✍ Children's social care: System needs 'radical reset' to prevent 'enormous' problems down the line - report

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Children’s social care in England needs a “radical reset” to stop the “cycle of escalating problems,” a sweeping review has said.

Former teacher Josh MacAlister, led the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, and is calling for a “five-year comprehensive ambitious reform and investment programme” to improve the lives of children in care and their families.

The review has made more than 80 recommendations, including calls to rebalance resources “to back those who care for and love children”.

And there has also been a call for a windfall tax to be imposed on the profits made by the largest private children’s home providers to fund the radical overhaul.

Mr MacAlister said the review was launched because of “widespread recognition” that outcomes for children in care and families who face lots of challenges are “far too poor” and that without change “costs will rise”.

He said: “What we found is that this is a system – the children’s social care system – that needs a radical reset because, at the moment, it is in a cycle where problems escalate, costs rise, outcomes continue to be too poor and that’s getting worse and worse over time.

“What we need to do is to tilt the system firmly back to supporting the adults, the carers, the parents, the families who love their children.”

Mr MacAlister said those working on the review, which began in March 2021, started by listening to people who have first-hand experience of the system, including children in care, young adults who were in care, grandparents, foster carers and parents.

He said: “What’s been hopeful about the review process is meeting thousands of people who are working in the system who are desperate to see change happen, and examples right the way across the country of people doing things differently for children and families.

“What we’re trying to do through the review is mainstream those ideas, bring them into the centre stage.

“Lots of the solutions to the problems we see are bottom-up – the report is filled to the brim with great examples of things that are being done.

The report’s main recommendations:

• Make the fact that someone has been in care a ‘protected characteristic,’ recognising that many experience subsequent discrimination or stigma.
This would make the UK the first place in the world to recognise children in care and care leavers this way.

• Phase out young offender institutions over the next decade as they are “wholly unsuitable” for children.

• Create an “Expert Child Protection Practitioner” role, which would see experienced social workers work with family teams when there are concerns about the serious harm of a child.

• Increase support to extended family members such as grandparents, aunts and uncles who look after relatives who may otherwise go into care.

• Create a new Lifelong Guardianship Order so care leavers can legally and practically join the family of another non-related adult who is important to them.

• Lead a national recruitment drive to bring in 9,000 new foster carers over three years.

• Allocate £253m for the professional development of social workers over four years.

• Create a new set of care standards to ensure children receive care up to their 18th birthday, and improve quality in children’s homes.

‘Invest really smartly now’

“The problem is they’re being done despite the system – not because of it.”

Mr MacAlister also said costs can be saved in the long run if the government invests in change now.

He said when children grow up without lifelong loving connections and when families are not supported, the social costs later down the line are “enormous”.

“It’s why we’re calling for a five-year comprehensive ambitious reform and investment programme so that we can set this system up to succeed for the hundreds of thousands of children and families who need it,” he said.

Read more:
Social care system in England ‘handing over children to ruthless gangs and criminals’

The review has calculated the costs of adverse outcomes for the social care system as £23bn a year and is suggesting an investment of £2.6bn over the next five years to reform the system and “reduce long-term costs”, Mr MacAlister said.

“The option for the government is simple either carry on as we are limping forward, into 2032, where we’ve got nearly 100,000 children in care, with costs of £15bn a year, up from about £10bn at the moment, or invest really smartly now in an ambitious programme of change so that we can improve outcomes and make the system more sustainable,” he added.

The review is calling for the government to levy a windfall tax on the 15 largest private residential children’s homes and independent fostering providers.

A tax of 20% on profits could generate hundreds of millions of pounds to help transform the system, it says.

‘The argument is really clearly put’

Moving away from the existing model will require investment and local authorities need help to “take back control” by establishing regional care cooperatives, the review recommends.

These would be responsible for creating and running public sector fostering, residential and secure care, and commission not-for-profit and private care, and would aim to end profiteering in the market and enable more children to be placed near family, friends and their community if this is in their interest.

Mr MacAlister said “it’s too soon” to tell if the government will take on the recommendations or provide the funding.

But he added: “The argument is really clearly put, which is that if the government don’t invest, if the government don’t pursue a big change programme, we will end up in a more costly situation in the years ahead, and outcomes will be significantly worse.”

Responding to the review, the government did not immediately commit to most of the recommendations but said they would be considered in the longer term.

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