Care Matters: Time to Deliver for Looked After Children

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Care Matters Time to Deliver for Looked After
Children
Helen Jones Oxford July 7 2008
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The challenge for child welfare policy

• The narrative-
• Where have has it come from
• Where is it now
• Where is it going

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Where have we come from1991

• the whole child care system, and public
  attitudes towards it, are still influenced by
  vestiges of the old Poor Law principle of less
  eligibility that is the notion that children who
  are looked after away from home should not be
  better off than those in similar circumstances
  who remain with their parents. This depresses
  expectations because so many children in care
  come from poor families suffering multiple
  stresses and low standards of living. an
  uneasiness about providing too high a standard of
  care for children looked after by a local
  authority lingers on..
  Parker et al., 1991

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1991-2008

• 1991-5 Looking After Children
• 1997 New political commitment to progressive
  universalism e.g Surestart
• 1997 Quality Protects
• 2000 Assessment Framework
• 2003 Every Child Matters
• 2006 Care Matters Green Paper

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Key steps on the journey

• Challenge between the universal and specialist
  services-
• Universal driven by broad issues of child
  poverty, morbidity, family breakdown
• Specialist driven by system failures such as
  child deaths,
• Need for understanding of interaction between the
  two

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Every Child Matters Outcomes

• Being healthy
• Staying safe
• Enjoying and achieving
• Making a positive contribution
• Achieving economic well being

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Every Child Matters

• Systemic change to
• Create opportunity and build services around the
  child, young person family
• Support parents carers
• Promote prevention early intervention
• Integration of
• Universal targeted services
• Services across the age range 0-19

• Better outcomes for all children and young people
• Choice and confidence for parents
• Achievement and opportunity for children
• Narrowing gaps

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2008 The wider policy context

• The Childrens Plan which set out the
  Governments ambitions for all children and young
  people
• Safeguarding Action Plan
• Public Law Outline for family justice proceedings
• Youth Crime Action Plan (forthcoming)

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Where are we now for looked after children
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Who are Children in Care?A changing and diverse
population

• 60,000 in care at any point in time 83,000 in
  course of a year (level of churn is reducing)

A changing population
Majority in family placements
With a high level of needs
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Care Matters- but why now?

• As work progressed on ECM and progressive
  universalism, looked after children featured in
  all the statistics
• Mental health
• Educational failure
• Not in education and training
• Teenage pregnancy
• And even where educational attainment rising for
  all children, gap widening for looked after
  children

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Why can we do better now?

• Understanding the nature of the problems-
• Child and family
• Organisational
• Services and interventions
• Setting an outcomes framework and monitoring
  progress through a robust framework for
  assessment, planning, intervention and review
  (the Integrated Childrens System (ICS))

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Care Matters Key themes

• centrality of the voice of the child
• uncompromisingly high ambitions for children in
  care
• good parenting from everyone in the system
• stability in every aspect of the child's
  experience

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Care Matters Theoretical Framework

• References to attachment theory and resilience
  theory as key concepts for government, managers
  and practitioners in thinking about the purpose
  of interventions
• Links to the importance of working with children
  from a strengths-based perspective- we wanted to
  focus on childrens capacities, not deficits

