Government departments and public bodies are to be placed under a duty to promote life chances for children in care and care leavers in England, the Department for Education (DfE) has revealed.

They would be placed under a “corporate parenting duty”, through government amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, ministers’ legislative vehicle for reforming children’s social care.

What corporate parenting duty involves

The duty, tabled by education secretary Bridget Phillipson, would require agencies, when exercising their functions, to

• be alert to matters which adversely affect, or might adversely  affect, the wellbeing of looked-after children and care leavers (aged up to 25);
• assess what services or support they provide are or may be available for looked-after children and care leavers;
• seek to provide opportunities for looked-after children and care leavers to participate in activities designed to promote their wellbeing or enhance their employment prospects;
• take such action as they consider appropriate to help looked-after children and care leavers make use of services and access support, that they provide and access opportunities to promote their wellbeing or enhance their employment prospects.

Scope of duty

The duty would apply to all government departments, generally in relation to their functions in England, Ofsted, English schools and colleges, NHS bodies in England, the Youth Justice Board and the Care Quality Commission.

The relevant departments and agencies would be required to co-operate with each other, and with local authorities, in exercising the duty where they considered that doing so would safeguard or promote the wellbeing of looked-after children or care leavers.

They would also have to have regard to any guidance published by the DfE on the corporate parenting duty, while the department would have to publish a report every three years on its own exercise of the duty.

The provision would not apply to the government’s immigration and asylum functions, while departments and agencies would only have to exercise the duty to the extent that it was consistent with the proper exercise of its functions and was reasonably practicable.

The amendments will be debated when the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill returns to the House of Commons next week, but are certain to be passed because of the government’s large majority.

Existing council corporate parenting responsibilities

The new duty would complement the existing corporate parenting duty on councils, under section 1 of the Children and Social Work Act 2017. This requires them, in the exercise of their functions in relation to looked-after children and care leavers, to have regard to the need:

• to act in their best interests, and promote their physical and mental health and wellbeing;
• to encourage them to express their views, wishes and feelings;
• to take into account their views, wishes and feelings;
• to help them gain access to, and make the best use of, services provided by authorities and their relevant partners;
• to promote high aspirations, and seek to secure the best outcomes, for the children and young people;
• for children and young people to be safe, and for stability in their home lives, relationships and education or work;
• to prepare those children and young people for adulthood and independent living.

The plan to introduce the duty was referenced in a children’s social care policy paper, published in November 2024, but not included in the original text of the bill.

This prompted criticism from organisations including the Association of Directors of Children’s Services and children’s charity Become.

Support for children in care ‘can’t end with local authority’

Become welcomed the proposed duty, with chief executive Katharine Sacks-Jones saying: “For children in care to thrive support can’t end with their local authority.

“Health, welfare, education and other services play a huge role in their lives and can shape their futures. We welcome this much needed step to ensure more public bodies take responsibility for supporting young people to live happy and healthy lives.”

However, the charity said it would be studying the proposals to see how they could be strengthened.

Government figures from March 2024 showed that over 14,000 care leavers aged 19-21 in England, 39% of the total, were not in education, employment or training (NEET).

By comparison, the NEET rate for all young people aged 18-24 in the UK was 14.5% in April to June 2024.

Supporting care leavers in transition to independence

Making the leap into independent living can be daunting for all young people; however, this is even more pronounced for young people leaving care. In an unfamiliar and often challenging world, they frequently find themselves without the support they need to manage life outside of care.

Recognising this significant gap in provision, ASDAN collaborated with care practitioners to develop Moving On – a course designed to equip young people with the skills essential for a successful transition from being looked after to living independently.

Flexible learning, directly mapped to pathway plans

Moving On offers a flexible structure, containing practical, adaptable activities based on real-life contexts. These help care leavers develop the personal effectiveness skills they need to take the next step with confidence.

The course is structured around five modules, aligned to the core areas of care leaver pathway plans:

• Building a home – tenancy, home maintenance, laundry, cleaning, and home safety
• Being healthy – physical health, emotional wellbeing, eating habits, personal safety
• Starting your career – education, exploring and applying for jobs, being an employee
• Managing money – budgeting, borrowing, saving and spending, financial support
• Relating to people – identity, healthy relationships, boundaries, support and community

Each module is designed as a portable journal, packed with practical activities and engaging content to support learning in a practical and relatable way.

Needs-led learning through real-life contexts

While their peers often return to, or remain living in, their parental home well into their 20s, care leavers often do not have this option, despite Staying Put (England) and When I am Ready (Wales) arrangements being designed to enable them to do so. Instead, they face the care “cliff edge”, having to move out and live independently without the safety net of family support.

Each care leaver will have a unique set of needs to support their transition to living independently. Reflecting this, Moving On can be completed with a ‘pick and mix’ approach, to bridge the gap into independence. Learners, and the trusted adult who supports them to complete the course, can choose the activities that are relevant to them in their own current situation.

