Keeping Children in Care out of Trouble: an Independent Review

Keeping children in care out of trouble: an independent review

Call for written views and evidence

Published: 23 June 2015

Closing date: 4 August 2015

RESPONSE FORM

Please see the end of this document for information about the review and its background. A separate response form and guidance for children and young people responding to the review are available at:

Please send us your evidence by 5.00pm on Tuesday 4 August 2015.

By email:

By post: Care review, C/o Prison Reform Trust, 15 Northburgh Street, London EC1V 0JR

For more information, contact Katy Swaine Williams, Care review co-ordinator, on 020 7251 5070.

Your contact details and data protection

You do not have to give us your name or contact details in order to take part in the review. We will still take your evidence into account. If you do give us your name and contact details, we will only use them for the purposes of the review, including to send you a copy of the review’s final report. We may also try to contact you during the review with any follow up questions arising from your evidence. Please let us know if you would prefer not to be contacted other than to receive the report.

Full name
Organisation and job title (if relevant)
Postal address
Email
Telephone
Are you happy for your evidence to be published? (Please delete as appropriate) / Yes / No
Signed: / Date:

All evidence received will be taken into account by the review. However, not all the evidence received will appear in the final review report. Where evidence is included in the report from children and young people or their families in relation to their personal experience, it will only be published or referred to in anonymised form, from which the individuals in question cannot be identified.

The questions the review wants to address are set out below. Please cite quantitative or qualitative evidence to support your response where possible. In all your answers, please try to reflect the diverse needs and characteristics of children and young people of different genders and ethnic backgrounds, to the extent that your experience allows. Please use the space at the end of the form to add examples of best practice that you know of, and any further comments.

