25 April 2022

1.             About the Local Government Association (LGA)

1.1.        The Local Government Association (LGA) is the national voice of local government. We are a politically-led, cross party membership organisation, representing councils from England and Wales. 

1.2.        Our role is to support, promote and improve local government, and raise national awareness of the work of councils. Our ultimate ambition is to support councils to deliver local solutions to national problems.

2.              Summary

2.1.        The Children and Families Act 2014 introduced a variety of important changes to improve the lives of children and young people. While the legislation and accompanying policies have achieved some improvements in children and young people’s outcomes, there are several areas which warrant further reform. We continue to work with Government, councils and wider partners to ensure every child and young person gets the support they need to have the best start in life.

2.2.        Crucially, many of the reforms were not underpinned with adequate funding to effectively implement them. Councils continue to face significant cost pressures in adult and children’s social care, while councils are also seeing rising children’s social care referrals and demand for placements for children in care and special educational needs and disability (SEND) support. To deliver on the ambitions of the Act, we continue to call on Government to ensure these frontline services, including early intervention and prevention services, are sustainably funded.

2.3.        Throughout the pandemic, councils worked hard to keep schools and early years settings open; they have innovated to safeguard vulnerable children on child protection plans and supported children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). It is a priority for councils to ensure all children and young people have the support they need to thrive, and the LGA have been calling for a cross-Whitehall Strategy that puts children at the heart of recovery.

2.4.        The introduction of ‘Staying Put’ was a welcome development, that resulted in an increased number of young people staying within their foster home until the age of 21. However, this policy has not been matched with adequate funding or measures to increase the overall number of foster placements. To enable councils to support successful Staying Put arrangements and deliver the best outcomes for all young people, Government must ensure the policy is sustainably resourced and funded through multi-year settlements.

2.5.        Councils continue to face significant challenges in finding suitable placements for all children in care. The Government needs to take urgent action, to ensure that all young people can stay put with their foster carers where they wish to, while also ensuring there are enough available foster homes for all children in care.

2.6.        The Act has had limited success in preventing the disruption that can be caused by children’s post-adoption contact with various people, including blood relatives and former guardians. It is vital that we continue to review our approaches to ensure that adopted children and their families are well-supported, including ensuring post-adoption and intermediary services are adequately resourced.

2.7.        The Act introduced a duty on councils to provide needs assessments for young carers. These are a vital tool in understanding young people’s needs, however due to the significant pressures on both adult and children’s social care funding, we know that these assessments do not always lead to young carers being provided with the level of support that we would like. To improve support for young carers and deliver the ambitions of the Act, it is vital that services to support young carers are sustainably funded.

2.8.        The Act does not appear to have made a significant, long-lasting impact on facilitating more timely adoptions for children in care, particularly for those children who are termed “harder to place”. Ongoing support remains vital to create more secure, stable adoptions that deliver the best outcomes for children and attract prospective adopters. We welcome the announcement in March 2022 to extend the Adoption Support Fund over the remainder of the Spending Review period and urge the Government to ensure long-term certainty over the fund going forward.

2.9.        The Act failed to achieve its goal of improving provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). While placing children and young people at the centre of the SEND system was right, the reforms set out in the Act were not supported by sufficient powers or funding to allow councils to meet the needs of children with SEND or hold health and education partners to account for their contributions to local SEND systems. As a result, councils continue to face significant challenges in meeting the needs of all children with SEND and their families.

2.10.   The Government set out to address these issues in the SEND Green Paper, ‘Right Support, Right Place, Right Time.’ It is positive that the Green Paper acknowledges that councils are ideally placed to act as convenors of local SEND systems, and that accountability and powers need to be reformed. We look forward to working with the Department for Education (DfE) to ensure councils have the powers to hold partners to account for their contributions to meet the needs of children and young people with SEND.

2.11.   Improving mainstream provision and creating a more inclusive education system will be central to the success of the proposals set out in the Green Paper. We would like to explore the development of a more contractual relationship between councils and schools in the provision of high needs funding. This should focus on children's outcomes and enable schools to be held account for the delivery of those outcomes.

