What does this report add to the sector’s existing knowledge?
• Reminds partners across the sector about the importance of continuing to try to reconnect children and young people with their family network after they enter care – alongside early intervention to help avoid children coming into care, this analysis highlights the scale of the potential for further support to enable reconnection and, for some, earlier exit from the care system. • Demonstrates the link between children’s social care and support for children with Special Educational Needs (SEND) – again, practitioners often see a link between those with SEND needs and those in need of support from children’s social care – this programme quantifies that relationship to inform prioritisation of support and improvement.
This report is intended to support existing improvement and reform activity across the sector. Drawing on evidence gathered from the journeys of children who have interacted with the care system, it identifies which parts of the multi-agency children’s services system most commonly shape those journeys, both before and after a child enters care. This provides local and national leaders with a guide to where system improvement efforts are most likely to make a difference, and by implication, where they may be less critical, as indicated by the evidence. In particular it: • Adds evidence to what many in the sector already see in their practice, to help quantify the scale of both the issues and the opportunity. For example, practitioners have long known that gaining parental consent is a key issue impeding early intervention, but this work quantifies the scale of the challenge and the opportunity that can be realised by tackling it. In this way it highlights the key features of the system which are likely to impact the majority of children who enter care (and their families). Similarly, being able to see the proportion of children entering the care system without receiving support from a local authority safeguarding specialist (through an Early Help, Child in Need, or Child Protection Plan) in the six months before they enter care helps to prioritise system wide early identification for proactive support.
Priority system shifts identified Assuming that historic patterns in the needs
These shifts are purposefully ambitious and expansive, reflecting the programme’s aim of using the evidence gathered to identify and challenge how the multi-agency care ‘ecosystem’ could support children and families even more effectively. The shifts are additive in nature and the likelihood of positive impact increases as more of them are made. The shifts that lead to improved support for families before a child enters the care system are also true for supporting children already in care.
of children and their families who enter the care system are a predictor of future patterns, the evidence gathered suggests five priority ‘system shifts’ which will positively impact children at risk of entering care in the future. For each shift, the evidence base is summarised below, alongside the key changes the report recommends in response. Whilst aspects of these shifts are in the direct control of a local authority, the interconnected nature of the multi-agency care ‘ecosystem’ means that achieving the full impact on outcomes for children and families will rely on the whole system to implement them.
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