Directors of Children's Services on 27 August to emphasise that foster carers "should have the maximum appropriate flexibility in taking decisions about children in their care." Decisions such as going on holiday, going on school trips and staying overnight at a friend's house are hugely important in making children feel part of a family and part of their peer group.

27. The Government is improving foster care and the status of foster carers by:

publishing a Foster Carers' Charter—an aspirational and clear articulation of what foster carers can expect from their local authority and their fostering service, and what is expected of them in return. The Charter was developed in consultation with stakeholders. It is not about being prescriptive from the centre and it is not about more regulation and guidance. It is rather about a set of principles which we hope every local authority will sign up to and which will encourage local dialogue and agreement about how excellent foster care services will be delivered. It provides foster carers and others with a tool to challenge their local authority or fostering service if the Charter commitments are not being honoured, and to strive together for continuing improvement;
implementing a modernised and streamlined regulatory framework, (issued in March 2011) comprising of revised guidance, regulations and National Minimum Standards which will come into force in April 2011. This framework is proportionate, more child focused and allows greater flexibility for people to make professional judgements. We have removed prescription where possible, for example, by allowing fostering households to carry out other work for the service such as utilising their skills in mentoring and training. The guidance highlights the vital role of fostering and addresses more clearly issues we know matter, such as delegation of authority.
funding training programmes such as Fostering Changes and KEEP to support foster carers to have the confidence and skills to care for foster children, particularly those with complex health needs.
supporting local authorities and the sector to promote the benefits of fostering and so encourage more people to come forward to be foster carers. This includes a grant of £78,000 to Fostering Network to support Foster Care Fortnight and other initiatives to support local recruitment of foster carers.

RECOMMENDATION 20: FOSTER CARE FEES

While local circumstances and the many different types of foster care will always require some variation, we cannot expect more people to consider fostering as a potential career without greater clarity about the financial terms that are on offer. We recommend that a national framework for fee payments be developed, and that it include stipulations about 52-week payments or retainers when foster carers do not have placements.

28. The Government does not agree with the recommendation that the Government should determine the level of fee which individual carers should receive. Such decisions should be taken locally, not in Whitehall, as they will depend on a wide range of factors. The way in which providers structure their payment systems is extremely diverse, taking account, for example, of levels of training, qualifications, experience, and the needs of the child in placement. The solution is not a single top down model, but transparency for carers about the payments they receive and the circumstances in which they are made.

29. The revised National Minimum Standards require fostering services to have a clear and transparent written policy on payments to foster carers that sets out the criteria for calculating payments and distinguishes between the allowance paid to cover the cost of caring for the child and any fee paid to the foster carer. The foster carer must receive clear information about the allowances and expenses payable and how to access them, before a child is placed. In addition the fostering service must advise foster carers about what financial and other support is available to foster carers where a child remains with them after they reach the age of 18.

RECOMMENDATION 21: FOSTER CARE NATIONAL REGISTRATION SCHEME

We recommend that the Government reconsider its opposition to a national registration scheme for foster carers. We believe that such a scheme would be a useful tool to improve quality and take-up of training, and to cement the status of foster carers in the teams of professionals caring for a child.

30. The Government has not been persuaded that there should be a national registration scheme for foster carers. Foster carers are substantially different from other groups which are registered and regulated by a central body. Foster carers are already approved, and strictly regulated, through a local approval process set out in legislation. The introduction of a national registration scheme would not be compatible with this or with this Government's philosophy of devolving responsibility away from Whitehall to local government. However, we will keep the issue under review and continue to listen to the views of sector representatives.

RECOMMENDATION 22: FOSTER CARE ALLEGATIONS

We consider it unacceptable that foster carers are not afforded the same considerations as other professionals in the children's workforce when an allegation is made against them. We ask the Government to stipulate that carers continue to receive fee and allowance payments while an allegation against them is being investigated.

31. The Government has carefully considered the issue of carers continuing to receive fee and allowance payments while an allegation against them is being investigated. Comments were made both for and against making such a requirement as part of the consultation on the National Minimum Standards. It is absolutely right that foster carers should be completely clear about what support including financial support they will receive during any investigation into an allegation and we have made this clear in the revised NMS. However, it is not appropriate for central government to interfere in the financial arrangements made between foster carers and their fostering service or local authority.

32. We are however mindful of the very real practical considerations which must be taken into account in handling allegations against foster carers and of the understandable stress and impact an allegation can have on the fostering household and foster children. We have significantly strengthened the fostering National Minimum Standards and statutory guidance to make clear the support which must be offered to foster carers and their rights where an allegation is made against them or a member of their household. The fostering service should make support, which is independent of the fostering service, available to the person subject to the allegation and, where this is a foster carer, to their household. This support is to provide:

information and advice about the process;
emotional support; and
if needed, mediation between the foster carer and the fostering service and/or advocacy (including attendance at meetings and panel hearings).

33. It is particularly important that services do all they can to eradicate unnecessary delays when handling allegations and ensure that their processes result in timely decisions being made. The revised framework comes into force from 1 April 2011.

