The Pursuit of Permanence

A Study of the English Child Care System

Claire Baker, Ian Sinclair, Jenny Lee, Ian Gibbs

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781843105954
• eBook ISBN: 9781846427428
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Social Sciences

Children in public care complain that they have too many placements. Professionals agree but little is known about the reasons for this instability or how it affects different groups of children. The Pursuit of Permanence explores this core issue for children's services.

Based on the largest study of the English care system in recent years, the book examines the children (what they need and what they want), their movements into, out of and within the care system, the nature and quality of their placements and the outcomes (whether the children are settled or happy). It analyses the reasons for movements and outcomes in different groups of children, and the relative impacts of the departments, social work teams and placements. It concludes with suggestions about how the care system should work, what it should offer and how it should be managed and inspected.

This detailed, innovative and comprehensive study is essential reading for all professionals and academics involved with fostering, leaving care, adoption and children's services, as well as policy makers and students on social work courses.

Chapter 1

Introduction

We would want our children, when they are in our care, to have a stable experience because we know that placement moves unless [they are] for positive reasons…can be highly damaging. (Social Services Manager)

Introduction

In Britain most children stay with at least one of their parents until they are grown up. Such comparative permanence is not the lot of those looked after by the state. Their ‘care careers’ begin with a move from home, and usually involve one or more subsequent changes of placement. Some move many times, some less frequently, others hardly at all. This book results from research into these different patterns of movement, and the reasons for them.

The background to the research lies in the belief that most children who are looked after move too much. The children themselves complain about the moves; official indicators of performance discourage them; children who have many changes of placement do less well than those who do not. Most moves are unsettling and, for the children, ‘scary’; some, such as those following the breakdown of a long-term placement, may be devastating for children and carers alike.

At the same time most agree that not all movement is bad. Moves take their meaning from a wider context: their effect on the child’s chance of achieving a permanent base in which he or she can grow up, happily, attached to those looking after them and without further disruption. Some moves, for example to adoption, enable the child to gain such a base; they are seen as good. Other moves may signal the breakdown of a placement intended to be permanent; they are seen as bad. Yet other moves, for example those to allow a ‘trial’ of a child at home, may be needed to allow time for a permanent plan to be made or to allow a child to prepare for a more permanent solution.

The appropriateness of these moves is likely to vary with the children involved and the stage they have reached in the care process. Some children enter the system at a young age and spend a long time in it. Clearly they depend on their carers to meet their attachment needs. Their need for a permanent placement is particularly strong. Other young children move on to adoption after spending up to two or three years with the same carers; somehow they have to be enabled to transfer their attachments to someone else. Yet others enter briefly and return home; their attachment needs are not met in the system and this is not to be expected. Other children may enter the system as adolescents and at a point when foster care may feel like a threat to their loyalty to their own families or when, like some seeking asylum, their minds are focused on making a new life. Such young people may not want a permanent home in care even if it was on offer.

In the end the appropriateness or otherwise of a move has to be judged in terms of the outcomes achieved. Final stability is, other things being equal, an outcome of value in itself. For it can hardly be desirable that children have no base at all. Yet it is possible for children to be acutely unhappy in their long-term homes, or to have many moves but remain secure because they have a long-term base with carers they love. We need to have ways of judging whether children are settled, happy, doing well at school and so on. We also need to know how far councils, social workers and carers can influence these outcomes. Academics want to know how care works out. Practitioners want to know how to improve its results.

For these reasons a full study of movement in care has to take into account the following:

•The children – what they are like, what they need and what they want.

•Their entrances and exits – why they come in, how long they stay and why they leave.

•Their placements – what these are, what they are meant to do, how long children stay in them and how often they move between them.

•The outcomes – whether the children are settled, happy, behaving well and achieving at school.

•The reasons – why all this happens as it does and turns out as it does.

This, very broadly, constitutes the ground covered in this book. As argued later in this chapter, some of the ground covered is new – no-one, for example, has previously investigated the effects on children of social work teams or of differences between departments in quite this way. Other parts of the book add to, complement or update the work of other researchers. Although the origins of the research had to do with movement, the result is probably as broad an empirical study of the English care system as has recently been undertaken.

Policy background

The study was commissioned as part of a research initiative stemming from the government strategy known as Quality Protects.¹ The strategy had a number of aims. From the point of view of this project the key one, outlined by Jacqui Smith (former Minister of State for Health), was to get ‘children to live in the right place, not being moved around and settling down so that they [could] fulfil their potential’ (Department for Education and Skills (DfES) 2003). This ambition was based on the views of children. It was to be advanced by improved management, in particular the development of a number of key indicators of excessive movement between placements. These ambitions in turn reflected two central concerns of the initiative: listening to children and management.

Policy has developed since Quality Protects. A new programme Choice Protects² has sought to increase the variety of placements, particularly foster placements, available. A series of government initiatives on Care Standards, Adoption, Leaving Care and Education³ have all striven to improve outcomes for children who are looked after by the state. The Green Paper Every Child Matters (DfES 2003) has re-emphasised the importance of a positive vision of what is possible. At the same time it has widened the focus to include all children, not just those who are looked after, while stressing the need for co-operation between services and the importance of early intervention.

