Consultation on the Green Paper Care Matters: Transforming the lives of children and young people.

a response from research in practice

research in practice actively supports a network of over 100 public and voluntary sector agencies across England and Wales in using an evidence-informed approach to improve services and outcomes for vulnerable children and families.

We limit our response to comments on aspects of the Green Paper that relate directly to the expertise of research in practice as an organisation - ensuring that services are informed by research evidence on the most effective ways to promote positive outcomes for children and ensuring that knowledge of research is embedded in the delivery of professional services.

research in practice welcomes the ambitious scope of the Green Paper and its focus on initiatives to promote improved outcomes for children and young people in care. The attention to a broad range of the experiences of children and young people in care, and to facilitating their enjoyment of, as well as their achievements in life are to be welcomed.

We note with pleasure the evident influence of recent research on the Green Paper’s recommendations. In particular the use of qualitative data that draws on the experience of care leavers themselves, and the way in which such research findings directly inform the draft ‘pledge’ to children in care – for instance in the development of the role of independent advocate and the extension of foster care provision up to the age of 21 in order to mirror the experience of the general population.

The use of focus groups and text surveys in developing the policy laid out in the Green Paper, and the sustained emphasis on facilitating children and young peoples’ input into care processes, for instance through participation in a ‘Children in Care Council’ are also to be welcomed. We would encourage any resulting legislation, regulation and guidance to also point to the vital need to involve children’s parents and wider families.

• Creating a National Centre for Excellence in Children’s and Family services

We welcome the commitment to develop more systematic approaches to identifying, delivering and sharing effective practice, but question whether a new Centre – either physical or virtual – is needed in order to achieve this.

• The desired outcomes may be more effectively achieved through providing material support to organisations already working with service agencies improve their understanding and use of research evidence

• We would also recommend providing additional finance to service agencies for resources (materials, time and training) to their staff

• Inspection and review procedures might be used as a means to encourage evidence-informed practice by inspecting for signs of the use of research evidence at every level

• research in practice draws on a decade’s experience as the largest children and families research implementation project in England and Wales. We would emphasise that that knowing ‘what works’ is only one ingredient in service organisations being able to make use of research knowledge. Dissemination and implementation of that knowledge requires agency commitment and the services of development organisations who can build the skills in staff in order that they can deliver access evidence and make use of it in delivering effective interventions.

• A National Qualifications Framework for Foster and Residential Carers

The proposal to develop a national ‘tiered’ model of placement types underpinned by a national qualifications framework for foster and residential carers is innovative and forward thinking. A training and qualification framework offers a means to ensure that knowledge of research is embedded in the delivery of foster care and to enhance the status of foster carers through formal qualifications and ‘expert practitioner’ status. We would recommend that this training takes account of what we know from research evidence – for example, the influence of the foster carers’ own experience of education, the importance of a positive attitude towards educational attainment and their ability to support children in their care in this area.

• ‘Virtual Head teachers’.
• One clear finding that emerges from a number of research studies is that looked after children want to be treated ‘the same as everyone else’ in school and do not want their looked after status to cause them to stand out as ‘different’ from their peers. Any development of the ‘Virtual Head teacher’ model needs to take account of this clear message from the children and young people concerned.
• This proposal raises important questions about lines of accountability between ‘virtual’ and ‘actual’ Headteachers that will need careful examination to ensure that looked after children are not further marginalised within the structures of mainstream schools.
• A single Virtual Head teacher per authority will present very different challenges. For small unitaries, they could be expected to know every LAC personally whilst in large shires with over 1,000 looked after children the expectations of the role must inevitably be different. This observation comes from our experience of working with a network of authorities of such varying size.

• ‘Social Work Practices’

The proposal to introduce private ‘social work practices’ run at arms length from the local authority by voluntary organisations or as private businesses raises a number of concerns:

• We are concerned that the proposal as presented here is not supported by any evidence that such an initiative would improve outcomes for children and young people.

• We are also concerned that the social work practice model would undermine the drive towards providing effective means to support evidence-informed front-line practice. If social work services were to be contracted out in this way, by what means would practitioners to be kept in touch with research evidence and evaluated best practice? The dilution of contact that this model of provision implies seems likely to lead to a further widening of the already varying standards of service both locally and nationally. We would also be concerned about the blurring of accountability that would result from such a move.

• Research evidence has directed attention in recent years to the importance of strengthening the corporate parenting role of professionals and elected members. This proposal raises questions about accountability in relation to the corporate parenting responsibility of local authorities. If we accept, as the paper suggests, that social workers ‘embody the corporate parenting role on a day to day basis’ how will this role be facilitated by a structure which places social workers at increased distance from other professionals and elected members within the local authority?

• At a time when Children’s Services professionals are working hard to implement structural changes and develop inter-agency working practices, placing social workers at arms length from their Children’s Services colleagues in, for instance, Education or CAMHS, would seem unlikely to facilitate successful inter-agency working.
• This model of practice is likely to result in the most experienced social workers leaving the local authority sector. Such dilution will not be in the interests of children and young people

• The model advanced in the paper of the service user as an individual in a position to make informed choices about ‘which practice is best able to meet their needs’ is at odds with the evidence about the psychological health and levels of educational attainment of children and young people entering the care system. Children and young people who have to leave their family home as a result of exposure to varying degrees of stress, neglect and abuse and are arguably not well placed to make instrumentally rational decisions of this kind. This is not to suggest that children and young people should not be consulted about the professional services they receive, but this raises questions about how and by whom they might be supported in making decisions of this kind.