RECOMMENDATIONS 23-25: QUALITY OF RESIDENTIAL CARE

We welcome the Government's investment in programmes that aim to improve the capacity of foster placements to benefit the most challenging young people. We hope that this will allow residential care to be considered on its merits rather than as a last resort for children who have been especially difficult to place elsewhere.

We recommend that the Government commission research on the flexible use of residential care as part of a planned package of care, and that it consider the resource and structural implications of enabling such uses.

We recommend that the Government show its commitment to addressing underperformance against the current National Minimum Standards for staff qualifications by making the Level 3 NVQ mandatory at the soonest practicable opportunity, and by analysing the reasons for the persistent failure of the sector to meet this standard. In the long term, a more coherent and ambitious strategy for the residential care workforce must be a priority, above and beyond the set of professional standards promised by the 2020 Children's Workforce Strategy.

Residential care

34. The Government agrees with the Select Committee that residential care can "make a significant contribution to good quality placement choice for young people". Local authorities should see residential care as a positive placement option to meet a child's needs rather than a last resort where fostering placements break down. The Government is committed to raising the quality of residential care for children in care and has launched a new programme of work to drive improvements in children's homes. This is led by the Department, working closely with the sector.

35. The work will involve facilitating a number of learning sets and 'peer to peer support' work on key issues, and will be delivered alongside peer networks sharing best practice. It is also planned to undertake a qualitative study of the range of therapeutic interventions being delivered within children's homes, and a systematic review of the evidence base underpinning these. It will also cover looking at how to improve the qualifications and skills of residential staff, as recommended by the Select Committee, so that they have the knowledge and competencies to provide high quality support to the children and young people in their care.

36. At the heart of the programme is the need for children's homes to learn from the best practice in the United Kingdom—and in countries such as Denmark whose residential care system provides very high quality support—and from evidence based practice such as social pedagogy. Our overall aims are to achieve:

children's homes placements which are commissioned as a positive option for individual children where it meets their needs—rather than, as can happen, being seen as a last resort;
greater stability for children placed in children's homes, and better educational outcomes; and
more children's homes delivering interventions that have proven effectiveness in stabilising and promoting the welfare of challenging children and, as a result, improved outcomes for this group.

RECOMMENDATION 26: SOCIAL PEDAGOGY

The social pedagogy pilot programme is very welcome. We urge the Government to think broadly and creatively about the possible future applications of the social pedagogy approach in the care system rather than looking to import wholesale a separate new profession.

37. The Government is supporting these social pedagogy pilots in some children's homes in England which focus on building relationships through practical engagement with children and young people using skills such as art and music or outdoor activities. A full evaluation of the benefits of this approach will be conducted, with a view to spreading the use of the social pedagogic approach more widely. The Government agrees with the Select Committee that any future roll out should not result in a separate new profession being created from the current workforce.

RECOMMENDATION 27: RESIDENTIAL CARE STANDARDS

While the emphasis the English care system places on family environments is right, the potential of the residential sector to offer high quality, stable placements for a minority of young people is too often dismissed. With enforcement of higher standards, greater investment in skills, and a reconsideration of the theoretical basis for residential care, we believe that it could make a significant contribution to good quality placement choice for young people.

38. As part of our wider programme to modernise and streamline the legislation framework for children in care, we have revised the regulations and the National Minimum Standards for children's homes (issued in March 2011). In particular, we have made the NMS more child-focused and outcome-focused, with each standard starting with the outcome that the setting/agency is expected to achieve and the type of evidence that indicate that the service is meeting that outcome. We have also removed unnecessary requirements, for example the detailed prescriptive requirements about "fitness of premises". These revisions will come into effect from April 2011.

Adoption

39. Another way in which children in care can achieve stability, love and support is through adoption. In the vast majority of cases adoption works; educational and health outcomes for adopted children are as good as for children growing up with their birth parents. So it is very disappointing that the latest national figures show a slight fall in the number of children moving from care into adoption (from 3,300 in 2008-09 to 3,200 in 2009-10), with indications of a further fall this year as a result of a larger fall in the number of adoptive placements (from 2,700 in 2008-09 to 2,300 in 2009-10).

40. We want the adoption system to work effectively for all children in care who would benefit from this permanence option, and to see all local authorities performing to the level of the best. We want to see more children adopted where this is in their best interests, less delay, including through more timely matching (particularly for black and minority ethnic children), and better use of the voluntary sector. That is why the Government has set up a Ministerial Advisory Group on Adoption to provide expert advice on a range of practical proposals to remove barriers to adoption and reduce delay.

41. To underline the importance of making immediate progress, Tim Loughton wrote last November to local authorities to ask them to do everything possible to increase the number of children appropriately placed for adoption, and to improve the speed with which decisions are made.

42. We expect to achieve change through a programme of reform to support adoption agencies continually to improve their adoption services. The Government has now published revised adoption guidance (February 2011), and National Minimum Standards (March 2011) which will come into force from April 2011. The adoption guidance is the culmination of a process of amalgamation, modernisation and streamlining. It represents a "call to arms" to local authorities to re-energise their efforts and improve frontline practice. It emphasises that they must consider all of a child's needs and not place the issue of ethnicity above everything else. It is unacceptable for a child to be denied loving adoptive parents solely on the grounds that the child and prospective adopters do not share the same ethnic or cultural background.