This new agenda does not contradict the old one. Certainly it highlights potential conflicts. The care system requires relatively costly services for a minority of children and young people. It will not be easy to marry such expenditure with the provision of an equally high quality service for larger numbers of children whose needs are less severe. Nevertheless the new Green Paper, Care Matters (DfES 2006), should have laid to rest any doubts about government’s wish to improve the lot of children in care. This passionate document retains the ambition of prevention: early, multi-disciplinary intervention will prevent admission to care where possible. At the same time everything possible will be done to reduce the yawning gap in achievement and outcomes between those in care and other children.

The reduction of this gap is seen as requiring continuity in the form of adults who will be available throughout a child’s ‘care career’; better and also more specialised and differentiated placements; even more commitment from the school system (earlier policies have already given education priority); greater opportunities outside school; and a later and better supported transition to adult life. Steps to ensure greater accountability, more independent inspection and greater responsiveness to the needs of the children the system is to serve will underpin the whole.

The organisational setting for the new agendas differs from that in place at the time of Quality Protects. There now are or, almost certainly, will soon be Children’s Trusts, Directors of Children’s Services, an enhanced role for the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (OFSTED) and Independent Reviewing Officers, a Commissioner for England and a range of new standards. Quality Protects foresaw none of this.

Despite these changes the fundamental philosophy remains the same. The four abiding themes are that children should have ‘permanence’ (by which is meant a lasting experience of a family that gives them the opportunity to attach to adults); that this attachment should underpin better outcomes, particularly in education; that there should be a choice of high quality provision; and that both the provision and the system around it should be well managed.

Even the philosophy of management shows much continuity. There is a continuing belief in empowering children so that their views are heard and used to improve the system. And there is a continuing emphasis on accountability, the achievement of external standards and targets, and the enforcement of this regime through external inspection. In these ways the policy agenda is very similar to that of this book. There is, however, a difference in perspective. Those making policy have to believe in their prescriptions. To do any less could be a recipe for ineffectiveness. Research is allowed the luxury of doubt. For example, in this book we will not assume that the current indicators of stability are necessarily appropriate. Nor will we assume that councils can necessarily influence outcomes. Insofar as we are able to reduce doubt we will, we hope, lay the ground for surer policy and practice.

How may research contribute to this agenda?

Research on the care system may contribute to this agenda in at least four ways.

First, it can describe what the care system is doing. This task is more complex than it seems. At the very least it covers what the system is trying to achieve for whom, how and over what length of time. So we need to know about the characteristics, needs, and lengths of stay of a representative sample of the children who are looked after. We also need to know how different groups of children get on in the system and what happens to them there. Such a description does not allow a formal evaluation – a demonstration that what is done works better or worse than possible alternatives. It does, however, allow for an appraisal – an informed assessment of what the children’s needs are and how far what is done is likely to meet them.

Second, research can investigate what children and young people think. To date we know, for example, that they feel they are consulted too little, that they commonly feel they are moved around too much, that some feel that they are kept too long in places where they are unhappy, that young people hate being bullied, and dislike being made to feel the odd one out in foster homes, that most want to see more of their families, that this does not mean that they want to see more of all members of their family – and much else besides (see, for example, references in Sinclair 2005). This knowledge is also an essential part of appraising what is going on.

A third way in which research can contribute is by assessing the role and impact of placements. It is natural to think that moves occur because of poor placements. Some do. Young children may be moved from placements where they are unhappy. Older ones may prove too much for their carers. However, ‘good’ carers may also enable movement, for example by working with a social worker over an adoption or a return home. A child who enters the system at the age of three and is still there at the age of nine is unlikely to want a move. An adolescent who has fallen behind with their education may need a placement that helps them to catch up and move on. Research may help determine what counts as a good placement and what impact it has on movement and other outcomes.

A fourth possible research contribution lies in its implications for the use of movement as a measure of performance. Performance measurement is central to the ‘New Public Management’ (Strathern 2000). It may be variously justified as enabling accountability, providing feedback and focusing managers’ minds on performance. It is also believed to promote informed choice, competition between agencies a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Also in The Series
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustration
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Who is Looked After? The Children’s Characteristics
• 3 Who is Looked After? The Children’s Families, Wishes and Behaviour
• 4 Groups of Children and Their Chance of Permanence
• 5 Admissions and Discharges
• 6 The Children and Their Different Paths in Care
• 7 Going Home and Leaving Care: The Case Studies
• 8 Placements: How They are Used
• 9 Placements: How One Leads to Another
• 10 Children Based in Care
• 11 Children and Outcomes
• 12 Placements and Outcomes
• 13 Carers, Homes and Outcomes
• 14 Teams and Outcomes
• 15 Councils and Outcomes
• 16 An Overview
• Appendix I: Representativeness of the Study Samples
• Appendix II: Analysis of National Data
• Appendix III: Monitoring and Quality Assurance
• References
• Subject Index
• Author Index