• Pilot studies and capturing promising practice

Many of the proposals in the Green Paper concern pilot studies of new initiatives.  It is vital that careful consideration is given to the design of and the aspirations for the evaluation of these pilots. Complex multi-intervention programmes present a major challenge to evaluators seeking to derive evidence of ‘what works’ in terms of an understanding of the causal mechanisms by which an intervention achieves change and how such mechanisms are influenced by contextual factors. Given the huge number of variables in the delivery of any intervention, there must be realistic expectations about the generalisability of findings from these pilots. We should be modest in our expectations about the kind of knowledge we can derive as a basis for policy-making from the evaluation of short term projects within a limited time scale.

We would recommend that in addition to introducing such pilots, increased attention be given to capturing promising practice examples from successful initiatives already delivering improved outcomes for looked after children. To take two examples:

Buckinghamshire County Council
Education of Children in Public Care Team.
In Buckinghamshire outcomes in terms of GCSE results have improved from 33 per cent of care leaver achieving any GCSEs in March 2002, to 70 per cent in March 2006. In 2005, the Education of Children in Public Care Team was presented with the Council’s Achieving Top Performance award. The team is led by Sally Morgan, who through experience at NCB had sound knowledge of the research evidence on improving educational outcomes for looked after children. Strategic and operational partnership in managing the team is seen as key to its success

The team is joint-funded by education and social care budgets and employs experienced teachers and social workers. They work closely with a range of relevant agencies.

The team maintains an extensive database which includes: the school, social worker, care status, any special needs, attendance and attainment for each looked after child. This may be updated on a daily basis.
Support to individual children includes:

• Ensuring every child has a PEP and it is implemented
• Acting as advocate for a young person
• Setting up education case conferences where there is a need
• Providing direct support/tuition to address learning gaps or the danger of exclusion
• Setting up short-term flexible educational packages where there is a gap in school placements

There are a number of other promising practice models that relate to different aspects of the Green Paper proposals. In relation to the question of housing support for young people leaving care, the Foyers Network which aims to provide housing and a sense of community to young people who are unable to live at home until they have completed the transition to adult life should be evaluated.

Ealing Council
At the Children and Young People’s Services Awards 2006, Ealing Council was named UK’s best corporate parent for children and young people in care and the council’s looked after children education team was honoured as the UK’s social care team of the year.
Councilor Ian Gibb, deputy leader and cabinet member for children’s services, said: 

“Our efforts are having powerful results. An impressive 13 per cent of our care leavers are going on to university and many are involved in mentoring younger students and improving services.

“Our success as a corporate parent is founded on our commitment to listening to looked after young people and acting on what they say.

“Ealing’s corporate parenting committee is led by young people who tell us directly what want. When they told us they were worried about the cost of higher education we introduced a £5,000 university allowance, and when they showed us how much it costs to set up a new home, we raised the leaving care grant from £500 to £1,000.

“When the team started six years ago, only 17 per cent of young people gained one GCSE, but that has now shot up to 60 per cent, and more are going on to university than ever before.”

Ealing has set up a range of education schemes for looked after children:

• An annual award ceremony where young people receive an academic award for their achievements in school
• Ealing were the first social services department to pay £5000 a year to any looked-after young person who is accepted into higher education.
• Ealing give young people open access to councillors as corporate parents.
• The council runs an annual survey of looked after children carried out by their peers over the phone. This method is seen as more likely to reveal bullying.

(Source: ‘Children in care need education’ Community Care 08/01/2001)

The looked after children education team (LACET) aims to support young people in school or college by working with teachers and monitoring the progress of each young person. LACET run revision and support sessions throughout the year and SATs and GCSE revision sessions at exam time. They will visit young people in their homes if they need particular support with schoolwork. During the school holidays they run special activities and trips and throughout the year organise events to support and celebrate the achievements of young people in care. They also monitor and facilitate the progress of personal education plans.

LACET supports looked after children and care leavers throughout their education and offers a service to school staff, social workers and carers working with young people in care. They run a drop-in centre with education sessions for young people who are not in school to make sure they don’t miss out on education if they are not attending school. The aim is to get them back into school as soon as possible. All the LACET are qualified and experienced teachers.

Conclusion
research in practice welcomes the opportunity the green paper offers to address the needs of and improve outcomes for looked after children. We urge that further development of these proposals makes full use of best practice examples as well as of research evidence and continues to draw on the expertise and experience of stakeholders to deliver on the pledge it makes to children in care.

Contact for this response:
Susannah Bowyer. Research Officer research in practice
susannah@rip.org.uk

Director:
Celia Atherton, research in practice, Blacklers, Park Road, Dartington, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EQ
celia@rip.org.uk
tel: 01803 867692

January 2007