2.12.   It will take several years for the proposals set out in the Green Paper to be taken through the legislative process, before coming law. In the meantime, the Government must go further to address urgent pressures within the SEND system, so councils can deliver the level of support all young people with SEND need to thrive. Crucially, the Government must ensure that councils have sufficient funding to meet the needs of all children and young people with SEND. We are also calling on the Government to develop a plan that eliminates every council’s Dedicated Schools Grant deficit, which will be vital to secure the future sustainability of SEND funding.

2.13.   Parental confidence in a new SEND system will be crucial if it is to work effectively and we are keen to work with parents, families, and the Government to ensure a reformed system meets the needs of all children and young people with SEND.

3.             To what extent has the Act improved the situation for the most vulnerable children, young people and families in England?

3.1              Staying Put             

3.1.1              The introduction of Staying Put – the opportunity for young people to remain with their foster families until the age of 21 – was a welcome policy development which many young people have benefited from. In 2019, 58 per cent of young people remained with their local authority foster carers beyond the age of 18 and 42 per cent with their Independent Fostering Agency foster carers.

3.1.2              Councils encourage young people to remain with their foster carers where they wish to do so. Staying Put has increased the overall number of foster placements that are needed, with Ofsted reporting that 8 per cent (1,335) of fostering placements in 2019 were being used as staying put places. However, without adequate measures to increase the overall number of foster placements, this has resulted in fewer places becoming available for looked-after children under the age of 18.

3.1.3    Councils continue to face significant challenges in finding suitable homes for all children in care. Action is urgently needed to improve this situation, so that all young people can stay put with their foster carers where they wish to, while also ensuring there are enough available foster homes for all children in care.

3.1.3              We are concerned that the funding provided to local authorities to support Staying Put does not sufficiently cover the costs placements, which can negatively impact young people’s opportunities to remain in their placements and their outcomes. Research by Action for Children found that while the Government paid local authorities £33.28 million to implement Staying Put in 2020/21, the actual cost to councils of payments to foster carers was likely to be £51.4 million, a gap of over £18 million. Funding is also currently only allocated on an annual basis, leaving uncertainty over how the policy will be funded each year.

3.1.4              The inadequate level of funding for Staying Put means that payments to carers can often decrease when the young person reaches 18. The Fostering Network found that 54 per cent of local authorities reported a reduction in allowances compared with pre-18 foster care allowances (figures for payments by IFAs were not included in the research). They also found that in almost a quarter (24 per cent) of cases where a young person did not stay put, this was because foster carers could not have afforded the drop in income they would have experienced. To enable councils to support successful staying put arrangements and deliver the best outcomes for all young people, Government must ensure the policy is sustainably resourced and funded through multi-year settlements.

3.2              Virtual School Heads             

3.2.1              The Act introduced the role of the Virtual School Head (VSH), who are responsible for promoting the educational achievement of looked-after children. This role has helped to improve the lives of looked-after children by bridging the gap between schools and social care, to ensure looked-after children receive the support they need to thrive in school and there is a consistent focus on their educational outcomes.

3.2.2              The VSH role has been expanded twice since its introduction; initially to include previously looked-after children, and in 2021 to include all children who have or have previously had a social worker. The clear focus on promoting the educational achievement of vulnerable children is welcome, particularly following the pandemic which increased the ‘disadvantage gap’.

3.2.3              The extension of the VSH role to all children with, or who have had, social workers is a significant expansion of the role which moves beyond what was envisaged by the Children and Families Act 2014. The expansion of the role’s responsibilities has not been accompanied by any new funding. This has put additional Virtual Schools under additional pressure and stretched existing resources and capacity even further. It is vital that the introduction of new duties is met with appropriate funding, to ensure councils can implement them effectively and prevent adverse impacts on provision. It will now be important to carefully monitor the effect of this extension, including on children in care, to ensure there has been no dilution of the role, and to learn and share good practice. 

3.3.              Post-adoption contact

3.3.1              The Act aimed to limit disruption that could be caused by post-adoption contact with various people including blood relatives and former guardians.

3.3.2              The issue of post-adoption contact continues to be a key issue in relation to adoption, particularly as we increasingly hear of children seeking out birth relatives, and vice-versa, via social media. Unplanned and/or unsupported contact can be disruptive to children, their adoptive families and their birth families. It is vital that Government and local councils continue to work together to review our approaches to ensure that adopted children and adults and their families are well-supported. This includes ensuring that post-adoption support services and intermediary services are adequately funded.

3.3.3              We understand that both the Regional Adoption Agencies Leaders Group and the Adoption and Special Guardianship Leadership Board are looking at work to improve the approach to both post-adoption contact and lifelong links with birth families, and to ensure that this is fit for purpose. This work is welcome and we look forward to their findings.

3.4              Young carers

3.4.1              The Act introduced a duty on councils to undertake a young carer’s needs assessment for those under the age of 18 who provide care for another person.

3.4.2              Assessments are vital in ensuring that we understand the needs of young carers. However, due to the significant pressures on both adult and children’s social care funding, these assessments do not always lead to these young people being provided with the level of support we would like. Adult social care alone is facing cost pressures of £1.1 billion each year. Councils are facing another £600 million of cost pressures in children’s social care just to maintain service at their 2019/20 level of quality and access.

3.4.3    While the Act may have supported our understanding of young carer’s needs, we know that too many young carers are still not receiving the support they need, including those who are unwilling to disclose their status as a young carer. Ensuring adequate funding for services to support young carers, including in relation to education recovery following the pandemic, is vital in delivering the ambitions of the 2014 Act.

4.             Is the Act enabling faster, more secure and stable adoptions which are in the best interests of the child?

4.1 Following the introduction of the Act, there were initial improvements in the speed of adoptions and the process became more timely for many children.  The proportion of children with a placement order waiting more than 18 months to be placed with a family dipped immediately after the introduction of the Act and fell to 27 per cent in 2016/17.

4.2 However, from 2017 onwards waiting times for children were increasing across all measures prior to the pandemic, as illustrated in the following graph. In Quarter One of 2021/22, the number of children with a placement order waiting more than 18 months to be placed with a family had climbed up to 51 per cent, equating to 1,500 children.

4.3              The Act does not therefore appear to have made a significant long-lasting impact on enabling adoption to take place more quickly, particularly for those children who are termed “harder to place”. For example, in Q1 of 2021/22, children from ethnic minorities, those with disabilities and those in sibling groups were more likely to wait 18 months or longer with a placement order without being placed with a family.

4.4              However, it is likely that this is a result of challenges that are unlikely to be solved through legislation. A range of issues contribute to delays and the stability of adoptions, including delays in care proceedings, adopter recruitment challenges and the availability of post-adoption support.

4.5              Adopters and adoptees consistently highlight the importance of ongoing support for adoptive families in ensuring more secure, stable adoptions that deliver the best outcomes for children. The provision of ongoing support is also helpful to reassure and attract prospective adopters. An evaluation of the Adoption Support Fund (ASF), published in March 2022, highlighted that support provided through the fund achieved a range of positive impacts, including improvements in children’s mental and emotional health and wellbeing and improvements in parenting confidence. Provision of support also led to an increased proportion of parents and carers saying that they were managing, or describing the adoption or special guardianship as ‘going really well.’

4.6  The ASF has in recent years been announced as a series of one year funds, limiting opportunities to plan for provision and ensure children and families receive the support they need. We welcome the announcement in March 2022 to extend the ASF over the remainder of the Spending Review period, and encourage the Government to ensure long-term certainty over the fund going forward.

4.6              The LGA will also continue to work with the Government on the delivery of the Achieving Excellence Everywhere adoption strategy.

5.             Has the Act achieved its goal of improving provision for children with special educational and disability needs and disabilities?

5.1 The Act failed to achieve its goal of improving provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Placing children and young people at the centre of the SEND system was right. However, the SEND reforms set out in the Act were not supported by sufficient powers or funding to allow councils to meet the needs of children with SEND, or hold health and education partners to account for their contributions to local SEND systems.

5.1.1 Demand for SEND support continues to rise and there are now over 430,000 children and young people with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) in England, an increase of 10 per cent or 40,000 in the last year alone. As a result of the Act, the number of new EHCPs has also increased each year since its introduction in 2014.

5.1.2 The Act introduced new responsibilities for councils for young people with SEND over the age of 16. Councils commonly cite this as the main contributing factor to rising demand and costs. LGA-commissioned research found that shows that the post-16 cohort now accounts for 23 per cent of EHCPs and around 17 per cent of spending.  This is an area that will continue to grow as successive cohorts move through the system.