Empowering young people with financial awareness

Photo: SeventyFour via Getty Images

Blue Mountain Homes, one of the first centres to deliver ASDAN’s Moving On course, provides residential care primarily to looked after children who have been excluded or are long-term refusers of mainstream education. Kirsty Carmichael, its learning co-ordinator, shares how the course develops young people’s financial awareness:

“Being able to manage money is such a crucial skill in all aspects of a young person’s new life,” says Kirsty. “Depending on where they are in the care system dictates how much money they are given.

“In the ‘managing money’ module, we covered weekly shopping budgeting. Our young people didn’t just sit and look at things online, it got them out into the real world. They physically compared different products and prices, and even did taste-tests on different brands and supermarket lines.

“Delivering ASDAN’s Moving On programme has filled a huge gap in what we offered our young people,” Kirsty continues. “The activities frame all the practical, crucial information they need in the real world and give them the chance to experience it in a meaningful way.”

Equipping care professionals to prepare young people for independence

As an education charity and awarding organisation, ASDAN’s mission is to engage, elevate and empower learners with diverse needs. Alongside this, we are passionate about supporting education practitioners, through training and support networks, to prepare their learners for learning, work and life. Moving On’s digital training videos are just one way we are responding to the needs of practitioners, to create flexibility and enhance their delivery of support.

Moving On is the result of years of research into education gaps and how to best serve those hard-to-reach young people in the care system who would benefit hugely from access to real-life skills development. The practical activities prepare learners for the next stage in their lives, and there is no portfolio of work required to assess this progression.

Find out more

Discover how ASDAN’s Moving On course can help young people in your community develop meaningful skills to make a positive transition from care to independent living.

Get in touch with ASDAN’s team of experts today.

In a 2018 survey of young people in care, one in eight said adults had done things that made them feel “embarrassed about being in care”.

The finding came in research for Bright Spots, charity Coram Voice’s ongoing programme to highlight care-experienced young people’s views, in order to influence local authority practice.

Since then, various literary works, campaigns to make ‘care experience’ a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010 and qualitative research have highlighted the effects of stigma on care-experienced people.

Lemn Sissay’s views on stigma in the care system

But where does the stigma around being in care stem from?

In an interview with Community Care, renowned poet and care leaver Lemn Sissay said that the idea of ‘something being wrong’ with children in care originated from those directly supporting them.

“[In my experience,] the most institutionalised people were those who worked in the care system,” he said.

“It’s very easy to have a blanket opinion of a person who’s obviously traumatised but quite demanding.”

A Community Care poll with 530 votes found that social workers largely agreed with him.

Over half (56%) said that the stigma surrounding care-experienced people originated, to a large extent, from within the care system itself, with a further 28% saying this was “somewhat” the case.

Only 16% believed felt this was “not very much” or “not at all” true.

What are your thoughts about the stigma children in care face within the care system?

By Katharine Sacks-Jones, chief executive, Become

As social workers, playing a leading role in the lives of care-experienced young people, you know more than anyone the immense pressure the system is under.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, introduced in December, clearly intends to improve children’s social care, through measures including better oversight and regulation about where children live and increased support for care leavers.

However, further scrutiny shows there are places where it could be strengthened, to significantly improve opportunities and experiences for care-experienced young people.

Last month, I gave evidence to the parliamentary committee looking at the bill, setting out what we welcome, and where it needs to go further for young people. After all, it’s only if their needs are being met that we know the system is working.

Strengthening Staying Close support

Statutory homelessness rates for care leavers aged 18-20 have increased by 54% in the past five years.

This has to change, which is why our End The Care Cliff campaign has been calling for the Staying Put and Staying Close schemes to be fully funded legal entitlements for all care leavers up to 25, unless they opt out.

It’s good news then that the bill says that local authorities must assess whether care leavers aged under 25 require Staying Close support and would then be under a duty to provide it to those in need.

But, as the criteria for assessment is not set out, we’re concerned this could lead to a rationing of support or a postcode lottery. We also want to see young people’s wishes and preferences taken into account in determining what support they might benefit from.

Going further on tackling care leaver homelessness

No young person should be facing homelessness, so it was especially welcome to see the government taking up a key ask of End the Care Cliff, by proposing an amendment to prevent care leavers from being found intentionally homeless. Now we’d like them to go further.

Currently, care leavers aged 18-20 are automatically assessed as being in ‘priority need’, which means local authorities are required to provide them with accommodation.

We think the bill should extend this to care leavers up to the age of 25, giving them a much-needed safety net.

The importance of financial support to care leavers

The bill will require local authorities to publish information about how they are supporting care leavers, particularly around housing, which we think is a positive move.

We frequently hear from young people on our Care Advice Line who are in acute financial crisis, so would like to see an additional focus on what financial support is available to young people leaving care.

