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.

Ah so many typos!

Educationally they are miles away from their peers in terms of engaging in education!

I work with teens who are mainly looked after children.

I would say it is a mixture of increased poverty linking to parental mental health problems, substance abuse etc which in turn links to neglect and abuse, and there being more awareness of safeguarding meaning we are reaching more of the dc who ate subject to abuse and neglect.

No one things that being in care is ideal, but I have never worked with a dc in care where it wasn't a preferable option to being at home with abusive parents. The bar for removing dc is very high (too high imo). Plenty of dc are left to suffer low level abuse and neglect.

Interestingly, the trend is opposite in Scotland. It has gone up in the last year after going down for 7, but this is due to fewer children leaving care, still a smaller number coming in. www.whocaresscotland.org/who-we-are/media-centre/statistics/

There's a 2 child limit now on benefit money. I sadly think this a factor. Many Mothers/families cannot support another child without extra money

@fizzwhizz1

There's a 2 child limit now on benefit money. I sadly think this a factor. Many Mothers/families cannot support another child without extra money

In all my years working in this field, I have never been involved in bringing a child into care because the parents did not have enough money to support their child. We would do everything we can to bridge the gap for a family before considering accommodating a child for this reason.

Obviously linked to poverty are other more complex issues such as addiction and mental health difficulties.

Poor people don’t necessarily neglect their children.

Also, all of the research which is current shows really poor outcomes for the majority of children in care
I don't think anyone would dispute the above.
But it isn't the same as saying these dc would have better outcomes if they remained in their birth family homes.
The level of damage that these children sustain cannot often be undone particularly if removed as older children.

I wonder if teens are more open about what is going on at home these days. And they all have phones, so can communicate with friends 24-7, rather than going home after school and being secretly at the mercy of whoever is abusing them.

I went into care because my mum had undiagnosed severe mental health problems and it all fell apart as she couldn’t earn enough to support us. Benefits were shit (cheers Tories) and mental health services pretty thin (cheers Tories).

So I’m not surprised there’s an increase in children going into care after over a decade of austerity.

@Kerikerikeri Yes you are right. I should have worded it better... its a factor to be taken into account, especially in regards to the more complex issues surrounding poverty. The OP suggested the highest rise (or highest number of children?) being taken into care was the 0-2 years bracket. The 2 child benefit limit has been in force since 2017 - which does have some correlation.

Massive underfunding of services, including mental health, early years etc.
Also possible that as our understand of abusive parenting has increased, the threshold for intervention has dropped? (eg in the time and place I grew up, nobody would bat an eye at a parent hitting their kid around the back of the head, hard to imagine nothing happening now)
Campaigns such as "pants rule" maybe allowing more children to disclose?
Likely to be a combination of factors

Is it really surprising that children in care have worst outcomes? The children who are taken into care come from the worst (or at least most unstable) homes or have the biggest mental health difficulties or are the most abused. Or a combination of the above. Hardly any wonder their outcomes are poor.

It's not a great aspiration for children and young people really, is it, that your life will be marginally less shitty if you're in the care system than if you'd remained with your original family?

I agree OP. There needs to be substantial thought and investment in supporting families who are on the edge.

Given the current government, there won't be though.

@Porcupineintherough

Is it really surprising that children in care have worst outcomes? The children who are taken into care come from the worst (or at least most unstable) homes or have the biggest mental health difficulties or are the most abused. Or a combination of the above. Hardly any wonder their outcomes are poor.

No, it isn't any wonder that children in care have worse outcomes than other children.

Which is reason to invest in these children, not just accept that their lives will likely be shit.

Better yet to invest in them and their families before they get to this point. Prevention is better (and cheaper) than cure and a whole lot of misery would be saved as well.

Are numbers up for all age groups or does the ten year high with older kids tally with a decrease in 2-8s going into care?

@Porcupineintherough

Better yet to invest in them and their families before they get to this point. Prevention is better (and cheaper) than cure and a whole lot of misery would be saved as well.

Quite. Exactly what pps have said about Sure Start, housing and benefit support etc.

Better yet to invest in them and their families before they get to this point. Prevention is better (and cheaper) than cure
I don't know anyone in field who wouldn't agree with this but sadly things aren't moving in that direction.

@romaarco nowhere did I say it was positive that more children are in care.

I also didn't say that only children with specialist needs are placed in residential units, I said that LAs are reluctant to do so and will try hard to place with family or foster caters first if that's what's appropriate.

Please don't misrepresent what I have said. I am also not going to be giving personal information beyond what I have already.

The figures will be a bit skewed because not all LAC Children ( looked after children) are in care as such ....many are still living at home ....it just means the child has LAC status and that the local authority is the corporate parent.....so lots of SW involvement and local authority can override parents PR

We were foster carers for 20 yrs. the children we looked after were with us for dozens of reasons. Some did really well with us and stayed for years. Others needed a higher level of supervision and a different kind of care and were moved to specialist units. The big difference we noticed was the influx of unaccompanied teenage asylum seekers. There was a huge need for carers who would take these young people.

My teen could have easily been one of those statistics. Still could be I suppose.

I’m a good Mum, a good job, no mental health issues, don’t drink.
For my teen tbe contributing factors were probably;
An absent father
Depression/self harm
Difficulty fitting in
School closures, which fuelled the depression and caused social anxiety
Then drug use as a way to fit in
Getting involved with bad people
Complete disregard of any boundaries
School refusal
Basically just out of control but it’s a combination of lots of factors and hard to pin point.
Lack of mental health funding and activities for teens in tbe community doesn’t help either.

Parents too scared to discipline for fear of being accused of abuse So kids do what they like till no one can cope then hand them in

For a long time there was a feeling that children should be kept with their families at all costs but that seems to have shifted after some of the truly horrific cases of children being killed by their parents. I think the increase is partly due to this, as the criteria is shifting.

I wonder if it’s those 2 ages at the top because social workers are much more likely to remove a baby who is extremely vulnerable/they know it’s a lot easier to place them in to care and/or adoption. Especially with recent years of media pressure and baby and toddler deaths at the hands of abusive parents. The next age then falls in to a grey area where children seem to be forced wherever possible to stay with parents. I work in a school and see children failed constantly by their parents but, unless it is life threatening, they aren’t removed. I have to watch children’s lives literally being ruined every day. These parents know how to play the system; most children keep quiet about what they go through due to fear. Every excuse under the sun seems to be given by the parents to explain things that aren’t right.
Then they reach the teenage years and they become a lot more difficult to ‘control’, behaviours of abuse become more apparent and then they are put in to care.

I foster. One of the reasons I foster is because I was fostered. Badly. I want to give my fosterlings the love, security, support and opportunities that weren't given to me and I like to think I do it well.