What could be done differently? Acknowledging the capacity issues highlighted by senior leaders engaged in this work, the key changes needed to support more children to exit the care system will hinge on ensuring any available capacity is used in the most targeted and effective way. Using data to ‘wrap around’ the children in care and their families – where the prospect of exiting the care system is most likely – is one way to achieve this. This raises innovative possibilities such as gathering data directly from children in care or their foster carers around whether exploring this outcome is timely in the current context of the child. Layering on the changes described in shift one would also help identify when parents are beginning to engage in support to also inform this practice. Alongside this, senior Case study One local area has achieved a 32% increase in the rate of children positively exiting the care system, alongside reducing the average timeframe to deliver this outcome by 18 weeks. This was achieved by: 1. Using data to identify children in care who are most likely to have potential to exit the care system so that system capacity is used in a targeted way.
leaders raised the importance of a culture that promotes these outcomes for children in care as being of equal importance to other outcomes delivered by the children’s social care system. This shift also links strongly to the national direction of travel to promote family group decision making as a means to either support reunification to parents or exit of the care system to the care of the wider family network. These approaches were echoed by care experienced young people engaged in this work, who also emphasised the importance of listening to children and young people through the reunification process; returning to these conversations often in case their views and preferences change; and going at their own pace throughout the process.
more than one year only have one placement in their first year in care compared to 92% who leave the care system within a year. This would corroborate the view that a meaningful proportion of system capacity goes in to responding to changes of placements (noting that active work will lead to some of the single placements sustaining). It also suggests that promoting placement stability on its own will not deliver a higher rate of children leaving care.
Senior leaders within children’s social care services spoke consistently about the capacity challenges they face – how responding to crises such as children who need to come in to care, or those where their placement has broken down, often means capacity to promote reconnection becomes reduced. Analysis shows that most children who stay in care for more than one year have a single placement in their first year. As shown in Figure 21, 65% of children who stay in care for
Figure 21: Number of placements that each child had in the first year of being in care Number of placements that each child had in the first year of being in care
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2. Convening the multi-agency team around the family at specific points in the permanence planning process to discuss how exit from the care system could be achieved, with a strong culture of championing exit from the care system. 3. Strengthening the delivery of this practice through IRO monitoring. 4. Tracking and reporting on the efficacy of this activity at a management level.
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1
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Number of placements
Summary: This evidence suggests that the prospect of family return, possible for a meaningful number of children, could be pursued and delivered by the system more commonly. In addition to the support to families described in shifts one to four, the analysis suggests key roles for foster carers in the ongoing team around the child and family.
Importantly, 80% of children who enter care between the age of one and 15, and stay for more than one year, are initially placed in a fostering setting, with approximately a 2:1 ratio of internal vs commissioned placements. As a result, how foster carers are integrated into wider multiagency activity to reconnect children and their family is crucial. This is an important consideration in the policy direction towards Regional Care Co-operatives overseeing much of the recruitment of, support to, and commissioning of foster carers. It is also important to recognise many of the features of the system articulated in other shifts also hold true for the families of children in the care system and what would need to be addressed for more children to exit the care system – the most prevalent needs being associated with the parents; engagement and consent being a key enabler; schools being the agency most likely to interact with the child.
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