Family Law London Blog

Kent County Council has called on councils to do more to ensure that children in care are placed as close to home as possible to minimise disruption to their lives.

According to the Council, there are currently 1,267 children in care that have been placed in Kent by other local authorities.

The leader of Kent County Council, Paul Carter, said: "Being taken into care is probably the most traumatic thing that can happen to a child. Children in care deserve a better deal and all councils must work much harder to provide placements that enable them to remain in their schools and with their friends, unless there is a threat to their safety. This will minimise disruption in their lives and protect the wellbeing of some of our most vulnerable children."

He went on to say that: "There are very good reasons why authorities place some children far away from home – with prospective adopters, with relatives, in specialist residential provision, catering for acute need or disability, that is not available closer. However, there are far too many vulnerable children and young people placed in children's homes and with non-related foster carers miles away from home. It is extremely difficult to be an effective ‘corporate parent’ and look after children placed so far away from home.”

The Council has called on the Government to legislate to:

• require local authorities to place children within 15 miles of their home or school, unless by exception,
• ensure all local authorities report annually on how many children have been placed more than 15 miles away or in another local authority area, and
• require London councils to work together to commission care placements in London to enable children to stay close to home, and reduce pressure placed on Kent's public services by supporting children from other council areas.

Commenting on new research from the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) that claims that local authorities are acting more quickly to process care applications, Sue Kent, professional officer, British Association of Social Workers (BASW), said:

“It is welcome that Guardians feel local authorities are making more timely and appropriate interventions, and the fact that more serious neglect cases are being picked up is clearly vitally important for improving the life chances of vulnerable children. The rise in neglect cases reaching court perhaps could be seen as the impact of the ever worsening economic climate on many families who are struggling to cope.

“However, increasing demand must be matched by resources on the ground, to protect the integrity and professionalism of all children’s social workers, regardless of the field they work in. Although the child’s main professional relationship is with their local authority social worker, BASW members within Cafcass have previously reported that as children’s guardians, the restricted timescale, coupled with ever increasing workloads, often compromises their ability to practice ethically, as they have less time to develop relationships with children to represent their best interests in court cases, and ensure the local authority care plan is the right one for them.

“It is notable that the Cafcass report emphasises that family court work ‘does not detract from the importance of family support services to parents, aimed at preventing, as far as is possible, family breakdown and neglect’, since this area of work  – offering a genuine alternative to care proceedings is currently stretched beyond what is acceptable.

“This has to be a concern for the future, how are these families going be supported, and how will social workers cope with this ever increasing rise in their work while cuts to resources continue.”

The care system is facing major challenges as the number of looked after children rises and retiring foster carers are not replaced fast enough, Children’s Minister Tim Loughton has warned.

He has urged fostering services not to be blinkered when considering who has the capacity to foster and to reach out to a wider pool of potential carers – able to help the increasingly challenging needs of children coming in care.

The Minister has argued that there will be a rising turnover of foster carers over coming years, caused in part by an aging workforce – the vast majority are already in their late forties to mid-50s. He said without younger and skilled foster carers coming forward, the current shortfall of carers will only grow.

Announcing measures to strengthen foster carers’ recruitment and retention, he has called on more fostering services to target those in caring professions, like nursing, teaching and social work, as potential foster carers.

Three quarters of the 65,000 children in care at any one time are in foster care – with as many as 91,000 spending some time in the care system over the course of a year.

A recent study by the NSPCC has found that hundreds of children currently going into care will be put at risk of further abuse if they are returned home without the support needed to keep them safe from harm.

According to the NSPCC, around half of the abused or neglected children who enter care each year are abused or neglected again when they return home.

The NSPCC’s work shows that local authorities face a range of difficulties including:

• A lack of evidence used in making decisions about whether a child should return home, resulting in children who face significant risks of harm.
• Poor support for parents to tackle issues such as drug or alcohol abuse, and mental health difficulties. Many children return home before problems which led to them entering care are addressed.
• Inadequate monitoring for the child returning home, with cases closed quickly after a child’s return despite the risk of problems reoccurring.

The NSPCC is calling on the Government to:

• Publish full data on the outcomes of looked after children who are returned home to increase transparency and accountability.
• Revise the care planning guidance to cover children returning home from care, ensuring that placement decisions are based on the child’s needs, and that the necessary support is provided to children and their families.
• Improve the support to families to tackle problems such as substance misuse, domestic violence, mental health issues and poor parenting before and during reunification.

The Fostering Network has called on the Government to make further investment in foster care as a matter of urgency. The call comes after the latest figures from Cafcass show that care applications have exceeded 10,000 over the last twelve months for the first time.