Extending corporate parenting duties beyond councils

We’re disappointed that government proposals to extend corporate parenting duties to other public bodies are not currently included in the legislation, and hope they will reconsider bringing forward this important measure.

Preventing distant placements by regional commissioners

The bill gives the government new powers to direct neighbouring local authorities to commission care jointly, with the aim of improving their assessments of need and strategies for ensuring sufficient placements.

We want to make sure that these regional co-operation arrangements don’t lead to more children being moved far from their local area, even if it’s still within the region.

Our Gone Too Far campaign highlights the negative impact of moving children far from families, friends and schools. Far too many young people tell us how this is disrupting their education, affecting their mental health, breaking their connections and leaving them isolated.

This is why we’d like a safeguard in the bill to prevent distant moves when it’s not in children’s best interests.

Requiring a national sufficiency plan

Local authorities are required to offer sufficient, suitable accommodation for children in their care. Underfunding and an increase in the number of children in care have made this challenging.

This has created huge instability for children and led to an increasing number of children living far away.

Whilst the bill introduces a number of welcome measures, including better financial oversight and powers to bring in profit caps for private providers, it doesn’t mention how it will boost capacity.

There needs to be a national strategy to understand how many children in care are living in places that don’t meet their needs, what’s needed to address this and how government will support local authorities to deliver.

Being ambitious for care-experienced young people

We know from the work we do with professionals like you that only so much can be done with the resources available, which is why we need to see funding commitments flowing from this legislation too.

It’s time to be ambitious and deliver the changes care-experienced young people need.

Become supports children in care and young care leavers 

The self-reported rate of disability among care leavers is double that recorded by councils, research has found.

Meanwhile, recorded disability rates among children in care and care leavers differ widely between local authorities, according to the report, published this week by Coram Voice.

The charity also found that leaving care practitioners had limited data and information on disability and felt it was not always well understood within their teams, while disabled young people reported it was difficult to get the support they needed.

Coram Voice said its findings showed that the “under-recording of disability” meant young people’s needs were not fully understood, and there was too little information to plan support for them and monitor its effectiveness.

Dearth of data on care experienced disabled people

It carried out the study to address a dearth of information on disability among care experienced young people. For example, the Department for Education (DfE) does not collect information from local authorities about young people’s disabilities in its annual dataset on looked-after children and care leavers.

The charity sent a freedom of information (FoI) request to all 153 English councils on their total number of children in care and care leavers, alongside the numbers who had a disability, broken down by type, receiving responses from 133 authorities. This revealed that:

• 11% of children in care were recorded as having a disability, the same proportion as in the general population, as measured by the government’s family resources survey.
• 13% of care leavers were recorded as disabled, below the 15.6% recorded by the Office for National Statistics for 16- to 24-year-olds nationally in 2020.

Self-reported disability rate double that recorded by councils

The figure for care leavers was half the rate recorded by Coram Voice for care leavers self-reporting a long-term health problem or disability (27%) through its Bright Spots research programme from 2017-24. This was based on responses from 8,245 care leavers across Britain, with the rate increasing from 22% in 2017-19 to 32% in 2023-24.

Coram Voice also found significant disparities between councils in reported rates of disability, which ranged from 3% to 32% for children in care and from 1% to 36% for care leavers.

For both groups, the most common types of disability recorded by councils were learning (35% of care leavers and 32% of children in care), autism (32% of care leavers and 31% of children in care) and ‘behaviour’ (31% of care leavers and 24% of children in care). Coram Voice said the latter category included ADHD.

The councils’ data did not include a mental health category, despite this being the second most common area of disability self-reported by care leavers in response to the Bright Spots research (20%), behind autism (21%).

Poorer outcomes for disabled care leavers

The Bright Spots research found disabled care leavers reported significantly worse outcomes on average than non-disabled counterparts across a range of areas:

• 12% said they hardly ever or never felt safe at home, compared with 6% of other care leavers.
• 35% always or often felt lonely, compared with 16% of other care leavers.
• 42% reported low wellbeing, compared with 24% of other care leavers.
• 29% said they found it difficult to cope financially, compared with 18%of other care leavers.

However, a workshop with over 100 leaving care practitioners and managers held by Coram Voice revealed significant issues in services’ response to young care leavers.

Practitioners ‘lack data and knowledge’ on disability

They acknowledged that services didn’t tend to record or ask young people their views on disability and that there was limited data and information on disability in leaving care services.

Staff reported gaps in knowledge, a lack of confidence in some areas and uncertainty about referral pathways and systems in relation to disability in leaving care teams, while there was a “disconnect” with adults’ services, eligibility for which was “unclear and fluid”.

This chimed with findings from Coram Voice’s advocacy service about disabled young people’s experience of transition, which included a lack of planning, failure to listen to the young person, frequent changes of staff, disputes between agencies about who funds what and a lack of suitable provision.

