Children going into care - ten year high

[romaarco]

I read a few weeks ago that the numbers of teenagers going into care has steaily increased over the last ten years and is now at a ten year high.

Does anyone know what is behind this - is it parents not coping or parents being abusive or poverty or more mental health problems in teens because of social media etc?

This applies to children of all ages, incidentally. But the second highest group of children being taken into care is 10 years up. The highest is 0 - 2

I know from experience that children very rarely do well in care. It is very rare that they find adults who care about them and give them support and there is a high chance they will be not given the emotional care they need and also that they will be exploited.

I know a lot of support was being cut before covid hit. I'm not coping well without it so this doesn't surprise me.

Closure of sure start, lack of support for families, school closures over Covid.

In short: tories in charge

Short- sighted self- serving pocket-lining decisions that shit on everyone ‘not like them’ in society.

In short: tories in charge

Ultimately, yes.

I agree about current policies and the conservatives, but does anyone have personal experience of what is happening, is it more:

• parents not coping
• dc being removed because DC out of control/parents not coping with their or their DC's MH
• parents being abusive or neglect

@SmallGreenStripes

Closure of sure start, lack of support for families, school closures over Covid.

In short: tories in charge

Short- sighted self- serving pocket-lining decisions that shit on everyone ‘not like them’ in society.

But never bad parenting. Never. Because parents simply cannot be held responsible for, you know, parenting.

When you say experience in what way do you have experience ? As I work in this area and yes some children do not do well and the things you say are true but in no way would I say it’s very rare. There are a lot of children who do very well and even the ones who don’t do well do better than they would have done in their family homes.
But essentially it’s the cuts; early help and specialist support has been taken away in a lot of areas. We used to have specialist times keeping teenagers at home but there’s no money for that, mental health support isn’t there so parents are in crisis, little support for women in abusive relationships so it reaches the point that children are removed. Add in poverty that makes life so much harder and getting on top of things so much harder.

@Fdksyihfd

When you say experience in what way do you have experience ? As I work in this area and yes some children do not do well and the things you say are true but in no way would I say it’s very rare. There are a lot of children who do very well and even the ones who don’t do well do better than they would have done in their family homes. But essentially it’s the cuts; early help and specialist support has been taken away in a lot of areas. We used to have specialist times keeping teenagers at home but there’s no money for that, mental health support isn’t there so parents are in crisis, little support for women in abusive relationships so it reaches the point that children are removed. Add in poverty that makes life so much harder and getting on top of things so much harder.

I would also be interested in what experience the Op has. I also work in this area and it absolutely has not been my experience at all. I have seen children absolutely thrive in care and offered opportunities they would never have had if they stayed with their parents. The children form very close bonds with their key workers and that bond continues often after they have left the care home to go into foster placements. Of course there will always be children who have been so damaged by their previous experiences that they will be traumatised for life but being in care can also give these children structure and life skills to help them go forward in the future.

@Icequeen01 @Fdksyihfd I went into care and I know several adults who were in care, basically, to answer your question. Obviously my experience is from many years ago, and is just personal experience, but all the adults I know experienced worse abuse in care than before being removed.

Also, all of the research which is current shows really poor outcomes for the majority of children in care and so I find your posts quite extraordinary to be honest.

Are you both key workers, and what is your experience,what are your qualifications?

You now have private companies making significant profits from running care homes, advertising for staff who will not be paid well and who will not have the sort of experience key workers need.

Can you answer my question about teens based on your experience - is this to do with more parents not coping, or children being removed for other reasons?

I am quite staggered at what you say though. Possibly the odd individual will do well, but statistically outcomes are overwhelmingly not good. Do you have any evidence to support what you say, about outcomes, statisically?

Not to mention the well documented exploitation of children in care, in relation to drugs and sexual exploitation?

@Fdksyihfd - also, you have mentioned cuts - but at the same time you will be aware that in recent years, private companies have set up care homes and are making millions - they form part of pension funds - if you look at who is advertising positions.

I also think it's an increasing recognition that teenagers are equally, though differently, impacted by physical and emotional neglect as younger children. Previously older children remained in the parental home when younger children were removed as they were better able to seek out and meet their own physical needs and speak up but the emotional impact of this was missed.

