ConservativeHome's Local Government Blog

Should there be less secrecy in child protection?

The Conservative MP Tim Yeo gave an interesting speechin the House of Commons on Wednesday denouncing the social work practices of Suffolk County Council. Often social workers are criticised for being too slow to remove children from their birth parents where this is necessary (and then often to slow to place the children for adoption, keeping them in temporary foster placements for years on the off-chance that their birth parents may get their act together.) Yeo feels that in Suffolk there is the opposite problem of children being seized without justification.

Some might therefore shrug off such complaints and conclude: "Poor social workers get criticised either way." I think the link between such terrible errors is that social workers can put their ideology ahead of common sense. Yeo feels greater accountability is the answer. Unfortunately the trade off would mean less secrecy which of course one can understand the value of. Yeo agrees with the journalist Camilla Cavendish that: "The privacy of the child has become synonymous with the privacy of the professionals." He says: "The secrecy surrounding the process, together with the appalling lack of scrutiny and accountability in the social care and family court system, is made worse by the fact that Members of Parliament are prevented from having proper information in relation to 'child protection' cases.

Haringey Council placed two-year-old with blind 82-year-old foster carer

Haringey Council alarming failure to protect the borough's children have again been making headlines. The latest story concerns a two-year-old boy, Baby K, being placed in foster care with an 82-year-old blind widow. She died earlier this month at home where she lived alone with the boy. What an extraordinary placement. No doubt a risk assessment was carried out and all the health and safety boxes ticked.

This case also indicates a biase against adoption. Couples in their 50s coming forward offering to adopt are routinely turned down as too old. While the choice of foster carer may be exceptional another aspect of the scandal is more familiar. Baby K had spent 18 months in the care system amidst delay and muddle. Why had no arrangements been made for adoption? That would have given him the chance to thrive in a permanent, loving home as a member of a family.

One hopes that Haringey will now get on with it. Keeping children in care should be a last resort. Denying Baby K a permanent loving home would mean paying perhaps £50,000 a year for the next 16 years to keep him in foster placements. It would mean Baby K having social worker visits ever six weeks, having six monthly reviews. It would mean him growing up with a carer who couldn't agree sleep overs or school trips because she doesn't have parental responsibility. This is not something we should be contemplating for a two-year-old.

Why do only 0.7% of Looked After Children go to university?

I am dubious about Councils handing over money to the Local Government Information Unit. But their boss Andy Sawford is right to focus on their poor outcomes for children in care (or "Looked After Children") as they are known. He says on the LGIU blog:

Of every 1000 children in care only 7 will go on to University. Children in care have the wealthiest parent of all - the state – yet it fails them in this most fundamental aspect of child development: education.  It won’t surprise you to know that children in care today are more likely to go to prison than to go on to get a degree. It doesn’t have to be like this.  The Danes for example manage to send 7 in 10 of their children in care to University.   At LGiU we are interested in whether we can import some of the success of social pedagogy, but in reality we need more urgent game changing solutions to improve the education of children in care right now.

I will be interested to see what they come up with. There is a lot to be said for the Danish school system. 13% of Danish children attend fee-paying schools compared with only about 7% here. Also some form of further or higher education is very much the norm for Danish children in general to move on to.

Harriet Sergeant has written an important study of failings in the provision of foster care called Handle with Care published by the Centre for Policy Studies. Sir Cyril Taylor has written on this site about how to improve the prospects for children in care - notably by increasing boarding school provision.

Best of all is to achieve a reduction in the number of children in care by increasing the adoption rate.

Gay adoption critics "retarded homophobes"

The state funded British Association for Fostering and Adoption, usually sticklers for Political Correctness, has used the term "retarded" to describe opponents of gay adoption, according to a report in the Daily Mail.

Since 2002 unmarried couples, including gay couples, have been allowed to adopt. I think children will usually be better off placed with them than left in care. But preference should be given to a married couple wishing to adopt even though it would be reasonable to conclude such a placement would be in the best interests of the child. The law is supposed to ensure the interests of the child are paramount but there are an array of politically correct rules which mean this is overridden in practice.

The Daily Mail say the number of children placed for adoption has actually fallen since 2002 from 3,800 a year to 3,200 a year. Last year there were just 30 adoptions by male gay couples and 50 by lesbian couples.

I'm on the Adoption Panel for my Council and it does seme to me that BAAF are part of the problem rather than part of the solution when it comes to the challenge of getting children out of care and placed for adoption. I think all Councils use BAAF as they seem to have some sort of monopoly. What is needed is an alternative body providing guidelines for social workers and othes on the various practical and legal issues. One seeking to overcome the barriers to adoption, not add to them with their own politically correct spin.

Lammy misses the point

Culture Minister and Tottenham MP David Lammy spectacularly missed the point  about the Baby P scandal in his interview with Radio 4's The World At One this lunch time. He was among the Ministers warned by former Haringey social worker Nevres Kemal last year who warned of flaws in the way the Department was operating. "The Council rebutted powerfully the allegations this social worker made," says Lammy.