Disabled children in care and care leavers ‘invisible’

In conclusion, the charity said: “Our work exposes how invisible disabled children in care and care leavers are in our national statistics – underestimation and under-recording of disability means that individual and collective needs and experiences of disabled children in care and care leavers are not fully understood.

“Currently there is little information available to plan and monitor the effectiveness of support.”

Charity urges improved data and training

On the back of the report, it made 19 recommendations, including that councils:

• Support professionals, including social workers and personal assistants, to develop confidence, skills and knowledge of disability by providing training to address existing gaps,
  practice tools and opportunities to discuss issues in supervision.
• Record children and young people’s self-reported experiences of disability and long-term health conditions and use this to inform individual care plans and service development.
• Collate and review disability data regularly to effectively plan and monitor service delivery for children in care and care leavers, and provide team managers and practitioners with this information.
• Ensure services for children in care and care leavers are accessible and supportive of children and young people with disabilities, including by listening to young people about the state of existing provision.
• Provide disabled children and young people with access to advocacy to safeguard their rights.

It also called for the DfE to publish disability data already collected as part of its child in need census in its annual looked-after children and care leaver statistics, and urged government and research funding bodies to commission further studies to better understand the experience of disabled care experienced people and what works in supporting them.

Care leavers aged up to 25 will be exempted from the need to have a local connection with an area to access social housing, the government has announced.

The policy, designed to tackle homelessness among the group, was a commitment made by the previous government in last year’s Stable Homes, Built on Love strategy, based on a recommendation of the 2021-22 Independent Review of Children’s Social Care.

The exemption will also be applied to domestic abuse survivors and armed forces veterans.

According to government data for England, 2,270 care leavers aged 18-20 and 2,810 aged over 21 were owed a duty by councils to help them secure suitable accommodation on the grounds they were homeless in 2022-23. A further 1,440 18 to 20-year-olds and 1,390 were owed a duty to prevent them becoming homelessness on the basis that they were at risk of becoming so.

How local connections tests apply to care leavers

However, councils with housing responsibilities are permitted to apply a local connection test, in determining a person’s eligibility for homelessness support, with 89% doing so.

In the case of care leavers under 21, or older if in education or training specified in their pathway plan, those who owed leaving care duties by the same authority, or by the relevant county council in a two-tier area, are deemed to have a local connection with that area.

If a care leaver has lived in another authority for at least two years, including some time before they turned 16, they also have a local connection with this other area.

The government said it had written to councils to ask them to prioritise veterans, care leavers and domestic abuse survivors for social housing and would bring forward regulations enacting the change in due course.

‘Young people face care cliff’

Become, a charity for children in care and care leavers, welcomed the policy shift, saying that the current rules meant care leavers often faced the disruption of having to return to their local authority’s area, where they may have felt fear.

“Young people leaving care face a care cliff where important support and relationships disappear and they are expected to become independent overnight,” said chief executive Katharine Sacks-Jones. “Today’s announcement is a welcome step in addressing this and ensuring that young people leaving care have somewhere safe to live.”

For youth homelessness charity Centrepoint, policy and research manager Tom Kerridge said: “Care leavers often find themselves moved all over the country because of budgetary constraints and a lack of housing availability, so this is hugely positive for a particularly vulnerable and often neglected group.”

However, he warned that homelessness duties were “barely worth the paper they’re written on without a sufficient social housing stock and properly resourced councils”.

Free Loaves on Fridays, a new anthology containing letters, stories and poems by 100 care experienced children and adults, was launched last week.

The book, edited by Rebekah Pierre, professional officer at the British Association of Social Workers (BASW), features contributions from people aged 13 to 68, from renowned poet and author Lemn Sissay to first-time writers.

“The book holds up a mirror to the system, exposing both the wonderful potential that good, well-funded social work can have, as well as the lifelong consequences when children are let down,” said Pierre, who spent time in care before becoming a social worker.

Speaking at the launch, Pierre said she hoped Free Loaves on Fridays humanised care leavers and challenged “the stigma and stereotypes that still exist”.

“I hope it flips everything on its head to show we don’t have to just be a small voice at the end of a feedback form but we’re capable of the whole narrative,” she added. “I hope it leads people to action.”

‘It brought up a lot of memories’

The book, whose proceeds are going to children’s rights charities Article 39 and The Together Trust, took Pierre two years to put together and edit.

She attributed this in part to how deeply the stories resonated with her own experience in care – so much so that she had to take time off at times to reflect.

“Having lived experience of [care], [the stories] resonated at a deep level and it brought up a lot of memories so the process [of editing] was very slow,” she said.

“It couldn’t be rushed but it was a privilege. My hope is that the next generation will see themselves represented in bookshops, so it’s absolutely worth it.”

