Child-Centred Foster Care

A Rights-Based Model for Practice

Annabel Goodyer

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781849051743
• eBook ISBN: 9780857004024
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Fostering is vitally important: the majority of looked after children are fostered, yet these children are often left out of the agenda and their voices are not heard.

This book sets out a child-centred approach to foster care which argues against thinking about children purely from a psychological perspective and instead places children's views, rights and needs at the centre of care. It sets out the theory behind working in partnership with children who are fostered, and discusses children's views about fostering systems and living with foster carers. The book then outlines how to put the theory into practice, offering models, processes and best practice examples. Practical advice is given on establishing effective communication and good working relationships between practitioners, carers and foster children.

This insightful book aims to promote better services and outcomes for fostered children, and will be essential reading for social work practitioners and students.

Part One

Setting out the Terrain

Chapter 1

Introducing the Contexts of Fostering

In this introductory chapter, the setting of fostering and the argument for a revision of current understandings and practice in fostering are explored. I begin by looking at the key facts about fostering and considering what constitutes a child-centred approach. There is no general agreement of what a child-centred approach is, but the basic principle involves engaging with children and their families, understanding and providing services that reflect their individual needs, and seeking and taking into account their wishes and feelings, but remaining aware that they may not yet fully understand the risks involved in their choices. A child-centred approach is therefore one that acknowledges a duty of care towards children and young people, but this is balanced with their own wishes and feelings as service users who are entitled to a responsive, individualised service. The following definition from the UK government publication Safeguarding Children and Young People from Sexual Exploitation (DCSF 2009a) provides a good starting point for understanding of child-centred services:

2.2 Action to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people who are sexually exploited should be child-centred and focus on the child’s needs. Those working with children and young people should engage with them and their families throughout the process. The particular needs and sensitivities of girls and boys, children with a physical disability or learning disabilities, those from ethnic communities, or those for whom English is not their first language, should be reflected in the provision of services. The wishes and feelings of children and young people as well as the concerns of parents or carers should be sought and taken into account in reaching any decisions about the provision of services which affect them. However…professionals should be aware that children and young people do not always acknowledge what may be an exploitative and abusive situation. (DCSF 2009a, p.13)

Facts and figures

Statistics concerning looked after children are available from all four countries of the UK: from the UK Government’s Department for Education (for England), the Scottish Government’s Education Analytical Services Division, the Welsh Assembly Government’s Statistical Directorate and the Northern Ireland Executive’s Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety. Information about looked after children is collected annually from each of the 150 English local authorities and published, at aggregate level, on the UK government’s information and statistical website. The figures in Table 1.1 are based on returns collected by the English Department for Education (DfE 2010) for the year ending 31 March 2010. I have here remained with data from only one of the four UK datasets.

Table 1.1 Children looked after by local authorities in England

Year	2007	2008	2009	2010
No. of looked after children	60,000	59,400	60,900	64,400
Male	33,400	33,400	34,600	36,100
Female	26,600	26,000	26,300	28,200
Age at 31 March
Under 1	3,000	2,900	3,300	3,700
1 to 4	8,700	9,000	9,500	10,900
5 to 9	10,900	10,400	10,500	11,200
10 to 15	25,500	24,900	24,900	24,900
16 and over	11,800	12,200	12,900	13,800
No. in foster care	42,100	42,000	43,900	47,200
With 3 or more placements in year	7,600	7,000	6,800	7,000
Main categories of need pre-care
Abuse or neglect	37,200	36,700	37,100	39,200
Absent parents	5,000	5,100	5,300	4,900
Family in acute stress	4,700	4,900	5,300	5,800
Family dysfunction	6,300	6,300	6,900	8,000
Ethnicity
White British	44,600	43,800	44,500	47,100
Mixed: white and black or Asian	3,400	3,300	3,200	3,400
Asian or Asian British	2,300	2,600	3,000	3,200
Black Caribbean or Black African	3,900	3,700	3,600	3,700

Numbers have been rounded to the nearest 100.

Source: Department for Education (2010)

An exploration of the annual statistics gathered about English looked after children demonstrates how fostering has become increasingly important in the care of looked after children and young people. There were 64,400 looked after children in March 2010: 47,200 of those children were in foster homes. In 2009, 43,900 (73%) looked after children were looked after in a foster placement. This was an increase on the 2008 figure of 42,000.

The national UK statistics also reveal some improvement in the numbers of children and young people who have achieved some stability in their foster placement. Stability is defined as having been in the same placement for two years, a definition of stability that would not be likely to be acceptable if applied to children in the general population. Of those children who had been looked after for two-and-a-half years or more, 67 per cent had, in the past two years to 31 March 2009, lived in the same placement or their combined adoptive placement and preceding placement for two years. This percentage has increased gradually since 2005 when the percentage was 62.9 per cent. Approximately one-third of looked after children have therefore not lived in the same placement for two years. Worryingly, 10.9 per cent of looked after children had three or more placements during 2009, up from 10.7 per cent in 2009. This figure had been decreasing steadily from 13.7 per cent in 2005.