43. We will encourage bottom up challenge to Directors of Children's Services and Lead Members to examine their adoption performance compared to other local authorities. There is significant variation at local level and we will be making comparative data available to illustrate this. We will also work to promote a better shared understanding of the adoption process, including where delay is most likely to occur and sharing practice that improves the timeliness of placements.

44. The Government is funding the British Association for Adoption and Fostering in 2011-12 and 2012-13 to:

encourage more people to become adoptive parents through National Adoption Week and its Adoption Champions volunteering scheme;
develop and disseminate evidence based on "what works" to managers and practitioners;
provide ongoing support/advice to adoptive parents to help make adoption work through their general enquiries service and access to their specialist consultants; and
provide specialist advice with particular reference to social work, health, legal, and black and minority ethnic perspectives.

45. The Government is also supporting Barnardo's and Coram in 2011-12 and 2012-13 to work with local authorities with poor adoption rates to identify the cause of delay and provide solutions, including through concurrent planning.

46. The Government recognises, however, that improving adoption services goes beyond the work of adoption agencies. Both the review of the family justice system, led by David Norgrove, and the review of child protection, led by Professor Munro, will have implications for adoption services in the future. The Family Justice Review's work on reducing delay in the Court process will be of particular relevance.

Recommendation 35: Early intervention and family support

While the intention of integrating budgets for children's services was laudable, we are concerned that one effect is that child protection, children in care and family support work are in competition for shares of the available resources. We are particularly concerned that those authorities which are managing a historically large care population will not be able to invest greater resources in family support without an unacceptable reduction in the quality of services for looked-after children. We recommend that the Government ensures that such services become universally available at agreed minimum levels.

Variation in early intervention and family support

47. The Select Committee rightly stressed the need to improve the current provision of family support services by local authorities where:

"Varying thresholds, confused responsibilities and a failure of services to think about the whole family can make it difficult for parents to get the support they need".

48. The Government agrees and is improving family support and early intervention with a view to maximising the chances of improving parenting, reducing neglect and abuse and keeping families together. In particular, the Government is expanding Family Intervention Services, Family Nurse Partnerships and refocusing priorities for Sure Start children's centres. Improve social workers support for families, where there are child protection concerns, is also at the heart of the Munro review.

49. Children in families with multiple problems (with significant social, economic, health and behavioural problems) are considerably more likely to have child protection issues and to need to be taken into care. However, where families receive intensive support this can be extremely effective in changing behaviours and improving parenting skills.

50. The Government has announced a new national campaign to support and help turn around the lives of families with multiple problems, with a view to improving outcomes and reducing costs to welfare and public services. The campaign will be underpinned by local Community Budgets. These will help local authorities to break down some of the existing barriers created by separate funding streams and monitoring arrangements and draw together funding already spent by agencies targeting services at or incurring costs associated with these families. This will support a more flexible and integrated approach to delivering the help these families need. Community Budgets will be established in 16 local areas to pool Department budgets for families with multiple problems, and rolled out to all local areas over the Spending Review period.

51. Intensive family interventions are provided nationwide, and some 7,500 families with multiple problems will be supported in the current financial year. The annual cost of delivering intensive family interventions is currently around £14K per family. But, in comparison, where these families are not in receipt of intensive family support, one study estimated the annual cost to the tax-payer as £250,000 to £350,000 per family.

RECOMMENDATION 30: VARIATION IN SUPPORT WHILST IN CARE

The quality of experience that children have in care seems to be governed by luck to an utterly unacceptable degree. When implementing the Care Matters reforms, we urge the Government to place the highest priority on ensuring that every child gets everything they are entitled to.

Tackling variation within care system

52. The Select Committee also highlighted the variation in local practice and quality of experiences that children in care have in different parts of the country:

"...we are concerned by how widely the quality of children's experiences in care varies…The question the Government must do more to answer is, how can we make sure that looked after children get all that they are entitled to expect from their time in care."

53. As the Select Committee points out, this often has nothing to do with the size or type of local community, nor of the funding that they receive.

54. It is certainly true that one way of seeking to achieve more consistency is through the setting of clear national standards. They are necessary, but they are certainly not sufficient in themselves. The revised care planning and care leavers regulations (and those relating to fostering, children's homes and adoption) which will take effect from April 2011, are now shorter, streamlined, more coherent and based on best local practice. However, the Government does not believe that further regulation or prescription is the way forwarded. Rather, we shall continue to work with partners on whether all parts of the revised framework remain necessary and fit for purpose or if there are further areas that would benefit from streamlining and deregulation.

55. To achieve the change needed requires a decisive shift in accountability for service improvement—away from central Government and towards self-driven improvement by local authorities themselves, with sector-led improvement support where external support is needed. The Department is working with the Association of Directors of Children's Services, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and the Local Government Group on the development of a sector-led improvement support system.