Pierre spent ages 16-18 living in an unregulated hostel after her foster placement broke down unexpectedly, right before Christmas.

Years later she decided to read her case files, only to find “pages and pages of cold, very formal language” where her name had been misspelt “over 100 times”.

Pierre later addressed her social worker in an open letter that included extracts of her case notes, criticising the language used. This is now part of Free Loaves on Fridays.

‘Care experienced people telling their stories in their own words’

Kirsty Capes, care experienced author and one of the contributors, said the book gave care leavers the opportunity to do something rare, to “tell their own stories in their own words”.

Capes, whose debut novel, Careless, is the story of a teenage girl in foster care, strongly praised Free Loves on Fridays’ no-rejection policy, which meant that all submissions were accepted, no matter the author’s level of writing experience.

“To have that no rejection policy, and for [care experienced people] to speak truth to their stories in their own words, that’s an incredibly powerful thing,” she added. “It’s even more powerful for people who’ve often had other people speaking for them.

“I hope it’s just the start of a wider conversation that we all need to have about how [care] experienced people are spoken about and how they’re represented.”

Similarly to Pierre, Capes’s entry in the book highlights the shame she felt when reading her notes, where her social worker often labelled her as a “liar”.

Changing language, she said, was a small thing that practitioners could do that would have “a big impact on care experienced people’s self-identity”, she added.

Another contributor, Kasmira Kincaid, highlighted the importance of acknowledging both the pressures social workers were under and the complexity of children in care’s lives.

“I think children in care will often not see the complexity and challenges social workers are confronted with,” she said. “[But] social workers often have the tendency to do the same thing.

“I think it’s important for them to take away that children in care might have different struggles, but they’re no less numerous and not that substantially different. So, I suppose it’s about seeing people as individuals. To see the complexity and avoid seeing people as a simple stereotype.”

A must-read for every social worker

Emma Lewell-Buck, MP for South Shields and a former social worker, described Free Loaves on Fridays as an emotional journey that would make readers “understand the reality of our system and why it absolutely must change”.

“So often, care experienced people are not listened to, their exclusion from policy setting and decision making is ever apparent,” she said. “Often those who have experienced care are spoken about as though they are all one homogenous group. They aren’t. Their diverse experiences are brought to life in this book.”

National director of BASW England Maris Stratulis called the book a “must-read for every social worker”.

“We must hear and learn from the voices of the care experienced community, and influence and change practice and systems for the better.”

Free Loaves on Fridays is published by Unbound and is currently available from Waterstones.com and uk.bookshop.org.

In 1976, Tony Inwood and his brother, Colin, appeared on the front cover of Community Care magazine.

Tony was 23 at the time and had recently left Caldecott, a residential home for children and young people in Kent. Tony had been put into local authority care at the age of six; both his parents had suffered from severe depression, his father having attempted suicide and spent time in psychiatric hospitals. After a time in foster care, Tony lived at Caldecott for eight years.

Forty-eight years after that original Community Care article, Tony has written a book, Flying Under the Radar, about his childhood and time in care, how this led to a breakdown in his early adulthood – and how he has overcome these challenges to reach a place of happiness and security in his life.

What are Tony’s memories now of his time at Caldecott?

Memories of care

“It wasn’t perfect by any means, and some of the care lacked sophistication,” he says. “But on the whole, it was extraordinary. It just had a special kind of spirit about the place. It drew people in. And it was a kind of healing spirit.”

The focus of the original Community Care article about Caldecott was this spirit, and why ex-residents like Tony and Colin would come back for reunions, years after leaving the home.

Tony says that he “enjoyed going back [to Caldecott]. I enjoyed seeing some of the people I knew”, as well as wandering around the grounds of the stately home that housed the Caldecott Community.

However, after leaving the home, he also developed mixed feelings about the place.

He writes: “For some years, there remained a wistful, almost subconscious longing, to go back there, to want to make things better in a way that cannot be done; to continue and develop relationships that were cut off.”

Support after leaving care

One of the biggest challenges was the minimal aftercare provided to young people leaving care at the time. Tony tells me that leaving Caldecott felt “a little bit like being abandoned. Not quite. But if there’d been some kind of extra ongoing support there, that may have helped.”

Tony writes now that: “I believe that aftercare support is crucial to enable young leavers to adapt to life in the outside world and to feel undergirded by the staff and/or social workers as a part of that process.

“For some this may need to last for several years before they are able to feel fully confident and independent. The vital point here is that to get this support it is not only fair and beneficial to them personally, but enables them to play a role in society according to the gifts that each of them have. So, the lack of this is a very sad double loss.”

Social work support

This lack of stability and ongoing support from one person was also a theme in Tony’s experience of social workers – or child care or welfare officers, as they were known at the time.

