Decision in Child Care

A Study of Prediction in Fostering

R. A. Parker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032068138
• eBook ISBN: 9781000437904
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Social Work

Responsible decisions are continually being made in social work. In particular the decision to place a child in a foster home can have far-reaching consequences for their welfare and it is vital that we make the best possible choice on their behalf. Although in the 1960s thousands of children were boarded out every year no systematic attempt had yet been made to summarize this experience as a guide for practice. Thus important decisions lacked the help which past experience could provide.

Originally published in 1966, this study assembled the past experience of foster care in one area, analysed it and presented it in such a way that predictions could be made of the outcome of a potential placement. At the time it offered an important contribution to the task of providing the best possible care for children separated from their own families. Today it can be read in its historical context.

1 Introduction

I The Study of Foster Care

An important feature in the development of the child care service over the last fifteen years has been the emphasis placed upon boarding-out. In an atmosphere of statutory encouragement and Home Office enthusiasm local authorities have increasingly sought to place the children in their care with suitable foster parents. Indeed, the foster home has come to be regarded as the best way, other than adoption, of providing for the needs of the child who for one reason or another cannot remain in his own home.

Notwithstanding the apparent desirability and humanity of such a policy it ought, like any other, to be regarded as an experiment which needs to be observed and tested.¹ Neither the policy nor the practice of child placement can develop intelligently without reference to what is happening and has happened in a variety of foster homes throughout the country. The modification of existing policies, the formulation of new ones, and the improvement of social work techniques all depend upon the accessibility of past experience. Little opportunity, however, seems to have been taken since the implementation of the Children Act, 1948, to assess the policies which have been adopted or to assemble and make available the store of experience which has been accumulating.

¹ As Prof. D. V. Glass has pointed out—’Given a new service it is surely necessary to include as an integral part of the structure some provision for examining the results and ascertaining how far and as a result of which specific measure, the desired ends are being achieved’. (‘The Application of Social Research’. British Journal of Sociology. Vol. 1, No. 1, March 1950, p. 23).

This study, which was carried out in Kent with the co-operation of the Children’s Committee and the staff of the Children’s Department, had as its aim these two objectives. That is, first, to assess the degree to which boarding-out has been successful, and second, to bring together and sift some of the recorded experience with a view to providing a basis upon which improvements in foster home placement might be made.

II Background to the Child Care Service

The child care service today¹ derives its form primarily from the Children Act of 1948. The three immediate antecedents of this Act are commonly considered to have been the correspondence in The Times during the summer of 1944,² particularly the letter from Lady Allen of Hurtwood; the case of Dennis O’Neill³ who died in a foster home where ill-treatment was subsequently proved; and lastly the Curtis and Clyde Committees which in 1946 published their findings on the care of deprived and homeless children in England and Wales, and Scotland respectively.⁴ A fairly full examination of these influences, their detail and effect is provided in the Sixth Report of the Work of the Children’s Department of the Home Office¹ and need not be discussed here.

¹ For an historical account of services for deprived children see ]. S. Heywood, Children in Care. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959. ² Various issues July 15, 1044 onwards. Lady Allen opening the correspondence on July 15 claimed that ‘the public are, for the most part, unaware that many thousands of children are being brought up under repressive conditions that are generations out of date and are unworthy of our traditional care of children’ adding that ‘because no one government department is responsible the problem is the more difficult to tackle,’ but concluding that ‘a public inquiry, with full government support, is urgently needed to explore this largely uncivilized territory.’ Considerable correspondence followed this letter. By the end of the month nineteen letters had appeared. Susan Isaacs wrote (18th) and so did George Bernard Shaw (July 21st and August 2nd), and many others. With but a few exceptions all agreed in essence with Lady Allen’s letter and called for an inquiry. For example: ‘We need a comprehensive study of the situation in all its aspects and based on this an equally comprehensive reform.’ (Gwendolen Chester—July 19th). ³ See ‘Report on the Circumstances which led to the Boarding-out of Dennis and Terence O’Neill at Bank Farm, Minsterley, and the steps taken to supervise their Welfare.’ Cmd. 6636. May 1945, (The Monckton Report). An awareness of such dangers was certainly not new however: for instance the 20th Annual Report of the Ministry of Health (1938-9. Cmd. 6089) stressed that the arrangements for visiting foster children were often inadequate, adding that these were ‘strikingly illustrated by the fact that a case of ill-treatment of a boarded-out child was discovered by the local officer of the N.S.P.C.C.’ (p. 72). ⁴ Cmd. 6922 ‘Report of the Care of Children Committee’, 1946. (Curtis) and Cmd. 6911 ‘Repon of the Committee on Homeless Children.’ (Clyde).