56. The Department is also working alongside Ofsted to consider potential changes to aspects of the wider children's services inspection framework, in line with the drive for greater local accountability and freedoms. This will be informed by relevant findings and recommendations from the review of child protection currently being conducted by Professor Munro.

57. At the same time, the Government is clear that it will continue to act to secure improvement where there is evidence of significant or long standing failure, or where there is evidence that a local authority has been unable to effect change within a reasonable timescale. Direct intervention from the centre will, however, be a last resort.

RECOMMENDATIONS 36-38: CHILDREN IN CARE COUNCILS

We welcome the introduction of Children in Care Pledges and Councils, and we hope that they will better enable children to hold local authorities to account for the disparities in the care they provide and to challenge poor practice.

The Government must spell out how local authorities will be held accountable for robust development of their Children in Care Councils and Pledges, and the impact these measures have on improving practice. It is not clear at present what the consequences will be for a corporate parent that fails to keep its promises to children, nor what action a child will be able to take if those promises are broken. Pledges must be detailed enough to be meaningful to young people, and we urge the Government to encourage local authorities to show ambition in their undertakings.

Councils and Pledges must not become the sole means of consulting with or involving children in policy and services. Local authorities should also be judged on the quality of their mainstream children's participation and children's rights work, and how effectively they involve looked-after children in it.

Strengthening the Voice of the Child

58. The Select Committee rightly stressed the impact that children's own voices can have in improving the care system:

"We welcome the introduction of Children in Care Pledges and Councils and we hope that they will better enable children to hold local authorities to account for the disparities in the care they provide and to challenge poor practice."

59. The Government agrees. Nearly all local authorities now have a functioning CICC, with a few working with their children and young people to set one up in the next couple of months. As part of wider reforms to make local authorities more accountable to their local communities, we want to see Children in Care Councils (CICC) help drive local change and challenge local authorities to provide high quality services. The Department is working with the young person led voluntary sector organisation A National Voice, and Roger Morgan, the Children's Rights Director, to organise regular meetings of Chairs of Children in Care Councils. These identify and share good practice so that individual CICCs can then argue for the best from their own local authority.

60. The first round of meetings is focusing on:

best practice on how CICC work most effectively and have the biggest impact; and

best practice by local authorities in the services and support provided to children in care and care leavers.

61. The Department is funding A National Voice in 2011-12 and 2012-13, to:

hold further regional meetings of CICC chairs, twice a year in all regions, which will concentrate on specific areas such as education, health, the role of Independent Reviewing Officers (IROs) and Foster Care services;
support the training of Children in Care Council members and increase their ability to put forward arguments and undertake consultations with other children in care;
map and disseminate best practice to local authorities and providing a national annual overview report.

RECOMMENDATIONS 39-40: IROS AND ADVOCACY

We are persuaded by the evidence received for this inquiry that these two distinct roles of Independent Reviewing Officer and independent advocate should in fact co-exist, and that the degree of inconsistency in the way local authorities are discharging their care duties makes it even more important that children have every possible opportunity to make their views count. Advocacy services should be routinely available for all looked-after children whenever decisions about their care are being made, not just when they wish to make a complaint.

We recommend that the duty on local authorities to ascertain and give consideration to children's views when decisions about their care are made should be strengthened by a requirement for Independent Reviewing Officers to record those views when care plans are reviewed.

Strengthening Independent Reviewing Officers and advocacy

62. The Select Committee highlighted the role of Independent Reviewing Officers and recommended that the role be strengthened. The Government agrees that all IROs should be playing a central role in challenging poor practice and ensuring that children's views are at the heart of care plans and reviews.

63. Flowing from the Children's and Young Persons Act 2008, revised care planning guidance, and additional guidance explicitly for IROs, will come into force in April 2011. These will help ensure:

a named IRO for each child reports on the quality of their care plan;
the IRO sees the child before each review;
more information is provided on supporting the child to participate;
that IROs record the views of children when care plans are reviewed (as recommended by the Select Committee); and
the IRO function is represented at senior management level so that the child's voice and scrutiny function is at the heart of the local authority strategic planning for children in care.

64. The Government expects IROs to have the authority necessary to scrutinise care plans for each individual child and to offer robust challenges on behalf of the child if the plan falls short of being in the child's interests and meeting their needs.

65. The Government will work with the IRO regional networks to ensure all IROs understand their new responsibilities and share best practice on how best to support children in care.

66. Whilst we do not accept the Select Committee's recommendation that legislation be changed so that advocacy services should be routinely available for all looked-after children, and not just when they wish to make a complaint, we do wish to improve the access and quality of advocacy services. The Government recognises the importance of such services and will be funding the charity VOICE to run a national helpline to provide a skilled advocate within 48 hours and to work with local authorities' front line staff to encourage more use of advocacy services.

67. The Government will also be funding Action for Advocacy to work in partnership with Children's Rights Officers and Advocates (CROA), to develop a Quality Performance Mark framework based on the successful model used for adults in the health service. This grant will also enable these organisations to raise awareness of the benefits and role of advocacy with excluded groups, such as asylum seeking children, disabled children, and children with mental health problems.