That was evidently good enough for him. As the local MP, with all the evidence that you would have thought he would have been made aware of, he was satisfied with the Children's Services Department. Even now he offers not a word of contrition. He says resignations should only take place "if" there were systemic failures.

"It is quite possible that social workers will not want to work in Haringey," he says blaming the media. If he really wants good social workers to apply for jobs in Haringey then he should recognise the need for a dramatic change of direction for the Department - under new management.

How to really look after "Looked After Children"

Sir Cyril Taylor outlines some radical plans to transform the life chances of children in care.

There are currently 61,000 looked-after children in care and a further 323,000 children in need of care in England, who are supported in their families or independently by local authorities.  The combined total of 384,000 is equivalent to 5 per cent of all English children.  A further 5,000 children are permanently excluded from mainstream schools and are housed in residential special referral units. This data was supplied by Government officials to the author for his paper 'Who Will Champion our Vulnerable Children'?

Sadly, the academic performance of most children in care is poor, with only 12.6 per cent of children in care for a year or more obtaining five good GCSE in any subject in 2007, compared to close to 62 per cent for all children.

The Government's 2007 White Paper 'Care Matters: Time for Change' recommended a number of positive steps to improve the education of children in care.  However, even bolder steps are needed to ensure that children in care receive the education they deserve.

As well as the 61,000 permanently looked-after children in England at any one time, a further 25,000 children spend at least some time being looked after during the year. Government figures reveal that the total annual cost of looking after them is £2.4 billion, or approximately £40,000 per child.  A study by the London Schools of Economics shows that the real costs of failing to look after our vulnerable children is close to £10 billion a year including such costs as apprehending and incarcerating young offenders who were in care, as well as welfare and health costs.

Some 41,700 of these children are placed with foster carers, 5,700 are living in children's homes, with a further 7,000 placed with relatives.  The Fostering Network estimates there is a shortage of at least 8,000 foster families.  The total annual cost of a child in foster care is close to £20,000 per child, with some independent fostering agencies charging up to £50,000 per child. The foster carer, however, typically receives only £200 per week or £10,000 per year of this amount. The balance of the £40,000 is used for administrative costs.

In my forthcoming book  "A Good School for Every Child" to be published by Routledge in early 2009, I recommend four major reforms to improve the way we look after children in care.

First, responsibility for mentoring the children and supervision of foster parents should be moved from social services department to the schools attended by the children.  Each school would assign responsibility for mentoring children in care to a particular teacher.

"Shocking" Norfolk social workers

Disturbing piece in the Mail on Sunday about social workers in Norfolk placing two children in care rather than approving them to be adopted by their grandparents. There is a suggestion that the grandparents have been discriminated against because they are Christians.

Stories of Politically Correct excesses by Social Services Departments are as commonplace in Conservative Councils as Labour Councils. Often it seems that Tory councillors allow social workers to prevent adoption taking place, for left wing ideological reasons.

These stories carry a health warning. The Councils are constrained in what they are able to say defending their position. But Norfolk is a Conservative Council which sounds as though it is allowing its social workers to pursue their own agenda - which is at odds not merely with Conservative principles  but also its duty that the interests of the child must be paramount. I hope some questions will be asked.

Cllr Harry Phibbs: Improving adoption rates

Harry is a Hammersmith and Fulham Councillor.

Congratulations to Conservative Home for launching this new section.  We have too many arm chair generals in our Party grumbling about how David Cameron and the Shadow cabinet should be taking a tougher line on cutting tax, or fighting crime or raising school standards but at the same time ignoring the considerable power that we already have in local government to make a difference in these and other areas.

One of the most important tasks of a local councillor is as a "corporate parent" to the several hundred children in care that each Council looks after. But are we doing a good job? Statistically the answer must be: "No." Vast amounts are spent but the life chances are dismal. Getting more children out of institutional care and adopted into permanent loving homes is not easy - but it is critical.

So I regard being on the Adoption Panel - with its fortnightly Wednesday meetings preceded by the heart rending telephone directory sized reports that come thudding down before each one, as the most important thing I do.

Frequently problems such as crime and disruptive pupils in class are caused by 'Looked After' children.  Despite the dedication of social workers and foster parents the harsh reality is that the state makes a bad parent. It also makes for a phenomenally expensive one. How many of those Councils that insist it is quite impossible for them to reduce the Council Tax have made a serious effort to increase their adoption rates?

In 2005-06 only 12 children were placed for adoption in my local Council. In the last year the number more than doubled to 25, including 11 in the new category of Special Guardianships which is recognised by the DFES as equivalent to adoption. Adoption transforms the life chances of the child compared to be brought up in care.

Together with improved preventative measures and the decrease in teenage conception this means that the number of children in care fallen over the past year from 393 to 373. There is a target to place 45 children from adoption this year.

Political correctness needs to be confronted by Tory councillors rather than deferred to - especially when it is particularly black children who are perversely denied loving homes in the name of Political Correctness. It is a great pity that statutory requirements prevent us from having an entirely "colour blind" approach to adoption. But while looking for an ethnic match is a requirement we are quite entitled to balance this by the need to be flexible and avoid delay. Any Conservative Council worthy of the name should ensure that this is the approach adopted by its Social Services department.