From the moment I was put into care I had about five [child care officers] altogether. So you just get to know a child care officer, and suddenly they say, ‘Sorry I’m leaving, you’ll get a new one soon’.”

“This was quite common, I think, in those days,” says Tony. And in fact it is still common for children in care to have multiple social workers during their time in care – as care-experienced adults we interviewed for our Choose Social Work campaign told us.

“In fact, originally in the 50s, I think they were called welfare officers,” says Tony. “And standard Caldecott jokes said, ‘They’re not so much welfare officers as farewell officers’, because people had so many of them, which, of course, didn’t help your stability.”

However, despite the lack of a consistent professional to build a relationship with, Tony says the child care officers “were helpful, and they intervened a lot over the problems with my foster parents”.

When his brother, Colin, requested their local authority notes and Tony read these as an adult, he found that, “Looking back, obviously they did quite a lot to help, particularly in times of crisis. So I would certainly say they helped me, definitely, despite the regular changes.”

Advice for staff working with children in care

What advice would Tony give to social workers and other professionals working with children in care now?

“I think the crucial thing, not so much for the social workers themselves but the actual staff [in residential homes], is to be aware of what children are going through,” he says. “And when they’re displaying erratic behaviour or disturbed behaviour, aggression, withdrawal, whatever it is, to know that that’s an alarm bell.”

This wasn’t the case for Tony: when he started drinking towards the end of his time at Caldecott, staff reacted in a fairly unsympathetic way to the symptoms, not the cause, of his behaviour. In Flying Under the Radar, Tony writes:

“The act of getting drunk as far as I was concerned, was not only to relieve my immediate feelings of anger and frustration, but also, I consider in retrospect, as a kind of plea for help. It was a classic case of ‘Not waving, but drowning’, but no one appeared to notice. It may be that no-one could have helped me at that stage. I do not know. They could have tried though, that was the point. They could have referred me to a psychotherapist, they could have tried talking to me, they could have done anything to show me they could see that I was in pain, but they didn’t.”

The value of relationships

If social workers are able to sustain an enduring, long-lasting relationship with a child or young person, it is a “lifeline”, says Tony.

“I think you feel, ‘Somebody’s interested in me’, even if they can’t solve all your problems, which they obviously can’t. But the fact that you know they’re, if you like, there for you, they’re interested, they’re trying to do their best, is enough to give you that encouragement to think, you know, ‘Well I’ll keep going’.”

In a statement, Nick Barnett, CEO of the Caldecott Foundation, which runs the home where Tony lived, said: “Tony was in care in the 1960s. In his book he shares this experience, reflecting on Caldecott as a wonderful therapeutic community.

“Since then, the therapeutic care sector has come to understand much better, through learning from clinical research and offering carefully adapted trauma-informed support to children and care-experienced adults, how the early childhood trauma which Tony experienced is highly likely to have continued to have an impact into his adulthood, despite some more positive elements to his experience.

“It is critical that children and young adults receive therapeutic care that supports them in addressing childhood traumas, losses and possible associated complex attachment issues so that they are able to live fulfilling lives.

“We must continue to support and guide young adults after they have left care. Life continues to throw challenges at us all. Most of us are fortunate to have loving families to support us through this. Sadly, this isn’t the case for many care leavers.”

How residential care has changed

Tony himself adds: “It is amazing how things have moved on in residential care over the last 50 years. The work done now at the Caldecott Foundation, as it is now called, is fantastic. The staff to child ratios are much higher. The therapies that children receive are very intense and staff training has moved on to a very high and sophisticated level. There is also much being done in the way of aftercare, which is so vital.”

Tony Inwood in 2023. Photo: courtesy of Tony Inwood

Today, Tony leads a “fulfilling and happy” life, and he credits this to his “rock solid relationship” with his partner, Simon, for providing a stable and secure home, along with the Christian faith he discovered in his adulthood.

In writing Flying Under the Radar, Tony hopes to demonstrate to anyone who has suffered a traumatic childhood that “there is always the possibility of a better and worthwhile future”.

If he was talking to a child or young person who was struggling now, he would say: “Things can get bad but, you know, there’s always another day, another year, and it may not always be that way.

“If people are really in a bleak situation, they may find that hard to believe, but this is why I think my story is a demonstration of it.”

Flying under the Radar by Tony Inwood is available on Amazon.

Social Work Recap is a weekly series in which we present key news, events, conversations, tweets and campaigns around social work from the preceding week.

This week’s includes an inside look into the treatment of autistic people and those with learning disabilities in mental health units, a £10m fund for social care research and evidence that helping children in care build support networks reduces their risk of  homelessness.

Jacob Crouch: action taken to protect babies following case, says safeguarding body

Pictured: Jacob Crouch Photo by Derbyshire Constabulary

Action has been taken to better protect babies following the murder of 10-month-old Jacob Crouch, the local safeguarding partnership has said.

