How to use this report This report sets out the evidence and its implications for how the system could change. It is structured around five ‘system shifts’: ambitious, evidence-based changes to how multi-agency partners work together to identify, engage, and support children and families. Each of these shifts is based on analysis of what practitioners identified as missing or as having the potential to be different in the cases reviewed, supported by wider data analysis and engagement: • System shift 1: Successfully supporting adults’ needs more often through aligned partnership resource and practice. • System shift 2: Gaining the trust and consent of families to participate in early support more often. • System shift 3: Integrating schools in multi- agency partnerships that support families. • System shift 4: Targeted support from specialists in the local authority, at the right time, where it is needed, informed by joined up data across agencies. • System shift 5: Supporting an ongoing connection between families more often and more successfully, across foster carers and partners. Shifts one to four focus on preventing children from entering care in the first place, and broadly follow the sequence of a family’s journey, from ensuring families are offered the support they need; to being successfully engaged in that support; to ensuring the child’s school is integrated into the support around the family; to ensuring the right children are supported by specialists in the local authority’s children’s social care department.
The programme was overseen by a cross- sector Advisory Group, with representation from Coram Voice; local authorities (Directors of Children’s Services, Section 151 Officers, Directors of Public Health and Chief Executives); Department for Education (DfE); The Early Years Alliance; and the NHS, including providers of Child and Adolescent Health Services (CAMHS). Throughout this approach, the principles, outcomes, and enablers of the Children’s Social Care National Framework have been used as guiding design principles for the analysis and recommendations xv . In particular, the work seeks to support several of the outcomes for children’s social care defined in the framework: • Outcome 1 : children, young people and families stay together and get the help they need. • Outcome 2 : children and young people are safe in and outside of their homes. • Outcome 3 : children and young people are supported by their family network.
Whilst this work has intentionally considered various possible changes within the children’s services system (recognising its complexity and interconnectivity), it has not sought to explore: • Prevention and reconnection in the context of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. • Opportunities to reduce the growth in unit cost of private sector commissioned homes for children in care. • How to best support children and young people currently in care in the very highest cost settings (very high cost residential or secure/welfare placements). • Whether the sum total of resource across all parts of the children’s services system (including established and ‘new’ funding) is enough to deliver on a more preventive or reconnecting agenda, specifically around the care system. • What can be done to increase the sufficiency and availability of foster carers to support children in care.
Shift five has a different focus and considers how the system can build upon shifts one to four to actively and consistently deliver a safe return for a child to their family network where possible. It is important to be clear that for children already in care shifts one to four are as important as shift five in promoting reconnection to family and potentially exit from the care system – they are additive. These five shifts are necessary and can be enabled by a series of changes across the system. Section 4 sets out the enabling conditions – at a local and national level – which would serve to create the environment for those shifts to happen in a way that delivers the desired outcomes. Section 5 then draws the financial implications of implementing these shifts: what the modelling suggests these changes could mean for expenditure on children in care placements over the next decade, and why the case for sustained investment is both compelling and time-sensitive. Finally, Section 6 proposes a series of next steps for the sector based on using the findings from this work to deliver practical action. In essence, this report sets out the evidence for where efforts to make changes to the multi-agency system should be targeted in order to have the biggest impact on the children at risk of entering, or already in, the care system.
SCT, CCN and Newton would like to extend their thanks to all those involved in this programme of work for being so generous with their time, expertise, and support.
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