The drivers behind the increase in adolescents not being able to safely stay at home are increbly complex and interlinked. Two of the biggest drivers from my own observations and what I understand of the data are the now long term consequences of cuts to Sure Start and Early Help, structural poverty/ inequality and the chronic shortage of child and adolescent mental health services.

The young people I see going into care over the past three years in particular seem to have profound mental health issues that I only rarely saw in the early part of my career. These incredible but highly vulnerable young people are no longer going into Foster families or residential homes, they're going into highly restrictive units and therapeutic placements (often underpinned by Deprivation of Liberty Orders) where the primary aim is to just keep them alive (due to the severity of their self harming behaviours - hate that phrase, its probably more accurate to describe them as trauma behaviours).

The system, in my view, is long past breaking point to the extent some local authoritys now have no choice but to accommodate (can't even say 'care for') children in unlawful placements (there are a couple of recent judgements about this, I think by Mcdonald J). This should be a national scandal and a political priority and it breaks my heart that it isn't. I've honestly never seen anything like it.

Thank you for asking such an important question OP, I hope nothing I've said in response has been triggering for you.

I know a few people who foster and part of the issue is how long the process takes to actually remove a child unless the situation is life threatening - assessments, court orders etc. take a long time due to lack of resources and unfortunately for some children the damage is done by that point.

It doesn’t surprise me.

Recognising what constitutes abuse is a relatively new concept, historically abuse was normalised and widely tolerated and many, may people who were brought up with abuse continue the cycle into the next generation. Abuse and teaching people to tolerate abuse or just ignoring obvious signs of abuse (sweeping under the carpet/minimising and denial of abuse) has been traditionally how abuse was managed because there was really no credible alternative for children but for the last 10-20 years we have been really educating people as to what abuse actually looks like and by finally recognising the problem of abuse we have to finally start coming up with solutions although as you quite rightly point out the cure often causes as much if not more problems than the disease.

It is incredibly sad.

@romaarco I was in care in the 90s and although my experience was fine, there were huge failings so I can understand why you feel this way about the care system.

I don't remember having reviews, no-one was prioritising my education, making sure I had health and dental care etc etc I was a teen and was left to my own devices.

I can promise you though, things are very different now.
There is far greater scrutiny and oversight of carers and placements.
There is a huge focus on therapeutic parenting and trauma.
There is ongoing support that just wasn't there when I was in care.

We do know that outcomes can be worse for children in care but that isn't a forgone conclusion and is changing.

Yes there are still residential units but long gone are those large children's homes where kids were just dumped because they were hard to place with families.

In my experience, local authorities are reluctant to place children in residential placements unless it really is in their best interests and the placement can meet their specific needs.

@romaarco
I’m a social worker, I work with children in care. The issues you talk about are obviously present and awful and I’m in no way minimising it but I do still say it’s not rare for children to do well. The outcomes for children in Childrens homes are generally not great compared to those in foster homes but the majority of the children in care in my local authority are in foster care and a good proportion are in family and friends foster care. I still stand by my view that most do better/are safer than in their family homes.
I also think it’s hard to measure certain outcomes like education against children without trauma and abuse in their past. I’ve had children who barely attended primary school in parents care, came into foster care and achieved 3 GCSEs, admittedly that doesn’t sound great but actually for them that was great because they started at a point of disadvantage.
The issues with teens in care is that they end up in homes or semi independent because we don’t have enough foster carers for them.
In my experience in the last year teens are coming in because parents can’t manage their behaviour - cse, and gangs are a lot to do with it and sometimes these parents have a new partner and younger children and they say they need to put them first which is very hard to hear. There’s almost always a history of neglect etc too.

Add in a lack of support for these parents for the past few years with cuts and this is where we are.

Changes to contraception isn't helping: a lot of GP practices only issuing 3mos supply of pill, cost of emergency contraception is high and, as a woman, it is very, very hard to get sterilised on the NHS.

And, of course, men are absolved of responsibility for looking after or paying for their children so don't have the 'incentive' to not wear protection---it's a woman's problem after all!!!

My parents fostered a teenager and tried their absolute best but I think the damage was already done through neglect. She went on to have abusive relationships with different men, multiple kids with different men who never hung around long, one of her kids ended up in prison being involved in a murder. Just a chaotic cycle that goes from one generation to another.

[quote bestsoupintown]@romaarco I was in care in the 90s and although my experience was fine, there were huge failings so I can understand why you feel this way about the care system.