Jacob Crouch died at his home in Linton, Derbyshire, on 30 December 2020 after a “brutal”  assault by his stepfather, Craig Crouch, who was jailed for life for his murder last week (source: BBC News).

Jacob suffered at least 39 fractured from assaults by Crouch over several months, according to prosecutors.

The boy’s mother, Gemma Barton, was cleared of his murder but was sentenced to 10 years for  causing or allowing the death of a child.

A spokesperson for Derby and Derbyshire Safeguarding Children Partnership (DDSCP) said it carried out an unpublished rapid review into Jacob’s case, as required when a child dies or is seriously harmed and abuse or neglect is suspected.

They said DDSCP had since taken action to better protect babies and very young children, including issuing guidance on baby safety and delivering “extensive staff training to strengthen practice”.

The partnership did not carry out a local child safeguarding practice review into Jacob’s murder – a more in-depth probe of cases that raise important issues – a decision supported by the national Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel.

Inside the ‘barbaric’ treatment of autistic people and those with learning disabilities in hospitals

Photo by deeaf/AdobeStock

The ‘barbaric’ treatment of some autistic people and people with learning disabilities in mental health units has been laid bare in an investigation for parliamentary magazine The House.

It featured the case of Danielle Attree, who had been sexually assaulted, violently restrained and locked in a room with only a mattress over the course of 14 years spent in 18 different units.

The trauma led to Danielle attempting to take her life multiple times, making herself physically disabled as a result.

“If you treated a dog the way we treat people like Danielle, you would be put in prison for a long time,” said her mother, Andrea Attree.

Danielle is among 2,000 autistic people and people with learning disabilities, including children, currently in mental health units, despite government pledges to move them into community settings in the wake of repeated abuse scandals.

While often admitted for short-term therapy, many ended up petrified by “chaotic” environments, with their resulting distress met with high use of restraint and sedation by staff, The House found.

Restraint Reduction Network manager Alexis Quinn, who was sectioned for four years, also spoke about the long-lasting trauma of being in solitary confinement.

“It’s utterly dehumanising having to urinate in front of people, eat on the floor with your hands because you’re not worthy of a table. I was in 12 different hospitals and it was the same in every one. This is a systematic failure”

£10m social care research programme launched

Photo: Fotolia/aquarious83men

A funding programme has been launched for research to “improve, expand and strengthen” social care services for adults and children.

The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and will invest £10m through its research programme for social care (RPSC), with projects receiving up to £350,000 each.

Applications should support immediate and long-term social care benefits, have strong links with service users, carers and providers and be from teams with demonstrable research expertise.

RPSC will run two funding calls each year with the first going out on 27 September 2023.

Building support networks could reduce homelessness rates for care leavers – study

Photo: motortion/Adobe Stock

A programme helping looked-after children build support networks could reduce their risk of homelessness on leaving care, research has found.

The study, commissioned by the Centre for Homelessness Impact (CHI), found a 10% reduction in the likelihood of a care leaver being threatened with homelessness when local authorities had implemented the Lifelong Links scheme.

Under the programme, developed by the Family Rights Group, a co-ordinator works with children in care to identify and help them connect with adults who are important to them and can provide ongoing support.

The CHI report, carried out by researchers at King’s College London, said previous research had found that 14% of care leavers had slept rough.

“With our most robust model finding a 10% reduction in the risk of a young person leaving care being owed a homelessness prevention duty, we believe that Lifelong Links is a very promising intervention, which should be further rolled-out across England,” the report added.

Tweet of the week

I’ve travelled the country up and down for many years speaking to care leavers, professionals, teachers, and social workers. I’ve seen hundreds of care homes, both regulated and unregulated. Some good, some terrible, some unfit for purpose. What I do know is that children deserve…

— Chris Wild (@ccwild79) August 1, 2023

Do you want to share your views and reflections on social work with fellow practitioners by writing for us? Check out our guidelines page for information on how to share your ideas.

Social Work Recap is a weekly series where we present key news, events, conversations, tweets and campaigns around social work from the preceding week.

From the missed opportunities that led to devastating first few months of the pandemic for social care to the true cost of the shortage in secure accommodation for children with complex needs, here’s what you might have missed this week in social work:

Unaddressed weaknesses left social care ill-prepared for Covid, study finds

(credit: dontree / Adobe Stock)

The government missed opportunities to prepare the social care sector for a pandemic in the years before Covid, a review has found.

The two-year study, led by the Nuffield Trust and the London School of Economics, concluded that a lack of representation in government, along with poor funding, workforce conditions and infrastructure, the immense challenges social care faced in responding to the pandemic.

This saw 20,000 care home residents die in the first three months of the pandemic, inadequate access to personal protective equipment and many people left without adequate support due to the lockdown-induced closure of services.

The sector was excluded from cross-government pandemic-planning testing and, even after exercises that did include the sector identified some issues, no action was taken, the study found.

