Children’s care home cuts may leave hundreds at risk
Closing of residential children’s homes by local authorities will mean rejection for most vulnerable, warn expert
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- Tracy McVeigh and Hannah Olivennes
- guardian.co.uk, Saturday 4 June 2011 20.53 BST
- Article history
They gained a reputation in the 1960s and 1970s as grim institutions riven with abuse, but residential children‘s homes have come to be valued as places of sanctuary for neglected, abused and troubled youngsters whose needs can’t be met by foster families.
Now, as local authorities look to slash their spending, the homes are under threat in what critics claim is the latest evidence of the dismantling of the care system for the most vulnerable. “And, of course, children don’t vote,” said Anne Marie Carrie, chief executive of Barnardo’s. “Children’s voices are not the strongest voices, and those who are being most let down are the mostly silent.”
The decision by Essex county council to close all of its homes, which had been held up as some of the best in the UK, has been condemned as a backwards step in efforts to support the 83,000 children in care across Britain at a time when the number of orders is rising. A report last year by the Fostering Network said there was a shortfall of more than 10,000 foster carers in the UK , and many in the job were complaining of poor training and support as well as being asked to take on children they didn’t feel they could cope with.
Some children end up being moved around from pillar to post as foster placement after foster placement fails. Carrie said she knew of a girl who had been moved 40 times before she was 12. “That’s not just moving homes: that’s schools, friends, everything. You can imagine the effect on a child – they think they are unloveable, unwanted. The more it happens, the worse the child’s difficulties become,” she said, adding that it was “nothing unusual” for children to experience multiple placements.
“For a child that’s multiple rejection. Without a doubt it makes for more and more challenging behaviour; they find it harder to trust or to invest in people. It’s a vicious cycle. That’s why residential care is such an important part of the package. To take it away is to deny those children the options they deserve. A child’s welfare should not be compromised by financial concerns. It’s never just the financial cost but the human cost that we have to look at, and the human cost is enormous.” Carrie said the best children’s homes were those that worked across the private, charitable and local authority sectors. But in a letter sent last week to Tim Loughton, minister for children, one Lancashire childcare company said that local authorities were “in turmoil”.
Mike La-Borde, manager of Family Care Associates, said the complete disarray in provision for children in care was leading to many private companies going under. “We are currently closing one children’s home,” he said, “and unless the position improves in terms of referrals other closures will undoubtable follow in the near future. We are also experiencing serious delays and avoidance of payment for the young people in our care.”
La-Borde said he thought many social workers were being bullied into putting children into foster care instead of residential care because the former was cheaper. “No one can justify the referral to a family of a child who has had 12 or more previous foster breakdowns but sadly that’s what’s happening,” he said. “And by the time they realise what a mess they have made and turn around and look for residential care, all the homes, all that specialist support, will all be gone.”
The Observer has published extracts from a letter sent to David Cameron by a 16-year-old boy in an Essex children’s home who begged him to intervene. The social workers’ magazine Community Care, which first published the boy’s letter, said there was enormous concern about a huge step backwards in child protection. “It’s a particular shock as Essex was pioneering some great work in care homes; in 2008 they began piloting social pedagogy where the development of the whole child is supported and it was proving very successful,” said children’s reporter Camilla Pemberton.
“The Essex situation is clearly only what other councils up and down the country will have been thinking about doing,” she added. “They are much smaller and have very specialist, innovative care. What we are hearing from the sector is real concern that by the time the intrinsic need for residential homes is realised, there won’t be any left. I talk to a lot of care leavers who couldn’t imagine not having been in a home, a big family; they are the greatest champions of children’s homes.”
A recent Ofsted report that sought opinions from children in residential care found the relationships with staff were valued as the major benefit of being in care. One 14-year-old boy with more than a dozen failed foster care placements said he preferred being in a children’s home with five others. He joked how the popularity of the children’s TV show Tracy Beaker, set in a residential home and based on the bestselling books by Jacqueline Wilson, had made kids at school jealous of him. “People think it’s cool. The staff are really good, they liked me and that was a first. If one is in a bad mood you know there will be someone else you can talk to. The food is good. It’s safe, although all the kids always worry they’ll get moved.
“I wouldn’t even know the foster carers didn’t like me; one minute I’d be there and the next the social worker would be packing me up. You can’t trust no one. They’re smiling but they want you out.
“It’d be evil if I had to move again. That would be it with school, there’s no way I’d get an education. If they tried to shut my home we’d lock ourselves in.”
Once in care himself, Dr Jim Goddard, co-chairman of the Care Leavers Association (CLA), says residential children’s homes “offer a genuine choice. Some young people prefer to be in residential care, they have just come from a family breakdown and the last thing they need is to be crowbarred into another.”
Goddard said research carried out by the CLA last year among people leaving care had shown that those who had been in residential homes reported more positive experiences than those who had been in foster care. “That explodes the myth that a children’s home is a hideous, awful place,” he said.
“We are talking about 62,000 [children in care in England]; that’s not a huge amount of money. In financial terms, the outcomes for children who receive good, innovative support compared with those who don’t and head into unemployment and prison are massively disproportionate. Any local authority thinking of following Essex down this regressive route needs to see that closing children’s homes is a completely false economy,” Goddard added.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jun/04/children-care-home-cu...
MY THOUGHTS
Some of the most disturbed children, with challenging behavior and autistic spectrum disorders reside in these homes, for the reason that they are hard to place with foster carers, and are in these homes for that reason.
Many Parents that also use these childrens homes for respite care, will also loose this option if homes in their area close, their children know the environment and staff, and as we all know, children with autism like routine, the only option could be placement with respite foster carers, once more upsetting a child’s routine.
So many parents may decide not to use any respite care option, leaving them overtired,and stressed.
The situation could be catastrophic for both children and families.
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