In 2009, the remaining 27 per cent of the looked after children population not in foster homes lived in a variety of placements: 6,920 children lived in residential care, mainly in secure units, children’s homes, residential units or hostels; 4,100 lived with their parents; 2,500 were adopted during the year, most of whom were aged 1–4 years; and 1,900 looked after young people were living independently. The 2008 public service targets (PSAs), which are set by the DCSF, for the way in which local authorities should look after children in public care, were for 80 per cent of looked after children and young people to have ‘permanency’. What these statistics reveal, however, is the wide variety of foster childhoods, from those settled in stable foster homes to the 10.9 per cent of looked after children who moved three or more times in the last year.

Children become ‘looked after’ for a variety of reasons: these were identified in Wilson et al.’s (2004) Knowledge Review 5: Fostering Success, a scoping overview of the trends in fostering research which was undertaken for the Social Care Institute for Excellence. This review suggested three main reasons. First, because the parents were unable to care for the child due to factors such as parental illness, imprisonment or homelessness. The second main reason mentioned is problematic parenting, covering issues such as neglect and abuse. The third reason is to do with problems attributed to the child’s behaviour, or the child’s relationship with the family breaking down for reasons associated with the child’s conduct (Wilson et al. 2004).

Legal contexts

The lives of children who are fostered in public care are largely determined through the application, by social work practitioners, of statutory responsibilities to protect and look after children. These responsibilities are outlined in the Children Act (England and Wales) 1989, which was first implemented in 1991. As with all UK legislation, there is an international requirement that the Children Act complies with international human rights legislation. The key piece of children’s rights legislation internationally is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989 (UNCRC), which was ratified in the UK in 1991 (UN 1989) and has now been agreed by all countries except the USA. It is a human rights treaty, covering children’s civic, economic, family, social and educational rights. As a signatory the UK government agreed to work towards ensuring that UK children had access to the human rights listed in the convention: this compliance is monitored periodically. The UNCRC sets minimum standards for nation states to uphold; for example, to ensure that children have rights to a name and identity, to be consulted and to challenge decisions which directly affect them. In considering issues concerning any child, his or her race, ethnicity and religious and linguistic background must be taken into account. Children’s rights encompass three distinct areas: protection, provision and participation (UN 1989). Amongst the rights that have particular relevance for looked after children are the following:

Article 9(3): the right of the child who is separated from one or both parents to maintain personal relations and direct contact with both parents on a regular basis, except if it is contrary to the child’s best interests.

Article 12: the right to participation requires states parties to assure that the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.

Article 16: the right to privacy. No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation.

Article 20: children who cannot be looked after by their own family must be looked after properly, by people who respect their religion, culture and language.

Article 25: the right of a child who has been placed by the competent authorities for the purposes of care, protection or treatment of his or her physical or mental health, to a periodic review of the treatment provided to the child and all other circumstances relevant to his or her placement.

(UN 1989, pp.4–8)

The 1989 Children Act is broadly congruent with most of the aims of the UNCRC. Legislative changes since the UK adoption of the UNCRC and the Children Act 1989 have encouraged theoretical, policy and practice shifts in understandings of and attitudes towards children’s involvement in the services that are provided for them. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child requires signatories to the convention to report on their progress in enacting the provisions of the convention. The UK government is required to report every five years, and first did so in 1994; the UN Committee repeatedly expressed concern about such issues as the rights of asylum-seeking children, the lack of a Children’s Commissioner for England and child poverty in the UK.

Some progress has now been made in this area, for example the appointment of a Children’s Commissioner for England in 2004, but asylum-seeking children are still imprisoned with their parents. Previous legislative models of childhood which perceived children as passive and vulnerable, who relied on adult protection, interpretation and perceptions of their needs, have now been reviewed. UK legislation post-1989 has allowed children’s own agency, perceptions and values to be considered, to some extent, within current thinking about and planning for children. However, the 49th session of the UN Committee on the Rights of Children met in March 2008 to respond to the reports from the four countries of the UK (UK Children’s Commissioners 2008). The committee made many observations of areas where they hoped to see improvements before the next periodic reports in 2014. In relation to looked after children, the monitoring of children in foster and residential care (by social workers), the need to take into account children’s views of their services, the provision of child-accessible complaints systems and the initiation of contact for children who are separated from their parents and siblings were all identified in the report as areas requiring improvement.

The Children Act 1989 is the key piece of legislation relating to entry into the looked after children’s system in England and Wales. This is distinct from legislation in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where separate parliamentary systems provide differing legislation and provisions for looked after children, which lie outside the scope of this study. The concept of corporate parenting in the Children Act 1989 is one that recognises the rights of birth parents, but sees their responsibilities as being supplemented or shared by local authorities, in respect of looked after children and young people. This partnership between birth parents and local authority social services departments was fore-grounded in the Children Act 1989 (Fox Harding 1998). Fox Harding identified four possible value positions in child welfare services. The laissez faire position involves minimal public...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part One Setting out the Terrain
• Part Two Setting out the Evidence Base
• Part Three Putting Children’s Views into Practice