RECOMMENDATION 41: CORPORATE PARENTING

We are concerned that the scope of corporate parenthood as usually understood leaves bodies other than schools and children's services too much leeway in the priority they give to looked-after children. If corporate parenting is to emulate family life, it must not be compartmentalised, nor truncated at age 18. We recommend that all Children's Trusts take responsibility for multi-agency corporate parenting training, to include managers within adult health and social care services, and officers and members of district councils where relevant.

Extending the scope and rigour of corporate parenting

68. A key theme in the Select Committee's report was the need to improve corporate parenting. The Government agrees, and will be funding a National Children's Bureau to provide:

guidance and support to young people and local authorities in developing practice on corporate parenting (linking to Children in Care Councils); and
training to local councillors on their corporate parenting roles and how they can best "champion" and monitor outcomes of children in care.

Improving educational attainment

69. A key priority for local authorities and their partners as corporate parents is to support the educational attainment of children in care, working closely with schools, further education colleges and universities. Although there have been improvements in recent years, the "attainment gap" between children in care and their peers has not narrowed and in some respects has widened. The Government is committed to doing all it can to narrow the gap in the educational attainment of children in care compared to all children.

70. The Schools White Paper, The Importance of Teaching, gives a clear strategic role to local authorities in championing the needs of vulnerable children such as children in care. Although the role of the Virtual School Head (VSH) is not statutory, we welcome the fact that most local authorities have decided to embrace the model, which has proved to be so effective in leading and driving local change. Together with designated teachers in schools, VSHs can play a powerful role in raising educational aspirations for children in care and their standards of achievement.

71. The Government has also decided to extend the pupil premium to include children in care. Children in both mainstream and non-mainstream settings who have been looked after for more than six months will qualify for a premium of £430 in 2011-12. Overall funding for the pupil premium will go up from £625 million in 2011-12 to £2.5 billion in 2014-15, and the children in care premium will rise in line with increases to the deprivation premium.

72. In December 2010 the Department published new information about the educational outcomes of children in care. For the first time the national data on the educational outcomes of this group provides a comprehensive source of information about their attainment from a wide range of perspectives. Local authorities will be able to use this to analyse the attainment of the children they look after according to the type of school they attend, the length of time in care, the number of placements and the category of special educational need. This information gives local authorities the data they need to benchmark themselves against similar authorities and to support Virtual School Heads and others to examine how effectively they support their children in care to achieve their full potential.

RECOMMENDATIONS 42-45: HEALTH AND WELLBEING

Looked-after children must have a higher profile in NHS performance frameworks. Children in care need 'champions' in senior strategic positions in the health service, and corporate parenting training should be mandatory for relevant senior NHS officers and board members with relevant responsibilities.

By comparison with its policies for the education of children in care—virtual school heads, designated teachers, priority in admissions and mandatory performance indicators—the Government has seemed timid in specifying what looked-after children should be able to expect from health services. The Government should seek to specify a range of good practice, in particular the roles of designated doctors and nurses, as a matter of urgency.

Children and young people in care should have guaranteed access to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, and resources must be provided to ensure that this is achievable. Urgent action must be taken to address the shortage of therapeutic services for children in care. We recommend that the Government should assess how specialist mental health teams for children in care can be put in place and sustained in all areas.

The Government's support for a holistic view of the wellbeing of children in care is very welcome, but it sits oddly with the withdrawal of national funding for the Healthy Care Programme, which appears to embody this principle. We recommend that the Government monitor the impact of the end of national funding for Healthy Care Partnerships on local collaborative working and the priority that looked-after children are given in services.

Health

73. The Government agrees with the Select Committee that CAMHS services (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) for children in care, which have traditionally been poor, need to improve. No health without mental health: A cross-Government mental health strategy for people of all ages was published on 2 February 2011. This cross-Government strategy takes a life course approach focussing on outcomes that are meaningful to people of all ages including children, young people and their families. The intention is for a wholesale shift in emphasis to put mental health outcomes alongside physical health indicators in assessments of the quality of the NHS.

74. No health without mental health: delivering better mental health outcomes which was published at the same time to support the strategy sets out six shared objectives to improve mental health outcomes:

More people will have good mental health;

More people with mental health problems will recover;

More people with mental health problems will have good physical health;

More people will have a positive experience of care and support;

Fewer people will suffer avoidable harm, and

Fewer people will experience stigma and discrimination.

75. Under the first objective the increased risk of children in care to mental health problems is highlighted. The paper refers to the crucial role of timely and effective health assessments to enable the speedy identification of problems and referrals to support services.

76. Schools also play a crucial role. Work continues on the Targeted Mental Health in Schools Programme (TaMHS). Now in its third year (2008-11), selected schools in every local authority are involved in this DfE-funded £60 million programme which is testing effective evidenced-based approaches for mental health support in schools, aimed at children aged 5-13 (and their families). From April TaMHS funding is included in the local authority Early Intervention Grant, bringing together funding (£2.2bn in 2011-12) for early intervention and preventative services for children, young people and families.

