Minister decries adoption 'age bar'

 

Tim Loughton says few children taken in care at five or older are placed with a family, due to 'informal age limit' by local authorities,  reports Ben Quinn [The Guardian] Monday April 18, 2011

The minister responsible for fostering and adoption has registered concern that some local authorities operate "an informal age limit" whereby children were not considered for adoption if aged five or over when taken into care. Tim Loughton was commenting on analysis of previously published figures which show the proportion drops from one in three at four or younger to one in 15 at five. Among children aged 12 or older, only one in 100 is adopted after being taken into care, according to the Department for Education. Prospective adopters are sometimes thought to be reluctant to take on older children, who may have developmental or emotional problems as a result of more years of abuse or neglect. However, Loughton told the Times that older children should not be denied the possibility of adoption. "For kids who've had a pretty traumatic childhood, getting them into a safe, stable, loving family placement is of the utmost priority, and every day that we fail to achieve that puts them at even more of a disadvantage. "While many babies are being adopted, as children get to school age the chances of getting adopted fall off dramatically. We need urgently to redouble our efforts to show these children are even more needing and deserving of a long-term placement and should not be written off simply because they are not babies or toddlers. I want to make sure local authorities are not operating some sort of informal age limit." New guidelines already drawn up by the government state that older children and those from ethnic minorities should all be considered for adoption by suitable families of any background, regardless of their racial background or social status. Ministers are eager to see an increase in adoption levels after the number of children placed for adoption fell by 15% between March 2009 and 2010, while more children are also waiting longer to be adopted. Loughton is on record as saying previously that it was "disappointing" that some councils placed only two% of the children in their care for adoption, while the rate was eight times higher in other areas.

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DFE: Safeguarding Children - Children in care

Wikio
Children in care - The Department for Education.

About children in care

Children in the care of local authorities are one of the most vulnerable groups in society. The majority of children in care are there because they have suffered abuse or neglect. At any one time around 60,000 children are looked after in England (of whom some 59 per cent are subject to care orders). Some 90,000 children are looked after at some point in any one year.
The Government wants every child in care to grow up safe, happy, healthy, secure and loved. This is the only way they will be able to fulfill their potential.
The term 'looked after children' includes:

• Those children who are in care through a care order under section 31 of the Children Act 1989
• Those accommodated on a voluntary basis through an agreement with their parents under section 20 of that Act, or agreement with of the child if they are over 16.
• Children placed away from home under an emergency protection order
• Children on police protection/remand/detention (section 21 of the Children Act)

How are they cared for?

• Most looked after children are in foster care (73 per cent)
• Some 10 per cent are in children's homes
• The rest are cared for in a number of different settings including residential schools and placement with parents.

Young Person’s Guide to Being in Care

The Who Cares? Trust, working with the Department, has produced a guide for young people on being in care.
This is available as a series of pages on Who Cares? Trust, a website for young people

What is the difference between safeguarding and child protection?

General article Updated: 22 March 2011     [click on title above for direct link to article]          

Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is defined as:

• protecting children from maltreatment
• preventing impairment of children’s health or development
• ensuring children are growing up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care.

Child protection is a part of safeguarding and promoting welfare. It refers to the activity that is undertaken to protect specific children who are suffering, or are likely to suffer, significant harm.
Effective child protection is essential as part of wider work to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. However, all agencies and individuals should aim to proactively safeguard and promote the welfare of children so that the need for action to protect children from harm is reduced.

Child protection: Role of LA Children's Social Care

[click on title above for direct link]
The Director of Children’s Services, under section 18 of the Children Act 2004 has responsibility for ensuring that a local authority meets their specific duties to organise and plan services and to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.
Each local authority is responsible for establishing a Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) in their area and ensuring it is run effectively. An LSCB can cover more than one local authority area.
Social workers take a lead role in:

• responding to children and families in need of support and help
• undertaking enquiries following allegations or suspicion of abuse
• undertaking initial assessments and core assessments as part of the Assessment Framework
• convening strategy meetings and initial and subsequent child-protection conferences
• court action to safeguard and protect children
• coordinating the implementation of the child protection plan for children on the child protection register
• looking after and planning for children in the care of the council
• ensuring that looked-after children are safeguarded in a foster family, children's home or other placement.