Briefly the Act places central responsibility for the care of children deprived of a normal home life on the Home Office. The local authorities however are responsible for its implementation, and the children for whom they provide care are those received under section 1 of the Act and those committed to their care as a ‘fit person’ by a juvenile court under the provisions of the 1933 and 1963 Children and Young Persons Acts. There are thus two main channels through which children ‘come into care’,² but in each case they become the responsibility of the children’s departments³ set up under the Children Act.

The Act itself places a duty on local authorities ‘to receive into care, where it appears to them in the interests of the welfare of the child, any child in their area under the age of 17 years who has no parent or guardian, or is abandoned or lost, or whose parents or guardians are prevented for the time being, or permanently, by incapacity or any other circumstances from providing for his proper accommodation, maintenance and upbringing.’⁴ Not only do local authorities have this duty to receive such children into their care, but also to return them to their parents or guardians whenever this is reasonable and possible. If this is not achieved the child stays in care until the age of 18.

The Children Act, 1948, does not give an authority power to take a child into care against the wishes of his parents. It provides, in effect, for a voluntary agreement between parent and authority. However, once a child has been received into care under this provision the children’s committee can in certain circumstances pass a resolution assuming parental rights (section 2 of the Act). Such decisions are not taken lightly and machinery exists to safeguard the rights of the parents.¹ These resolutions are usually passed when the child is abandoned, orphaned, and sometimes when the parent or parents are suffering from a permanent disability or where they are unfit by their ‘habits or mode of life’ to have care of the child.

¹ Home Office Sixth Report of the Work of the Children’s Department May, 1951. pp. 3-6 (henceforth often referred to as the ‘Sixth Report’). ² Children can also be accepted into care under section 6 (4) of the 1948 Children Act, that is from an Approved School, viz. ‘A child on licence from an Approved School or under supervision of the managers, who has no home or whose home appears to be unsatisfactory.’ (6th Report para. 23, p. 7.) Few children are received under this provision—in 1950 there were 36 in England and Wales, and 68 in the year ending March 31, 1960. Recently too under Section 5 (1) of the Matrimonial Proceedings (Children) Act, 1958, and under section 2 (1) of the Matrimonial Proceedings (Magistrates’ Courts) Act, 1960, a small number of children have been taken into care: in the year ending March 31, 1963 a total of 117. ³ The responsible body at local level is, of course, the Children’s Committee of the Council. ⁴ Sixth Report para. 24, p. 7.

Under the Children and Young Persons Acts, 1933 and 1963, juvenile courts can make a fit person order in respect of a child brought before them either as delinquent or as in need of care, protection, or control.² The vast majority of such orders commit the child to the care of a local authority which acts as the fit person. Those in need of care, protection or control,³ are children ‘against whom certain offences have been committed, including children neglected, abandoned, exposed, assaulted, or ill-treated in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering or injury to health; children, who through lack of proper care or guardianship, have fallen into bad associations or have been expo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Table of Contents
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Development of The Study
• 3. Description of Results: The Children
• 4. Description of Results: The Foster Home
• 5. The Prediction Table
• 6. Discussion
• I. Additional statistics on the child care service
• II. Supplementary definitions
• III. Notes on statistical method
• IV. Matrix of concomitance
• Bibliography
• Index
• Index of Persons