77. In line with the Government's policy of devolving decision making to local areas, partnership working between local authorities and the NHS will be key to making sure that health services meet the needs of children in care and care leavers. Crucially, in the new health arrangements there will also be a stronger role for local authorities in supporting local health commissioning which will allow more of a focus on vulnerable groups such as children in care. Effective commissioning should ensure that the needs of children in care, including those living outside their local authority area, and care leavers are reflected in joint strategic needs assessments and local health and wellbeing strategies.

78. The proposed Local HealthWatch organisations will be the local consumer voice for health and social care services, representing the diverse range of public and patient voices within their local community. This will include the voices of children in care and their carers. We would urge local authorities to take up these opportunities at local level by putting forward a representative from the Children in Care Council or the Lead Member for children, to join the local HealthWatch and become involved in its activities. Local HealthWatch will also have a role in providing information to enable people to make choices about health and social care.

79. Subject to the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill, GP Consortia will be subject to sections 10 and 11 of the Children Act 2004, under which the statutory guidance Promoting the Health and Wellbeing of Looked After Children is published.

RECOMMENDATIONS 46-56: CARE LEAVERS

We welcome the Government's assertion that it should become exceptional for a young person to leave care before they turn 18, and hope that it will precipitate a culture change in local authorities. We recommend, however, that the Government show more ambition by making a commitment to narrowing the gap between the average age of leaving care and the age of independence for other young people. Remaining in care in some form until at least age 21 should become routine.

We welcome the Right2BCared4 and Staying Put pilots, and urge the Government to make their benefits available to all young people in care—including those in residential placements—at the earliest possible opportunity.

The success of efforts to ensure that young people stay in care for longer will depend on factors the Government has not yet fully addressed, such as supply of foster placements, support to prevent placement breakdowns, and the effectiveness of Independent Reviewing Officers and review processes. Local authorities must be given all necessary assistance to achieve these changes.

The Right2BCared4 and Staying Put pilots should be used to explore how more flexibility can be built into the process of leaving care, so that young people who find they are not yet ready for independence are able, and encouraged, to revert to a higher level of support.

The vulnerability of care leavers to sexual exploitation is a matter of great concern to us. We urge the Government to analyse any ways in which features of the care system itself expose young people to greater danger, and take urgent steps to protect care leavers from this sort of exploitation.

We recommend that national standards for leaving care services should be developed with local authorities so that these services can be objectively assessed. The standards should include a greater degree of consistency and transparency in the financial support available to care leavers and the criteria on which it is determined. Each authority should include details of what it will provide in its Pledge.

We are concerned that the benefits of specific support to enable young people with disabilities to move on from care, as distinct from the care services related to their disability, have not been recognised in the Care Matters programme. Equal access to all features of effective leaving care support must be guaranteed to care leavers with disabilities.

The duty to provide a Personal Adviser should be extended to all care leavers until age 25, not just those who have education or training plans. The terms on which this provision has been extended risk excluding some of the most vulnerable young people from continuing support. The role of the Personal Adviser should include facilitating access to health and social care services when needed. We recommend that the Government explore ways of ensuring that care leavers have full and proper access to health, social care and education services, commensurate with their needs, until they are 25 years old.

We seek reassurance from the Government that funding will be made available to local authorities that experience particular difficulties in finding suitable accommodation for care leavers due to local housing shortages. We recommend that the Government extend the new 'sufficient placements' duty to include supported and independent accommodation for those leaving care.

A quality assurance framework for care leavers' accommodation should be developed so that housing options can be assessed against nationally agreed standards; it should not be left up to a young person to say that the accommodation they are offered is unsuitable. No care leaver should be placed in bed and breakfast accommodation, and the availability of suitable accommodation must be considered a prerequisite for a move to independent living.

There should be a presumption against declaring any care leaver intentionally homeless. Every children's services authority should be required to adopt a joint working protocol with the relevant housing departments or authorities, to ensure that care leavers are given every possible support in maintaining tenancies. Key managers within housing departments should be included in corporate parenting training.

Supporting care leavers

80. The Government agrees with the Select Committee that more needs to be done to support care leavers. Too many young people are still expected to cope with independent living too early and without proper support, leading to social exclusion, long term unemployed or involvement in crime. The Ofsted annual report 2009 said that "few of the young people spoken to felt really confident about leaving care". There is also wide variation in local authority performance. For example the number of care leavers in Education, Employment or Training in 2010 ranges from 87% in some local authorities to only 34% in others. Improving outcomes for care leavers is therefore a priority for the Coalition Government.

81. The Select Committee highlighted the success of the Staying Put: 18+ Family Care pilots in eleven local authority areas and recommended that these be extended. As part of the 2010 spending review settlement, the Government has given all local authorities funding to enable more care leavers to stay with their care leavers using the Staying Put model (part of the non ringfenced local authority Formula Grant).

82. The Government will continue to fund National Care Advisory Service—Part of Catch 22—to run the From Care2Work. The programme is designed to improve employment opportunities for care leavers and has been a real success with:

over 30 national employers signed up to provide employment opportunities for care leavers;
all local authorities working towards implementing a work plan to improve the support they give to care leavers;
a thousand employment opportunities provided in 2009-10, with an additional thousand planned for this year.

