About transitions lxxvii Young people transitioning to adulthood require a specific focus and a lifelong approach to managing disability and mental ill health. Transitioning to adulthood can represent a period of significant change for a young person with care needs, particularly across their wider support network, including their education (they will stop attending school), their relationship with their family, and possibly their accommodation (they may be moving out of the family home). At the same time, this is typically the point where the management of the individual’s care and support ‘transitions’ from children’s services into adult social care. By the time a young person reaches their teenage years, it is often possible to predict whether they are likely to have long-term care needs, as well as what support they will need to continue to prepare them for their adult life, to maximise their chance of living as independently as possible in their community. These young people may need help with the basic skills of day-to-day living, or they may require more complex help such as with managing challenging behaviour or emotional support. It is essential that children’s services and adult social care are communicating throughout the young person’s teenage years to ensure that they are achieving the best possible outcomes. This is a common area where authorities feel there is opportunity for improvement.
The future of transitions What do we expect to happen to future transitions to adulthood? With the increase in the number of individuals in receipt of local authority support for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), many authorities have expressed a need to better understand the likely long-term impact this will have on adult social care services, as they ‘transition’ from childhood to adulthood. With the already demonstrated recent increases in cost pressures for supporting working age adults, and the subsequent challenges for authorities in the supply and management of high-quality local placements, understanding any additional demand from transitions is important to deliver a high performing service. This section explores the expected volume, timing, and potential cost of increasing transitions of younger adults from children’s services over the next 10 years. Finding 1: There will be a temporary 20% increase in the number of all 18-year-olds, peaking in 2030.
Across the UK population, there was an increase in the rate of children being born from 2001 (570,000 births in England), reaching its peak in 2012 (695,000 births) lxxviii . The number of births at this peak was 22% more than at the start of the century (see Figure 8). This high volume of births has since steadily declined, and the early 2020s saw similar birth rates to the early 2000s. This group of children born around 2007–2016 (i.e. in the years preceding or following the 2012 peak) has aged through the education system, requiring increasing amounts of resources as a whole group as a response to their greater numbers. For example, there was a record number of Year One school placements (5–6-year-olds) in 2018 (five to six years after the birth peak). This means there will be an increase in the number of young adults turning 18, regardless of changes in the national SEND system, building up to 2030, at which point the number will start to decline. The below figure shows the forecasted number of 17-year-olds in education, training, apprenticeships, and NEET in 2030 will reach 748,000, 13% more than the 659,000 in 2022/23 lxxix .
What do we mean by transitioning to adulthood?
Young people with care and support needs, including physical and learning disabilities and mental ill health, are typically supported by children’s services until the age of 18 under the Children and Families Act (although in some cases EHCPs remain in place up to age 25 under individual circumstances to allow additional time for the transition into adulthood). At this point, if they have ongoing care and support needs, they will ‘transition’ to being supported by adult social care teams. These teams will typically support adults from the age of 18 until the end of their life under the Care Act. There may also be a further ‘transition’ point later in life from a ‘working age’ service into an ‘older age’ service, usually when an individual reaches 65. ‘Transitions’ often refers to planning for and managing this process. Some services set up dedicated teams and structures to work with young people through this period of their lives. For example, some county authorities have a dedicated transitions team, often supporting children between the age of 16–25, which may sit as part of their children’s or adults’ service. Others have also constructed whole- life disability directorates – where disabled children and adult teams sit within the same organisational leadership. Often, young people with physical and learning disabilities and mental ill health, and their families, receive significant care and support. This might include specialist educational support, such as a placement in a specialist residential school; 1:1 (or higher) ratios of care and support at home or in the community; and significant respite support for the family and carers. When transitioning to adulthood the nature of this support will typically change and this can present a challenge for services to ensure the best outcomes can be achieved for the young person and their family.
Figure 8: Growth in birth rates versus growth in 17-year-olds in education, training, apprenticeships, or NEET
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Number of births, England (ONS) 17-year-olds in education (All education, training, apprenticeships, and NEET) Forecast 17-year-olds in education (All education, training, apprenticeships, and NEET)
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