3 weeks ago
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Select committee hearings typically involve experts answering questions from MPs. Last week there was a strikingly different session, as four care-experienced young people offered their perspectives to the education committee. The point was to increase MPs’ insight by confronting them with children for whom social care is a hugely important fact of life.
Some of the material shared was personal. But these witnesses also had opinions about how services could be changed to better meet the needs of young people in similar positions. As well as describing losses and disappointments, they spoke warmly about adults who had supported them. This included teachers, personal advisers (support workers for care leavers up to age 25) and foster carers. One young woman said her independent visitor (a voluntary role) was a key person in her life.
The importance of sustained relationships was a theme that shone through. Each young person described painful feelings of disconnection. These can be personal but also institutional – for example, the gap between children’s and adult mental health services, or the lack of accommodation outside term time for students who have no other home. The need to support siblings to keep in touch was raised, along with increased entitlements for kinship carers.
A clearer role for kinship care is one element in the children’s bill currently making its way through parliament, although advocates are disappointed that new allowances are not included. Concern about rising costs is the reason, with social care budgets widely recognised to be among the biggest challenges facing local government. The system as a whole is under huge strain. In 2022-23, councils in England spent £7bn on looked-after children. At the end of March, there were 83,630 children in the care of local authorities.
Poverty, driven by austerity, is a key reason for this rising tide of need. While the change of government has brought new policies, including an attempt to limit the profits of private children’s homes and strengthen local authority commissioners, the reforms can also be viewed as the next stage in a process started by the last government. Josh MacAlister, who led a review commissioned by the Conservatives, is now a minister.
Public awareness of the vulnerability of children separated from their parents dates back centuries – think of novels such as Oliver Twist. Research showing that a childhood in care is correlated with adverse life experiences including homelessness and time in prison is not new. But the increased visibility of care-experienced activists and advocates means that outdated ideas are being updated, as a renewed struggle for improved rights and services takes shape. In Wales, new placements in children’s homes or other settings run for profit are being banned.
A campaign to make care experience a protected characteristic, in an amendment to the UK-wide Equality Act, would grant care-experienced people explicit protection from discrimination. The entitlements of 16- and 17-year-olds – including the right to be placed in care, as opposed to regulated accommodation – are in urgent need of being strengthened. While there are, of course, a range of views about priorities, it is right that the voices of care-experienced people are being heard. As Jake Hartley, who grew up in a foster home in Lancashire, told MPs last week, “One person can make a world of difference.”
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