83. The Department issued regulations and statutory guidance on support for care leavers earlier this year with an implementation date of April 2011. These are intended to bolster the quality of support and ensure more consistency across the country by building on the best local practice. They gave effect to the provisions in the Children and Young Persons Act 2008 to give care leavers entitlement to Personal Adviser (PA) support from local authorities, where they wish to resume education and training beyond the age of twenty-one and up to aged 25.

84. The revised statutory guidance also emphases the importance of suitable accommodation for care leavers and lists the criteria that local authorities must consider when arranging accommodation for 16 and 17 year olds. Improving support for care leavers is also priority area for the Ministerial Group on Homelessness, whose aim is to prevent and reduce homelessness, and improve the lives of those people who do become homeless.

RECOMMENDATIONS 57: PREVENTING INVOLVEMENT IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

To some extent, we recognise that general improvements in the care system—stable placements that are properly supported, help to achieve at school, and a gradual transition to independence—will help to prevent looked-after children offending. However, opportunities have been missed to take further specific steps to address this. We ask the Government to revisit the Youth Crime Action Plan to address explicitly the state's responsibility as corporate parent for the disproportionate criminalisation of young people in care.

Involvement in the criminal justice system

85. The Government expects all care settings to have active strategies in place to divert children from offending or anti-social behaviour and to provide them with opportunities and services necessary to offer them positive opportunities that put them on the path to success.

86. Revised Care Planning Guidance coming into force in April 2011 requires local authorities to establish strategies so that children in care are provided with all possible support to become responsible citizens.

87. Similar expectations are included in revised National Minimum Standards for children's homes and fostering services. It is essential that corporate parents do everything possible to avoid unnecessary criminalisation of young people in the care system. Where a child in care is placed in a children's home, a key role for the home will be to provide a supportive and structured environment with appropriate rules and expectations on behaviour. It is also important that children's homes do not unnecessarily involve the police to enforce discipline and control, since this may lead to vulnerable children being needlessly criminalised.

RECOMMENDATIONS 58-61: LOOKED AFTER CHILDREN IN CUSTODY

We recommend that children accommodated under voluntary agreements should retain their looked-after status when entering custody; we consider that this would be a greater safeguard of the continuity of each young person's care than the new requirement to continue visiting children. We are concerned that even children on care orders may not be receiving the services they are entitled to when in custody, and we seek reassurance that inspection will be an adequate tool for enforcing the new visiting requirements when it has apparently failed to enforce existing requirements.

We recommend that the Government identify and implement a mechanism for automatically triggering a needs assessment by the relevant children's services authority when a child comes into contact with the criminal justice system.

We recommend that the lead responsibility of children's services for looked-after children in the youth justice system be re-asserted, so that extremely vulnerable children are not denied the support they need by being excluded from mainstream services when they come into contact with Youth Offending Teams.

We ask the Government to guarantee future funding for social workers posts in Youth Offending Institutions.

88. The Government agrees that children in care who offend should receive the same quality of care as other looked after children. The revised statutory guidance explains how local authorities should work with Youth Offending Teams to support young people who have been arrested or reminded in custody. This includes, as recommended by the Select Committee carrying out a needs assessment and providing ongoing support including planning for release.

89. The Government agrees that children accommodated under voluntary agreements, who do not retain their looked-after status when they enter custody, are still vulnerable. Through implementing the Children and Young Persons Act 2008, the Government will improve co-ordinated support and impose new visiting requirements from April 2011. This will ensure that whenever a voluntarily accommodated child is sentenced to custody they have to be visited by a representative of the local authority to assess their needs and where necessary contribute to resettlement planning.

RECOMMENDATIONS 62-64: UNACCOMPANIED ASYLUM-SEEKING CHILDREN

We recommend that the Department for Children, Schools and Families assume formal joint responsibility with the Home Office for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.

Clear guidance must be given to local authorities that all of the provisions of Care Matters, and the principles of good care planning, apply equally and without exception to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. We are particularly anxious that the Government resolve the contradiction between the importance that Care Matters places on continuity of care for looked-after children older than 16, and the expectation that young asylum-seekers will leave their foster placements at that age.

We support the idea of appointing guardians for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, to ensure that they are properly supported through the asylum process, and that swift access to services such as education is arranged on their behalf. We are concerned about the particular vulnerability of this group of children to trafficking, and would like the role of guardian to include a remit to ensure that children do not go missing.

Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children

90. The Government agrees with the Committee that unaccompanied asylum seeking children should be considered as "children first and foremost", and is committed to improving support to them.

91. These children will benefit from the revised legislative framework, such as the strengthened IRO function. When these young people reach legal adulthood at 18 (and the asylum claim is still being determined or asylum / leave to remain has been granted), the authority will from 1 April have related responsibilities to provide them with support and services as "care leavers".

92. The Select Committee is right to have pointed out the vulnerability of these children, particularly those suspected of being trafficked. Police, immigration officers and social workers are making good progress at ports of entry, for example through the highly successful Operation Paladin at Heathrow Airport, to identify perpetrators and victims, and the Government will spread this good practice to other areas.