Vicki Swain, campaigns manager at the Fostering Network, said: “As the vast majority of children in care are fostered, this rise in applications will put even more pressure on a fostering system already feeling the strain.

“Fostering services have been struggling with a shortage of foster carers for the last few years. This has made it difficult to make sure children and foster carers are well matched, meaning children end up living a long way from home or being repeatedly moved around the system as placements break down.

“We are therefore calling on the Government to provide more funding so that fostering services are able to properly pay and support their foster carers and have the resources to encourage more people to foster. Without this, the system is going to struggle to cope and will fail this very vulnerable group of children.”

Ofsted has recently published a report into the causes of delay in the adoption system. The report find that the most significant cause of delay for children needing adoption is the length of time it takes for cases to be completed in court. The average time taken to complete care proceedings in the cases inspectors examined was almost 14 months.

Not intervening early enough, and cases being left to ‘drift’ prior to care proceedings, were also key factors that hindered successful adoption in the cases reviewed. The report found that some children had been known to children’s social care for a considerable length of time prior to care proceedings being initiated.

Typically, these cases were characterised by long-standing concerns about either neglect or emotional abuse, or both. Delays jeopardised good outcomes for children. The children were older when they entered care, and their life experiences had resulted in some significant behavioural challenges for potential adopters.

The report also found many good examples of practice where local authorities worked to minimise delays. Overall, there was good parallel planning when children were taken into care or about to be placed for adoption. Most of the cases tracked showed a clear commitment to early planning for adoption at the same time as rehabilitation was being pursued. This ensured that if children could not go back to their birth family then the process for adoption was already in place.

Of those adopters that were interviewed, the majority were happy with the overall service that they received. Most did not feel that they had experienced significant delay, although nearly all considered that there had been some kind of delay, however minor. Nearly all adopters felt they had received a welcoming and sensitive response when they first enquired about adoption, and that assessment was necessarily thorough.

The report found that processes for matching children with adoptive placements were generally robust and of the authorities surveyed, there was little evidence of delay caused by an unrealistic search for a ‘perfect’ ethnic match.

The Government has published an Action Plan for Adoption to overhaul the system for prospective adopters and strengthen the performance regime for local authorities.

The current system is too bureaucratic and takes too long for both potential adopters and children who need a stable, loving home.

The numbers of children adopted from care has been decreasing in recent years. Just 3,050 children found new homes through adoption last year, the lowest since 2001. A recent survey showed that one third of adopters were not satisfied with their experience of the adoption system. Research has shown that with every year that a child waits their chances of being adopted decreased by 20%.

The new action plan will include proposals for:

• New adoption scorecards, to hold local authorities to account. The first scorecards will be published in the coming weeks.
• A revised approval process for new adopters, cutting it to six months.
• A national gateway for adoption, providing a first point of contact for anyone interested in adoption.

Children’s Rights Director Roger Morgan has published the annual Children’s care monitor, which gives nearly 2,000 children’s views through an online survey.

This year, the monitor survey included a new focus on children’s experiences of placement change in care. Just over half (55%) of the children in care in the 2011 survey said they were only given a week or less notice before they were last moved to live in a different placement. Twenty-three per cent reported that they were given no notice at all of their last move and were told on the same day they were moved.

As in previous years, the 2011 survey found a high level of separation of siblings in care. Nearly three quarters (73%) of children in care who also had a sibling in care reported that they had been separated in different placements.

Children in children’s homes were found to be more likely than children in foster homes to be separated from siblings in care. In fact, 96% of children surveyed in children’s homes who also had siblings in the care system had been separated from brothers or sisters.

Up to the time of the survey, the average number of times children responding had moved placements had risen from 4 in 2010 to 5 in 2011. Well over half (57%) of children in care surveyed said they had no choice of placement the last time they were moved.

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) has published a position statement setting out potential changes to the adoption system in response to criticism that it takes too long for a child in care to be permanently adopted.

Fostering requires a lot of skill, and foster carers must be trusted and given the support they need to do their job properly, England’s children’s minister Tim Loughton has said.

The British Association for Adoption & Fostering (BAAF) has published new research which highlights the difficulties faced by adoption agencies in finding homes for sibling groups. The Association warns that a shortage of people willing to adopt groups of brothers and sisters who need to stay together puts these children at risk of missing out on permanent homes.

Investment in foster care is essential to ensure that more foster homes are available for children who need them, according to the Fostering Network. The warning comes after the release of new figures showing a further rise in children coming into care in England and an increase in the number living with foster carers.