“The fragmented nature of the system and a shortage of civil servants working on social care contributed to confusion over who was responsible for decisions and implementation in the Covid-19 response,” said the review report.

“Had the sector had the tools it needed then some of the confusion and delays that led to so much distress and heartbreak could have been avoided,” Natasha Curry, the study’s co-lead and the Nuffield Trust’s deputy director of policy, told The Guardian.

PAs’ high caseloads leaving care leavers without emotional support, says report

Photo: motortion/Adobe Stock

Personal advisers’ (PAs) high caseloads are reducing their ability to provide emotional support for carers, a study has concluded.

Support for care leavers’ emotional wellbeing also varied widely across the five English councils studied, found the research by What Works for Early Intervention and Children’s Social Care.

None of the local authorities collected data to monitor the support they provided, amid a wider lack of evidence on the effectiveness of mental health support for care leavers

Care leavers’ access to wellbeing support was hindered by high thresholds for acceptance, practical barriers, such as the location of services, and a lack of consideration for diversity, the care leaver experience and internalised stigma.

While PAs’ relationships with care leavers were critical to the support they received, the study found these were hampered by practitioners’ high caseloads.

In its recommendations, What Works called for PAs’ capacity to support care leavers to be increased, including through training and reduced caseloads.

It also urged the government to support councils to improve the diversity and consistency of the support they provided.

Must Listen: ‘Children locked away: Britain’s modern bedlam’

Photo by Tortoise

Vulnerable children with complex needs are waiting for months, or even years, for a  secure children’s home placement, an investigation has found.

News organisation Tortoise found that children waited an average of two and a half months for a secure bed, in the two years to March 2023.

Of the 50 authorities to respond to Tortoise’s freedom of information request, nine had average waits of at least six months.

Photo by Tortoise/NHS

Some councils told Tortoise that the wait was so long that they simply “gave up”.

The shortage of secure beds has forced councils to, increasingly, seek the High Court’s permission to place children in unregistered – and therefore illegal – settings through so-called deprivation of liberty orders. The Tortoise investigation, which is available as a podcast, found 40 councils were paying at least £10,000 a week for such accommodation for individual children.

The investigation was prompted by the recent case of a 12-year-old girl from Staffordshire, who had attempted to take her own life several times. Due to the severe shortage of secure accommodation in England, the girl, known as Becky, had been placed in isolation in a hospital room for eight weeks and fed through a hatch on the door.

Those supporting Becky had called the accommodation “unsuitable” and “actively damaging”.

Among two other stories explored in the podcast was that of Child X, the subject of a 2017 judgment concerning her need for a secure mental health bed after several suicide attempts. Six years on, aged 22, she is detained under the Mental Health Act in Rampton, one of the England and Wales’s three high security hospitals, found journalist Louise Tickle.

You can listen to the full episode here if you are a Tortoise member or, otherwise, wherever you get your podcasts.

Must Watch 1: Here I am – Leah

Children’s charity Bernardo’s has produced a thought-provoking and emotional short film based on the experiences of young people it supports.

The five-minute video puts the viewer in the shoes of Leah, a 14-year-old girl whose story encapsulates those of various vulnerable young people, and offers a glimpse into child sexual exploitation and how difficult it can be to turn to adults for help.

Must Watch 2: Kids – Channel 4

Photo by Channel 4

Channel 4’s new docuseries, Kids, offers viewers an unfiltered glimpse into the experiences of six young people in care in Coventry.

The first episode follows 19-year-old Annabelle and 17-year-old Xorin. Annabelle, who was pregnant during filming, said she was determined to “break the cycle of care” that saw her taken away from her parents when she was five.

Xorin, who had been exploited by a gang as a child, was seen transitioning back home after three years away and multiple placements.

The episode started with Kayleigh, a therapist from Coventry’s reunification project, making a  visit to Xorin’s mum, Kelly, to help with the transition. However, when interviewed, Kelly admitted that, after having a series of practitioners come in and out of her home over many years, trust was hard to establish.

“I need to see her say what she’s going to do before I trust her or even like her. I need to see people’s words meet their actions,” she added.

You can watch episode one here.

Tweet of the Week:

As a baby, I was abandoned and left to die. After hearing my cries, neighbours called the police. I recovered in hospital from malnutrition, dehydration.

1/5

— Fatima Whitbread (@FatimaWh1tbread) May 15, 2023

Former world javelin champion Fatima Whitbread will be running from 15 to 18 May in support of charity The Fostering Network’s ‘Foster Care Fortnight’, which aims to raise awareness for foster care and its impact on young people in need of a home.

In a series of tweets, Fatima shared her own story of being fostered and the motivation behind her support for the campaign.

Do you want to share your views and reflections on social work with fellow practitioners by writing for us? Check out our guidelines page for information on how to share your ideas.