93. The revised statutory guidance says that in making any placement the local authority will need to give consideration to the risk that a trafficked child may go missing and to how the placement provides support to minimise this. The local authority must have a care plan for each child in care, based on a thorough needs assessment. It should set out how the local authority intends to safeguard the young person or child who may have been trafficked; it should also include a contingency plan to be followed if the young person goes missing. The Government will look to spread best practice in this area, particularly through its programme of work to improve residential care.

94. At present, the Government does not see the need to require through legislation the appointment of guardians specifically for trafficked children. There is no evidence to show that the creation of another agency or person in a child's life will add any appreciable value and it is more likely to blur lines of accountability and unhelpfully complicate service delivery.

RECOMMENDATIONS 65-68: PERFORMANCE FRAMEWORK

We fear that the increased emphasis on self-assessment and light-touch, "proportionate" inspections in schools and children's services as a whole is exerting an inappropriate influence on the inspection of children's social care. In particular, it may lead to unwise over-reliance on the National Indicator Set as a barometer of authorities' ability to keep children safe. There is potential for quarterly updates of performance profiles to engender false confidence, and this practice seems to be at odds with the Chief Inspector's reassurance that on-the-ground investigation will be a prerequisite for passing judgement on services. We recommend that ways of promoting more frequent, informal contact between inspectors and local authorities be explored, such as designating a named inspector for each authority who would make regular visits.

We consider that the evidence on which performance assessments are based should be retained by Ofsted for at least three years after publication.

We recommend that the Government reassess how the new inspection regime for children's services can be made a more effective vehicle for spreading good practice, perhaps through the inclusion of a peer review element, or whether a different mechanism is needed. Ofsted must also improve the representation of officers with extensive social work experience in its senior leadership positions.

There is at present too much emphasis on measuring processes in the care system and not enough on assessing its quality. The quality of decision-making and the quality of relationships are difficult things to measure, but they are fundamental to the success of the care system. To help address this problem, children's satisfaction with the care they receive—independently sought and expressed—should feature prominently in performance indicators and assessments of the care system both locally and nationally.

The performance framework for the care system

95. The Coalition Government believes that many of the top down drivers used in recent years were ineffectual or ill-advised. It is convinced change must, overwhelmingly, be locally and professionally driven.

96. That is why the Government is devolving significant financial control to local authorities. The Department for Education is playing its part by reducing radically the number of ringfenced grants going to local authorities for education and children's services.

97. We are also reducing the burdens on local authorities by reducing unnecessary statutory regulations and guidance, inspection and data collection requirements and sweeping away targets.

98. At the same time, across children's services as a whole, we will also be:

strengthening the evidence base about "what works";
supporting sector-led improvement;
spreading the use of data to increase transparency and encourage locally driven challenge;
developing markets;
and strengthening the hand of front line professional staff.

RECOMMENDATION 69-72: ANNUAL 'STOCKTAKE' ON PROGRESS

We look forward to examining the first of the annual ministerial 'Stocktakes' of the care system, and we welcome the focus and priority this process promises to place on how well the whole state is performing as a corporate parent. We recommend that children's views and their satisfaction with the care system should form a crucial part of the evidence used in the Stocktake. In order that Government as a whole can be held to account for its performance, the Stocktake must involve the Home Office and Ministry of Justice as well as the Department of Health and Department for Communities and Local Government.

The present performance framework is insufficiently flexible to allow the progress children make in care to be captured. The Stocktake should promote a comprehensive view of outcomes for young people who have been in care (up to age 25).

We consider that lack of data about some sections of the care population, and care leavers, compromises the corporate parenting task. The Stocktake should be used as an opportunity to fill some of the gaps in data relating to looked-after children; specifically, the lack of information about the circumstances and outcomes of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, and about looked-after children in the criminal justice system.

We are pleased that data on children missing from care will be included in the Stocktake, and we look forward to seeing evidence of improved performance in this area.

99. Although the Department will not be holding an annual stocktake conference, it will continue to monitor progress in outcomes for children in care and the support they receive whilst in care.

100. The Department will monitor data on placement stability; education and care leavers and draw on Ofsted's annual report on the care system to monitor national progress in improving the way children in care are supported.

101. A key way of understanding whether the changes we seek are being made is by listening directly to the voices of children in care and their carers. That is why we:

have set up a "Tell Tim" webpage which gives children in care (and their carers) a way of communicating directly with Tim Loughton, the Minister with responsibility for children in care. This will is not a mechanism for responding to individual requests or complaints. But it does enable children and their carers to let the Minister know what changes are taking place and what more needs to be done;
are holding regular Ministerial meetings with groups of children in care and separately with care leavers; and
are using the annual Children's Rights Director's Annual Monitor and other reports to review what changes are taking place based on surveys of children in care.

4 To be consistent with the Select Committee report, we use the term children in care to include all children being looked after by a local authority, including those subject to care orders and those being looked after on a voluntary basis through an agreement with their parents Back



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