I don't remember having reviews, no-one was prioritising my education, making sure I had health and dental care etc etc I was a teen and was left to my own devices.

I can promise you though, things are very different now.
There is far greater scrutiny and oversight of carers and placements.
There is a huge focus on therapeutic parenting and trauma.
There is ongoing support that just wasn't there when I was in care.

We do know that outcomes can be worse for children in care but that isn't a forgone conclusion and is changing.

Yes there are still residential units but long gone are those large children's homes where kids were just dumped because they were hard to place with families.

In my experience, local authorities are reluctant to place children in residential placements unless it really is in their best interests and the placement can meet their specific needs. [/quote]
@bestsoupintown can I ask what your role is now, why you believe the ten year high is positive? It doesn't tally with what I am aware of at all - looking at information drawn from various sources including the exploitation of children in care.

Yes there is more awareness of developmental trauma and more guidance for foster carers, and some really good developments there, but it doesn't change the fact that the reality for most children is that they are not receiving this sort of help, and there is no indication of change, from what I have seen. Looking at how the providers search for employees to work with these children - low wages and low expectation in terms of expertise and awareness, as I said.

Totally inadequate care in homes for older teens again this has been highlighted by reports. Many LAs talk about inadequate numbers of foster carers, and it simply isn't correct that children will only go into residential care if they have special needs and the care meets their specific needs - again, what makes youbelieve otherwise?

Do you work in this area now, do you mind me asking?

@romaarco

I agree about current policies and the conservatives, but does anyone have personal experience of what is happening, is it more:

• parents not coping
• dc being removed because DC out of control/parents not coping with their or their DC's MH
• parents being abusive or neglect

All of those reasons.

I work with children in care. Yes, they have poorer educational outcomes than children not in care, and are more likely to end up in prison. As a society we need to address those things. But do you know statistically which groups do worse? Children on Child Protection and Child in Need plans - ie those on the edge of care but who remain in neglectful or otherwise inadequate situations. For many children, care is a protective factor. It’s not perfect but it’s often better than the alternative. And please remember that unless there is evident abuse, children are not removed immediately. They are likely to have been on CP plans for some time and a lot of agencies will have tried to support the parents to make things better. Nobody wants to remove children unless there is no alternative.

@GiantCheeseMonster

I work with children in care. Yes, they have poorer educational outcomes than children not in care, and are more likely to end up in prison. As a society we need to address those things. But do you know statistically which groups do worse? Children on Child Protection and Child in Need plans - ie those on the edge of care but who remain in neglectful or otherwise inadequate situations. For many children, care is a protective factor. It’s not perfect but it’s often better than the alternative. And please remember that unless there is evident abuse, children are not removed immediately. They are likely to have been on CP plans for some time and a lot of agencies will have tried to support the parents to make things better. Nobody wants to remove children unless there is no alternative.

Thank you for this, @giantcheesemonster but do you have the statistics for children who do worse, on cip or cin plans? Because i didn't think that that information was available? I do absolutely appreciate that when removals happen there are very good reasons for it - that isn't my argument here - my concern is that there are indications that the alternative in reality doesn't work as it should and that the funding there is should be diverted to better ways to deal with the problems

A family I know couldn't control their oldest child. Kept running away,punching holes in things generally tormenting the household.

Eventually they were told that if they didn't let him be taken away in to semi secure facility,they would face issues with their younger children as they were 'failing to protect them' by keeping their oldest child in the home it was/is horrendous.

The child now lives in a halfway house type situation and is still just running the streets. The centre call the parents every other evening to tell them he hasn't come ' home' again.

So they still spend most of their time in a state of permanent stress and fear for their child.
It makes no sense

I agree with lots of what @GiantCheeseMonster has said.

Children who are accommodated away from home do statistically have poorer outcomes than their peers - educationally that miles away from many of their peers in of engaging in education and attainment.

However, I agree that children on the edge of care are at greater risk. Those who are on the periphery of child protection too are a worry - they don’t quite meet the thresholds but are living in homes which do not fully meet their needs.

It is is incredibly difficult to do a qualitative study comparing children at home with children in care as there so many variables. Yes children from the general population at home with parents will on the whole do better than kids in care. But had those children remained at home, would they have had better outcomes? That’s a very different thing. Removing a child from their home is not something that is done lightly. In most cases it will be because that child is at physical risk of harm.