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Components of current strategy
Underpinned by very strong partnership with the
sector - need to build on that to generate
sector-led improvement across the board.
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Encouraging greater use of family and friends
care though new statutory framework and
requirements in family proceedings B
Ensuring provision of family and parenting
supports
280 million for short break care for
disabled children
Family and parenting support
Requiring effective care planning to ensure
supports and services in place for return home
Making it easier for relative carers to obtain
orders which give them parental responsibility B
Significant investment in Multisystemic Therapy
(MST) to keep young people on the edge of care
or custody at home
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Toolkit has been developed for LAs to help them
develop action plans to improve stability. 
Will be disseminated via GOs, and shared with
CFEO
Children and Young Persons Bill provisions to
improve placement decisions and quality of
placements
Stability
Work to improve quality of support and
training for foster carers in their role in
promoting the emotional well being of children
Care planning reforms, and work to support
better commissioning
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Revise guidance on promoting the health of
looked after children, guidance to be statutory
for local authorities and PCTs ensure looked
after children
New NIS measure on the emotional and behavioural
health of looked after children
Health and Well-being
Have access to positive leisure activities
using arts, music, sport
Closer working relationships with health
partners locally, their role in corporate
parenting
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Designated teacher on a statutory footing (B),
more personalised learning (eg 500 personal
education allowances)
Giving highest priority in school admissions
Virtual school head pilots,
Educational Attainment
legislating to reduce school moves B
Mapping LAC data against the National Pupil
Database (NPD) to gain a better understanding
New guidance on exclusions services working
together to reduce the need for exclusion
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Promoting employment opportunities e.g. through
apprenticeships
Extending the right to a personal adviser to 25
for all care leavers in education or wanting to
return
B
Transitions for Care Leavers
Bursary of 2000 for care leavers going into
Higher education
B
Pilots to stay in foster care to age 21
B

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2008..Where are we going to

• Aspiration, aspiration, aspirationand to
  achieve all this through delivering on all our
  Care matters commitments and-
• Integrated working across universal, targeted and
  specialist services
• Co-location, multi agency and multidisciplinary
  working
• A world class workforce

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Piloting new models
Multi systematic therapy
Family Drug and Alcohol Court
Virtual Head and Private Tutoring
Regional Commissioning Units
Social Work Practices
Pastoral Care in FE
Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care
Right2BCared4
Staying Put 18 Family Placement
Social Pedagogy
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But how will we know when we have got there?

• Voices of children and young people through
  Children in Care Councils and Annual Ministerial
  Stocktake
• Improvements in outcomes and narrowing the gap
• A whole system approach to service delivery
• Wide uptake of evidence-based interventions

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Measuring Success
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Everyone who works with children, young people
and their families
Next Steps vision for workforce
Understands the importance of working in
partnership with children and young people, their
parents and families, to realise the highest
possible ambition for them
Recognises that children and young people have
needs and strengths across all 5 outcomes
Understands their role in identifying problems
early and ensuring that they are responded to
Works effectively with colleagues from different
professional and occupational backgrounds
Has high quality and up to date skills, knowledge
and practice in order to deliver world class
levels of service which respond to the needs of
all children and young people, including the most
vulnerable or disadvantaged
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Social pedagogy

• A theoretical and practical framework for
  understanding childrens upbringing
• Focus on building relationships and practical
  engagement with children and young people e. g.
  using art, music, outdoor activities
• Particular expertise in working with groups

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So

• How do we make all this happen?

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The Implementation Gap

• It is one thing to say with the prophet Amos,
  Let justice roll down like mighty waters, and
  quite another to work out the irrigation system.
  
• William Sloane
  Coffin
• Social
  activist and clergyman
• NIRN

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What do we know

• Excellent evidence for what does not work
• Dissemination of information by itself does not
  lead to successful implementation (research
  literature, mailings, web postings, promulgation
  of practice guidelines)
• Training alone, no matter how well done, does not
  lead to successful implementation
• Implementation by edict alone does not work

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And..

• Effective intervention practices and programmes
• Effective implementation practices
• Good outcomes for children and their families
• No other combination of factors reliably produces
  desired outcomes for children and families

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What seems to be required
Ensuring the integration of Implementation Factors
Organisational Components Selection, Programme
Evaluations, Administration, Systems Intervention
Influence factors Social, Economic Political
Implementation Drivers
Core Implementation Components Training,
Coaching, Performance Management
Fixsen, Naoom, Blasé, Friedman Wallace, 2005
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.but through the eyes of the child

• Childrens worlds are smaller and more immediate-
  its the little things which count
• I knew I belonged when my
• foster carer put my school
• photo on the wall

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Contacts

• www.everychildmatters.gov.uk
• www.dcsf.gov.uk/publications/childrensplan
• Helen1.jones_at_dscf.gsi.gov.uk