Nationwide Association of Fostering Providers – Written evidence (PSC0023)
The Nationwide Association of Fostering Providers (NAFP) has been campaigning on behalf of independent fostering agencies (IFA), and the children for whom they care, since 2008. Our members care for around 95% of children living with IFA foster carers across England, Scotland & Wales.
Child vulnerability tends to be defined by thresholds within local authorities. This can differ between larger, urban local authorities and smaller, rural ones. Although the framework for assessing children’s vulnerability is the same, the definitions differ. How “good enough” parenting is considered and assessed depends on these thresholds and availability of resources. Sometimes children are left in vulnerable situations longer than they should due to limited resources and funding restrictions.
Current practice when assessing the needs of vulnerable children varies widely in its quality and consistency. Assessment information is too often not recorded in a way that enables like-for-like comparisons across cohorts of children. It is weak in its capacity to inform an understanding of the impact services make on the lives of children and, consequently, strategic planning is then based on weak data. Local authorities supplement their statutory monitoring and review for children living with foster carers from IFAs with costly and bureaucratic contract monitoring. This often provides little further information about the impact on children or value for money. It confuses the priority of meeting children’s needs with both regulatory inspections and procurement monitoring. A child’s journey is poorly reflected in all of this.
When a child is deemed to need a foster care placement, their needs tend to be defined as ‘standard’ or ‘core’ within referral information, even when a child is clearly experiencing significant trauma that would benefit from a therapeutic approach to their care. This is often not considered simply due to cost. The impact means children can experience placement moves due to their needs not being fully met, which increases their vulnerability and can give the child a message that they are not lovable. Each move will increase the challenges they present to their next fostering household. Past research has suggested that children living in residential care have often experienced numerous fostering placements before arriving at a children’s home.
There exists a statutory system for assessment and review of the needs of children in care. This should be the basis for our shared understanding and the commissioning exercises should be designed with this in mind. Arguably, it offers a default assessment of vulnerability. However without national monitoring, the data and information captured is of limited benefit.
NAFP supports the implementation of the Transformational Collaborative Outcomes Management (TCOM) approach and assessment tools (primarily the Child & Adolescent Needs & Strengths (CANS) assessment), already successfully used and proven in a growing number of countries worldwide. It is too early to understand if there is a willingness from local authorities and children's services providers in the UK to use this approach.
Removing a child from the family and taking them into care is a momentous step. Foster carers welcome children into their lives and support them to begin to address the trauma they experience as a result of this ‘toxic trio’ of issues, alongside others.
Linking care and educational data: the educational progress of looked after children in England (2013), an important study by the Rees Centre, found that young people who have been in longer term foster care do better than children ‘in need’ but not in care, and better than those in short term care – so it appears that care may protect them educationally.
Serious Case Reviews continue to highlight the lack of thorough, in-depth assessments of children’s needs. High social worker turnover results in inconsistency in completing this detailed work. There are insufficient resources to support families at risk, characterised by long waiting lists and mental health services being unable to meet demand. Covid-19 has meant there is less opportunity to observe vulnerability in children. The places where children (and their needs) are visible have been closed or limited, including schools and face to face visits from social workers. There is a subsequent lack of sharing information that is crucial to support children.
Without thorough assessment, children’s needs can be missed. There is a risk that fostering placement referrals and matching is flawed, placing children with foster carers who are not fully informed of their trauma or behaviours. For instance, placing a child who has witnessed domestic abuse can often lead to young people copying behaviours and controlling siblings or carers in placement. Referral information is often poorly completed, does not include up to date information and misses key information that would inform risk assessments and harm reduction plans. IFAs receive so many poorly completed referrals that they have to follow-up with numerous additional enquiries. This adds cost and inevitably means some referrals are missed within the hundreds that IFAs receive every week.
Historical cost cutting within local government, arising from central government policy, has resulted in placement decisions for children in care being made at short notice. Until local authorities have time to consider a child’s needs and options available to meet those needs, this will continue. For example, when a local authority considers foster care availability needed within a few days, there is likely to be little choice. If placement procedures were reviewed to enable all available foster care placements to be considered over a longer period, this would open up choices. That rarely happens.
There needs to be an understanding by central government that at times powers devolved to local authority level do not meet the needs of children in foster care. Children living with IFA foster carers may be placed outside of a local authority/borough. This is a result of a squeezed timescale for making placements, lengthy decision making procedures, a lack of coordination by neighbouring authorities, and a lack of best use of vacancies, rather than about the needs of children. Central government should play a stronger role in ensuring coordination takes place - history suggests that this cannot be done by local authorities alone. Currently, money is wasted and children have less chance of being placed with the foster carer who is best for them.
Some children in fostering have managed extremely well during lockdown. This could be due to less external challenges from ‘family time’ (contact) and relationships at school (where bullying is not uncommon). They have been living in a ‘therapeutic bubble’ with their foster carers, with an opportunity to go back to basics and learn new skills such as cooking, art and music. Foster families have creatively managed school work with children, enjoying the outdoors and becoming more active. Fostering agencies are reporting less placement breakdown and fewer children missing from home. The impact of ‘returning to normal’ could therefore have a negative impact for some children. Public services need to be prepared for an increased need for emotional support to manage coming out of lockdown - how we gently integrate children into their previous lives and learn what positives to keep from lockdown.
