Figure 5: What could have been different about the support that was provided to families, where a lack of engagement or consent from parents was seen? What could have been different about the support that was provided to families, where a lack of engagement or consent from parents was seen?
10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%
0 5%
Building trust in professionals
Domestic abuse support
Earlier support
Reducing mental/ emotional load on parent
Trauma- informed approach
Reducing the number of different interactions/
Therapeutic approach
services involved
Figure 6: Number of children entering care per 10,000 Number of children entering care per 10,000
This issue was reinforced by care experienced young people engaged in this programme, who described the difficulties of gaining parents’ consent or willingness to accept support. They identified fear as being a key factor in parents’ unwillingness to accept support – fear of being judged by practitioners, as well as a fear of the potential negative consequences. The young people engaged believe that this fear is exacerbated for many parents by an often deeply-entrenched pride which makes accepting help challenging, alongside an ingrained lack of trust in the children’s social care system. He was very insulted by it… he hated the idea that he could possibly ever do anything wrong.” Care experienced young person The care experienced young people engaged also spoke of parents often feeling unsafe or unable to speak openly as a driver behind them often not engaging in early support. They described practitioners meeting with parents together rather than individually, so potentially preventing one parent speaking more openly.
Mum felt very intimidated…
Dad was in the home so she couldn’t open up. She didn’t have a safe space to talk to them.” Care experienced young person Gaining this consent more consistently will be linked to the ability of practitioners in the multi-agency team around the family to be able to build relationships and trust with that family. There is existing, wider evidence on how families of different characteristics have different outcomes from the current system. In this work, the representation of children growing up in areas of varying deprivation was analysed, alongside the variation in representation of children of different ethnic backgrounds in care. In relation to deprivation, evidence indicates that in county areas, children who grow up in more deprived neighbourhoods come in to care at 2.5x the rate of children from less deprived neighbourhoods. This pattern is seen across all the authorities involved in the programme, both across district areas and specific Lower layer Super Output Areas, as shown in Figure 6. Further analysis of different drivers of deprivation did not yield any factor that appeared to more strongly correlate with children coming in to care. The quality of housing, in particular, was investigated and was not found to be a factor for 80% of children that come into care.
11.8
Under 1
4
9.3
1-4
3.7
12.2
5-11
5
9.7
12-15
3.9
6.3
16-17
2.9
9.9
All children
3.9
Rate of entry into care per 10,000 0-17 population IMD Decile 1-5 IMD Decile 6-10
When looking at children who are in care for less than a year, 25% are from ethnic minority backgrounds, compared to 15% of the 0-17 population of the data phase authorities as a whole. For children that enter care at the age of 12 or above, 27% are from backgrounds other than white British, whether they remain in care for less than or more than one year.
Analysis of the representation of children from different ethnic backgrounds in care shows that for children that enter care before the age of 12, the children that stay in the care system for more than one year are broadly representative of the ethnic diversity of the local population.
34
35
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs