The latest figures show another increase in the number of “looked after” children, or children in care, in England. There are 82,170 of them – up two per cent on the previous year. In 2010 the number was 64,460. David Cameron and Michael Gove rightly felt the number was much higher than it needed to be. A lot more of the children being shunted around the care system would be better off with the permanent loving home that adoption could provide. The difficulty was that social workers put their ideology ahead of the best interests of the child. So often being “in care” started with a child being removed from the abuse and neglect of their family home, being placed with foster carers, then returned to the family home suffering more abuse and neglect, then placed with different foster carers, and so on. Local authorities spend £5.4 billion a year on these arrangements for the children which result in them being more likely to end up in prison than university. Those in institutional care, children’s homes, have seen the greatest spending and the worst outcomes.
Adoption would not be viable for all children in care. But it would be for most of them. If the child is in mainstream education that is a strong indicator that an adoption placement would be feasible. Even most of those in children’s homes are in mainstream education. The difficulty was that while Cameron and Gove produced strong rhetoric, the delivery was weak. It amounted to “guidance” rather than a clear legal presumption in favour of adoption. It was naive to imagine this would be enough. After all, “woke” distortions to the decision-making process in social work were well entrenched long before the virus spread to commercial banking and other “sectors”.
Keep in mind that to get a job as a social worker it is necessary to have a social work degree – undertaking a three-year course of the most appalling content. Black children are the least likely to escape the care system – due to the insistence by social workers that they may only be adopted if an “ethnic match” can be secured. That is just one aspect of social work ideology – albeit a particularly pernicious and damaging one.
I have noted before that while the 2019 Conservative Manifesto promised to “prioritise” adoption, the number of children in care increased during the pandemic. It continues to rise. While Cameron and Gove tried but failed to reduce the number of children in care, now the attempt seems to have been given up altogether.
It is unsurprising that as well as thwarting opportunities for adoption, social workers are also hostile to giving children the chance to attend boarding school.
A recent article in The Times, by Nadhim Zahawi, the Conservative MP, and others stated:
“Last year’s independent review into children’s social care highlighted the dismaying reality that 70 per cent children in care moved home, changed school, or had a new social worker each year. Only 16 per cent experienced none of these changes over two years.
“This precariousness means children are not able to develop secure attachments, which compounds behavioural and emotional needs, making it more difficult to establish good relationships.
“If 7 per cent of the UK’s school age population is educated privately, why not 7 per cent of the UK’s most vulnerable children too?”
The report itself says:
“The findings from the matched control group analysis – that care-experienced children could be four times more likely to achieve ‘five good GCSEs including Mathematics and English at grade 9-4’, and that the intervention also offers savings to government that equate to £2.75million for every 100 children supported – provides the government with the evidence to consider the routine use of such placements as part of care planning arrangements.”
The research is welcome and impressive. The message was endorsed by Baroness Barran, an Education Minister. She said:
“The Royal National Children’s Springboard Foundation was appointed as a delivery partner, providing a placement brokerage service to ensure children are placed in schools best suited to support their educational attainment and personal wellbeing.”
But, of course, it can not “ensure” anything of the sort – if the social workers are able to block such placements. Only a few hundred children in care and “on the edge of care” are given the chance – even that modest tally is mostly organised direct by charities rather than by social workers.
We have had decades of research proving the benefits, and of supportive Ministerial statements – including from Lord Adonis under the last Labour Government. But progress is derisory.
Councillors in upper tier authorities are supposed to be “corporate parents” of the children in care. In practice that usually means leaving the social workers to it, perhaps pitching up at an awards ceremony and praising them for doing a wonderful job and making supportive noises about their need for an increased budget. Switching between Labour and Conservative control merely means that a different person is tasked with uttering the same pious banalities.
Any social worker brave enough to challenge the orthodoxy on adoption, or boarding schools or anything else would not find such a challenge career-enhancing. When I was a councillor I had whispered conversations with such people in corridors – while they furtively looked over their shoulders. I also had more open and strident conversations with social workers who were still true believers. Either way the disastrous policies persisted.
Zahawi concludes his article by declaring:
“Given the compelling research findings that have emerged from the evaluation of the scheme to date, the government, local authorities and schools should support its significant scaling as providing a tangible, well-tested route to provide immediate benefits to our most vulnerable young people.”
They should. But they won’t. Nothing will change without a change in law that removes the social worker veto on children in care being able to take such places if they so wishes and such places are on offer.