There appears to be a lack of transparency about activity with central government departments. With DfE as lead for children in care, it can be difficult to understand priorities and policy. The role of DHSC, in particular, can be equally opaque with regard, for example, health assessments of prospective foster carers and gaining mental health support for children in care. The design of government websites means information is not easily accessible to children, families and those working with them. Despite DfE having a children in care team, there is little information about this team or the work they do in the public domain.
There needs to be a move away from procurement that commoditises children’s foster care and instead encourage local authority commissioners to prioritise impact or value for money. Central government should ensure there is greater coordination of local authority delivered services working in tandem with those delivered by the independent sector. There is little coordination of these two sectors within and across local authorities. Central government could encourage and support relationships of trust between independent providers and local authority corporate parents.
There is a need to revisit learnings from Serious Case Reviews, especially given the ‘working together to safeguard children’ approach. Within foster care, there can be a defensive approach that excludes those that can offer expert guidance in relation to caring for children - foster carers.
Providing timely support is vital. Addressing a child or family's needs early on can reduce risk factors and increase protective factors in a child's life. Intervention is less effective when difficulties have become entrenched. Numerous studies have suggested that early investment saves much higher individual and societal costs later on.
Yet, early interventions and preventative services appear overloaded, pushing up thresholds so only those on the cusp of care receive support. Children can be left in vulnerable and risky situations at home too long - chronologies often show a long and damaging pattern of abuse and neglect.
Once a child is placed in care, foster carers play a key role in helping children to return home. IFAs support foster carers effectively to undertake this role. Yet, there is little recognition of this in planning for children and the views of foster carers are generally not sought to inform planning. A sea change is needed to acknowledge the skills and knowledge of the foster carer, as often the person who knows a child better than other practitioners and professionals. Despite the fact that an independent provider may be best placed to support reunification for a child with their family, local authorities have historically been reluctant to acknowledge this or work with IFAs to achieve this. As a consequence, some children remain in long term placements by default when, had the right intervention been facilitated, they could have returned home earlier.
Careful consideration and meaningful care planning needs to be considered prior to children returning home. There seems to be an increase in reports from IFAs that some children return home only to re-enter care weeks later, with requests for the same foster carers. However, due to sufficiency challenges, the carers are unlikely to be available. This is further rejection for children. Budget cuts mean that there is a reluctance to pay a retainer to foster carers for a period of time and for them to be ready if the child needs to return.
Accountability via lead councillors for children’s services is insufficient and far too blunt a tool. It is a significant challenge for lay local authority members to gain an understanding of wide-ranging services, value for money and impact. This can be seen in some of the poorly evidenced cases presented to cabinets and scrutiny committees.
Service providers are in an invidious position. On the one hand, local authorities request information based on a risk averse, rather than a risk management approach. On the other hand, they ask for information which does not reflect the journey of a child in foster care. Local authorities seem unable to report on and share information they have collected for the benefit of service improvement and planning. Central government, including Ofsted and DfE, should work with local authorities and IFAs to standardise the data they collect from IFAs. If the proposed collaborative local authority/independent sector review of the national contract for foster care were resourced and supported, this would be an ideal group to move this forward.
Poor interpretation of GDPR has hindered effective communication between sectors. Subject Access Requests (SAR) are increasing and this means there can be a reluctance to own professional observations for fear of a SAR at a later date. References from work places, schools, NHS and other public services now adopt a “it is not our policy to share any other information than the dates this person worked here or when this person was known to us”. Meetings take place that exclude key people (such as foster carers) that can contribute to keeping children safe.
IFAs are judged 93% good or outstanding by Ofsted. Local authorities could learn from IFAs in the support they offer children and foster carers, and in the way they plan and deliver services. In reality, too often they see IFAs as a threat to their own (‘in-house’) fostering services, rather than complimentary. Having positive and trusted relationships between providers, their representatives, directors of children’s services and lead members would better enable this.
NAFP sees many examples of poor decision making which is not child focused. Children who are settled with and IFA foster family may be moved to local authority foster carers despite. Even with independent advocates, the decisions may not be reversed. A small number of local authorities attempt to poach foster carers by threats to move children if a carer does not transfer to their internal service, and promise a ‘light touch’ transfer. This is often based on a flawed understanding of cost savings. Decisions in relation to Special Guardianship Orders (SGO) can be similarly influenced by a calculation of money saved, rather than seeing the value of why children are settled with a family. Similarly, ‘Staying Put’ arrangements often exclude the IFA, leaving carers without support and resulting in Staying Put being unsuccessful.
Budgets inform everything and encourage protectionism for local authority departments. Successive spending cuts have left local authorities in an unenviable position. However, local authorities need to be more child-centered and performance driven in the way in which they manage this challenge. Local authorities need to invest in effective commissioning and long term relationships with independent providers which may require a higher level of early investment. Procurement models (which force operations to function and be monitored according to a weekly fee) do not enable a child-centred approach which is critical for both outcomes and investment in the lives of vulnerable children.
19 March 2021