5.2 System and accountability reform

5.2.1 The SEND Green paper acknowledges that councils are ideally placed to act as convenors of local SEND systems, bringing together health and education partners to develop local inclusion plans. It also rightly recognises that getting the accountabilities and the levers right, will be crucial to improving SEND support and children and young people’s outcomes.

5.2.2 Councils currently lack the powers to hold partners in the SEND system, including schools and health and care, to account for their contribution to meeting the needs of children and young people with SEND. We welcome the Green Paper’s clarification that health and care are “truly integrated partners” in local SEND partnerships, which are convened by councils. However, councils must have backstop powers to hold partners to account if they fail to make appropriate contributions to meet the needs of children and young people with SEND. The Green Paper proposes to provide statutory guidance to Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), to set out clearly how statutory responsibilities for SEND should be discharged and a duty to co-operate. While this is a positive step forward, we believe this duty should also be extended to Integrated Care Partnerships. The forthcoming regulatory review of MATs, set out in the Education White paper, should propose a similar duty on schools to co-operate with councils.

5.2.3 We are concerned that the proposals, set out in the Green Paper, for the DfE Regions Group to hold councils to account for delivery and high needs spending will place an unnecessary additional burden on councils, when sitting alongside Ofsted/CQC SEND area inspections. It is also likely to divert resources away from meeting the needs of children and young people with SEND. This approach would also result in fragmentation of SEND accountability arrangements, with the DfE focussed on the role of councils, while the Department of Health and Social Care is holding NHS and health partners to account.

5.2.4 We would like to work with the Department, partners, and the inspectorates to develop a new SEND area inspection framework. Local SEND systems are incredibly complex, and any new inspection framework must therefore retain the existing narrative judgement which reflects this complexity in a way that isn’t possible with a one-word graded judgement. Inspections should focus on the system as a whole, including the contribution of each of the key partners; schools, councils and health.

5.3 Improving inclusion

5.3.1 Almost half of all children and young people with an EHCP are being educated in settings other than mainstream schools. Special and non-mainstream settings are, by their very nature, more expensive than mainstream provision. While only 7 per cent of children and young people with EHCPs are in independent and non-maintained special schools, our research found that these placements account for an average of approximately 14 per cent of expenditure.

5.3.2 Improving mainstream provision and levels of inclusion will be central to the success of the proposals set out in the recently published SEND Green Paper. We would like to explore the development of a more contractual relationship between councils and schools in the provision of high needs funding. This should be focussed on outcomes and councils should have the levers to hold all schools to account on the successful delivery of outcomes for young people with SEND.

5.3.3 Further detail is needed on how schools will be incentivised to become more inclusive. We are concerned that the aim for every school to become part of a strong MAT by 2030 will not of itself drive a sufficient increase in mainstream inclusion.

5.4 Tackling immediate issues

5.4.1 It will take several years for the proposals set out in the Green Paper to be taken through the legislative process, before coming law. In the meantime, making additional high needs funding available via the ‘safety valve’ and ‘Delivering Better Value in SEND’ programmes is welcome.

5.4.2 However, the Government must go further to address urgent pressures within the SEND system, so councils can deliver the level of support all young people with SEND need to thrive. The Government need to review the level of High Needs Funding councils receive and ensure all councils have sufficient funding to meet the needs of local children and young people with SEND. We are calling on the Government to develop a plan to that eliminates every council’s Dedicated Schools Grant deficit, which will be vital to secure the future sustainability of SEND funding.

5.4.3 Parental confidence in a new SEND system will be crucial for it to work effectively. We are committed to working with parents, families, and the Government to ensure a reformed system meets the needs of all children and young people with SEND.

6.             Have the reforms to childcare agencies and childcare provision introduced by the Act improved the quality and availability of childcare?

6.1 Feedback from councils suggest that childminder agencies have not made a significant difference to the quality and availability of childcare. In some cases, childminders are not interested in registering with an agency, and local authorities have also raised concerns that when childminders do register, there are poor monitoring and registration processes. There are arrangements within local councils that work well to support childminders, for example, encouraging them to take up courses before becoming a childminder, and facilitating ongoing professional support to support retention.
 

6.2 There has been limited take up of the inspections on request of providers and there are concerns regarding the capacity for Ofsted to undertake these inspections. Many providers are going up to 7 years without being inspected by Ofsted and there is a delay for the first inspection, which can be a disincentive for providers to enter the childcare market.

May 2022

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