You may also be interested in

[Click on title for link to to article]

• Safeguarding child performers
• Photographic images and the press
• Guidance on the use of images for publicity
• Child-protection policy example
• Professor Eileen Munro talks about child protection
• Interim report of Munro review published

 

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PAC reports Cafcass 'not fit for purpose'

[London Evening Standard November 11, 2010]

The body responsible for looking after the interests of vulnerable children in the family courts was exposed as "not fit for purpose" in the wake of a large rise in cases following the Baby P tragedy, MPs said today.

Tragic: Baby P - Abused & Torchured until death

Wikio

Children suffered as the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) "failed to get to grips with fundamental weaknesses in its culture, management and performance" following a 34% increase in its caseload, leading to "chaos across the family justice system".

"These problems have been to the detriment of children", the report by the Commons' Public Accounts Committee (PAC) found.

Margaret Hodge, the committee's chairwoman, said: "Cafcass was ill-prepared for the very large increase in care cases in 2009-10 which followed the Baby Peter tragedy and caused chaos in the family justice system.

"This lack of readiness was a direct result of the organisation's continued failure to get to grips with the fundamental weaknesses in its culture, management and performance.

"It is still dealing with a legacy of low morale, unacceptably high levels of sickness absence and under-performance by some staff."

Baby P, now named as Peter Connelly, was 17 months old when he died in Tottenham, north London, at the hands of his mother Tracey Connelly, her violent partner Steven Barker and his brother, Jason Owen, in August 2007.

He suffered more than 50 injuries despite receiving 60 visits from social workers, doctors and police over an eight-month period.

Children and Family Court Advisory Support Services

The case prompted a 34% rise in cases for Cafcass in 2009/10, the MPs found, and the body was only able to respond to the demand through the use of measures "which allowed it to do less work or to delay work on cases".

"Cafcass, as an organisation, is not fit for purpose", the committee said.

While the specific impact of the Baby Peter tragedy was "hard to predict", the possibility of a sustained increase in cases "was a scenario that Cafcass should have planned for".

But "Cafcass did not see the crisis coming, nor did it have a contingency plan in the event of a significant increase in demand", the committee said.

Cafcass has also taken "too long to secure essential changes, and much of the responsibility lies with top management".

"It is shocking that Cafcass has not previously collected all the information it needs to manage its workload more effectively," the committee said.

Low compliance by staff with important requirements was "a persistent problem" which undermined the body's efforts to improve, the MPs added.

There was also a risk that the number of unallocated cases could return to the "unacceptable levels seen in summer 2009".

Cafcass was still not providing a timely service, eight out of 10 Cafcass areas failed Ofsted inspections, and the committee "does not share the Department for Education's confidence that all will be well by 2011", Mrs Hodge said.

"The failure to provide an effective service cannot be blamed solely on the rise in public care cases since 2008," she said.

"Top management must demonstrate and exercise strong and vigorous leadership if Cafcass is to meet the challenges it faces."

The report added: "Cafcass also faces the challenge of dealing with the relentless rise in open cases that is putting pressure on all organisations working in the family justice system.

"Renewed energy and vigour are needed to sort this situation out if Cafcass is to become the world-class organisation it aspires to be."

Cafcass took an average of 27 days to fully allocate a care case to a family court adviser, down from up to 40 days between September 2009 and June 2010, but "still well above what it should be", the report found.

It added that data which Cafcass holds on cases centrally "contains inaccuracies".

And sickness absence was "unacceptably high", with an average of 11.6 days per staff member in 2009-10 and 16.1 days for family court advisers, compared with the public sector average of 8.3 days in 2009.

Cafcass said it had taken "robust action" to improve the service.

Chief executive Anthony Douglas said: "We will take heed of the PAC findings, and we will continue to defend the interests of the 140,000 children who we work with each year, each of whose cases is unique and many of whose lives we improve as a direct result of our involvement."

He went on: "Cafcass is fit for purpose because we have absorbed a massive number of new cases in the last 12 months and have improved our productivity by 17%, which is a performance any organisation would be proud of.

"We have improved on every measure considered by the PAC and the National Audit Office, including falling staff sickness, faster filing times of court reports and quicker allocation of cases."

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