There are more than 12,600 children in care in England aged below five – that’s 83 for each local authority area. What circumstances do ‘children in care’ live in? The term doesn’t just apply to children who have been removed from the care of a parent or parents. It also includes children who live at home with their birth parents or relatives under the supervision of social care departments.
Children can also live with foster parents, in residential children’s homes or in other residential settings such as schools or secure units. They might have been placed temporarily in care voluntarily by parents struggling to cope. Or social care might have intervened because a child was at risk of significant harm. All these children in care have been placed, to a greater or lesser degree, under the protection of the state.
The concept of ‘corporate parenting’ has been around since it was established in the Children Act 1989, defined as a means ‘to safeguard and promote the welfare of the looked after child and to act as good corporate parents to enable each looked after child to achieve his/her full potential in life’.
In England it wasn’t codified legally until the Children and Social Work Act became law in 2017. Now, local authorities (being the ‘state’ with responsibility to care for these children) are legally obliged to have regard to seven principles for looked-after children and care-leavers. They must do the following:
- Act in the best interests of children in care and care-leavers and to promote their physical and mental health and well-being.
- Encourage children and young people to share their wishes and feelings.
- Observe the need to take these views into account.
- Help them gain access to and make best use of services provided by the local authority and relevant partners.
- Promote high aspirations and seek to secure the best outcomes for them.
- Help to ensure those children and young people are safe and have stability in their home lives and relationships, education and work.
- Prepare them for adulthood and independent living.
This last point means that local authorities’ duty to publish its ‘local offer’, first established by the Children and Families Act 2014 for SEND children, has now been extended to care-leavers.
It is interesting to note the relatively limited way in which the state is defined in the new Children and Social Work Act. In Scotland, the state’s corporate parenting principles apply to 24 different agencies in a law that came into force in 2015.
Schools
Parts of the act will particularly affect early years provision in schools, and build on the DfE’s ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ guidance (2016), which says there is a need for schools to have a named designated teacher for ‘looked-after children’ and liaise with the virtual head in their local authority.
The act now specifies:
Local authorities must make advice and information available to parents, designated teachers in maintained schools and academies to promote the educational achievement of looked-after children. The LA must employ an officer (or can share one with another) to discharge the duty to provide information.
Governing bodies of maintained schools, and proprietors of academies, must designate a member of school staff to have responsibility for promoting the educational achievement of previously looked-after children (including those subject to adoption, special guardianship or child arrangements orders) and those who have been adopted.
Outcomes for children in care are notoriously dreadful: eighty-four per cent leave school without five good GCSEs, and care-leavers are four times more likely to commit suicide than anyone else. The majority of prostitutes – 70 per cent – were in care.
By giving schools more oversight over the education progress of this group, it is hoped that more attention will be focused on improving outcomes for these children and even promoting the use of more individual, attachment-based approaches.
Background
The meaning of corporate parenting and how it impacts settings’ daily practice is still not well understood. The new act should help with this and hopefully ensure there is consistency across the UK when supporting the educational and emotional needs of these children.
However, there is a danger that some local authorities may focus on the agencies known to them – and not seek the views of private settings.
Most local authorities have Local Safeguarding Children Boards that co-ordinate and monitor their responsibilities as corporate parents. They work with previously looked-after children and monitor data, developments, training and outcomes.
Foster carers are provided with their own allocated social worker and a separate social worker for the child they care for. They are provided with training, funding, attend regular meetings, reviews and are given resources. The new act will hopefully extend this support to children on other orders such as special guardianship.
For years, children living on orders such as this were not given the time, attention and resources and this often resulted in placements breaking down. Most local authorities have ‘edge of care’ panels (or similar) where additional resources are offered to prevent placement breakdown. It’s good to see the reverse, where support is offered from the outset.
Ann Marie Christian is an independent safeguarding and child protection consultant.