Care system ‘failing to protect children’, finds government-commissioned review

There is an “urgent need” to find a new approach to children’s social care in England, a government-commissioned review has said.

The warning comes as data shows a large spike in the amount of young people requiring its services, with the number of looked after children (LAC) rising by 24 per cent in the ten years to 2019/2020. The figure that year stood at 80,080, the vast majority of whom were in foster care.

Josh MacAlister, the chair of the independent review, said the current system “pushes away help from neighbours, extended family and the wider community”.

“As one example, last year around 137,200 people came forward with an interest in fostering but only 2,135 new foster carers were approved,” he wrote.

The report, entitled “The Case for Change”, also suggested that the sector needed to do more to offer practical help to families.

It points to how the system favours investigation to support, with 135,000 of last year’s 201,000 section 47 inquiries leading to no child protection plan being put in place.

“This is creating an increasingly adversarial system that is both less able to support parents or protect children,” the review explains.

The authors add that better decision making and more decisive action is required to safeguard children, especially teenagers, from harm.

The review also highlights the problem of how children taken into care often end up with weaker rather than stronger relations with others.

“Children in care should grow up and grow old with a strong loving group of people around them and we are currently not meeting this most basic obligation,” it notes.

“The state needs to become a pushy parent for children in care so that they get the homes and support they need.”

This overview of the issues facing the sector is based on conversations with social care workers, advice sent in by 900 respondents and evidence submitted by researchers.

Their feedback was collected over three months from the beginning of March, after the government announced the review on 15 January.

Writing in the report, its chair Mr MacAlister described the social care system as “a 30-year-old tower of Jenga held together with Sellotape: simultaneously rigid and yet shaky”.

“Improving children’s social care will take us a long way to solving some of the knottiest problems facing society - improving children’s quality of life, tackling inequalities, improving the productivity of the economy, and truly levelling up,” he added.

In response to the report, Imran Hussain, director of policy and campaigns at Action for Children, said it was right to suggest the care system “is failing too many children”.

Mr Hussain urged the government to invest in services to support children and to intervene as early as possible. “It’s entirely unacceptable that children are left to suffer harm before we give them help,” he said.

The review’s first report will be followed by final recommendations about children’s social care.