1. How does the experience of being in care affect the likelihood of offending?
Children are placed in care for a reason. In 2013 42,480 children were in care because of abuse and neglect. The consequences of this abuse and neglect do not stop once these children have been removed from their families. Neglect and abuse have long term consequences on development and life chances.
Moreover for many children and young people the experience of being in care can be disruptive, stressful and often unhappy. We see in our work with young people in care that as children in care get older they are exposed to more and more risks that could result in contact with the justice system.
This contact occurs for two main reasons. Firstly the care system does not do enough to help children overcome the trauma that they experience in their younger years. Secondly, as the protective layers that care services provide for children begin to fall away with age, a number of push and pull factors emerge that can lead to criminal behaviour.
In order to prevent this from happening, services need to change. In order to overcome abuse and neglect there needs to be closer attention paid to the therapeutic services children receive and a much keener focus given to promoting high emotional wellbeing positive mental health. In order to fix the system to prevent this ‘collapse’ of provision for older children, services need to change their attitudes towards older children in care and provide age appropriate interventions to help prevent the slide towards the youth justice system.
2(a)Which features of the care system increase or reduce the chances that a child or young person will offend?
Placements
One of the biggest features of the care system that causes instability is the way in which placements are chosen. The longer a child remains within the care system the more likely they are to have had more than five placements. 50% of those ceasing care after the age of 18 have had more placements compared to just 15% of those who leave care between the ages of 10 and 15[i]. Younger children often receive the most stable placements – either through adoption or long term foster care but as children get older placement stability clearly decreases. This is due to a number of factors; there is often a lack of foster carers able and willing to take older children and often children’s needs increase as the long-term consequences of their abuse and neglect become more acute and difficult to deal with. As a result older children are often placed in either residential children’s homes or supported accommodation. Both of which appear to have features that can push children towards the youth justice system.
-Residential Homes
Over 50% of children’s homes residents are aged 15 or older[ii]. Children’s homes are highly regulated and if poorly run often feel like an institutional rather than a family setting. Just under half of all children in residential settings have had four or more placements[iii] Essentially children’s homes accommodate older children who have had multiple placements. These children have often had the worst experience of the care system and have high needs and often challenging behaviour.
Furthermore, in 2014 more children were placed outside their local authority in a children’s home than were placed inside their local authority in a children’s home[iv]. This means they are far away from family and friends, may have changed schools, and are likely to receive less contact with their named social worker.
In these highly regulated settings, and far from home, children are more likely to go missing. 9% of children in residential homes went missing in 2012/13 – more than in any other setting[v]. Moreover almost 50% of missing episodes were repeat episodes meaning that they had run away from their home more than once[vi]. Running away from care is an important risk factor relating to criminal justice. Our national surveys of young runaways indicate that 12% of runaways steal in order to survive and 9% have begged[vii]. Both of these behaviours put children at risk of coming into contact both with the police, but perhaps more importantly with other young people and adults who may have a negative influence on them and lead them into more risky and potentially criminal behaviours.
There are other risk factors related to children’s residential homes and the criminal justice system. Children in residential homes have worse educational attainment[viii] than other children in care and in the strengths and difficulties questionnaire that is used to measure their levels of emotional wellbeing the average score in a children’s home is 18.1 which is rated as a serious cause for concern[ix].
National data collected about children’s also gives us information about crime. 20% of young people living in a residential home for the last 12 months will have been convicted or subject to a final warning or reprimand during the year[x].
The data on Residential Children’s homes is particularly good. It shows us how older children, often having multiple placements and as likely to be living far away from home as they are to be living within their local authority are being placed in settings from which they are more likely to run away, be absent or excluded from school, do poorly in exams and come into contact with criminal justice. All of this coincides with young people who are beginning to test boundaries, push limits, experiment and develop relationships outside their school and placement. When all these risk factors are combined it is not perhaps surprising that children with experience of residential homes are so often found within the criminal justice system.
-Supported Accommodation
Supported accommodation is in many ways the opposite of the residential children’s home. It’s unregulated, there is little data and young people are moving from a highly rigid and institutionalised setting into one where they may have more freedom than they have ever had before. Most young people will move through some form of supported accommodation as they exit care. These settings are designed to prepare young people for independent living.
Every year, we estimate that around 8,000 children in care, care leavers and homeless young people stay in supported accommodation (combination of children in care placement data, care leaver data and The Children’s Society data on homeless 16 and 17 year olds). This supported accommodation can range widely from moving-on flats designed to promote independence to hostels and foyers.
Our report on ‘Getting the house in order’ highlighted significant safeguarding risks in supported accommodation including sexual and criminal exploitation. For example:
Five young people placed in the same hostel were groomed and sexually exploited by a group of 10 men. The young people had been going missing on a regular basis and found in the company of men, often under the influence of drugs. Despite concerns raised by voluntary sector organisations and the police, the young people did not recognise their sexual exploitation. In this case the police investigation resulted in men being charged with various sexual offences.
Youngpeoplewere placed in a hostel being targeted by people who sell them drugs, in many cases ‘legal highs’. In some instances they lent them money to buy drugs and then required them to repay their debt with interest. Those young people who could not pay were forced into criminal behaviour or street begging to repay the debt.
A young person in supportedaccommodation was encouraged to take drugs and then got involved in shoplifting in order to fund her drug habit.
A young person who went missing from their accommodation who was found on the street distributing drugs.
Forthcoming evidence that we are planning to publish in September further examines what is happening in this accommodation. Early analysis of the evidence we have gathered suggests that contact between children’s social services and accommodation providers is minimal, that many of the young people are living in poverty, the police are often called to the accommodation and violent incidents can be quite high. Indeed our evidence suggests that providers call the police too soon and that this can result in the criminalisation of children who, had they been living in a family setting, might have been spared direct contact with the police.
Supported accommodation typifies our argument that the care system becomes weaker as children approach adulthood. Difficult placements in residential homes can be followed by placements in supported accommodation that expose young people to risk and can result in criminal behaviour – often as a by-product of exploitative relationships with other young people and adults.
-Foster care
It is worth briefly mentioning foster care. 41% of young people aged 16 and over in foster care have been in placements for over five years[xi]. Not only do they enjoy this increased stability but they are now able to stay put with their foster carer until 21 if both carer and young person agree. At the moment there is no data on outcomes for those who have been able to stay put but the government is hoping it will result in better outcomes. The stable care those in foster placements have compared to those in residential and supported accommodation may result in further inequity within the system which could result in those having less favourable placements being further pushed towards the criminal justice system.
Social Worker turnover and trusted adults
Social work turnover has been high for many years now, but professionals often assume that all children in the care system are affected in the same way when their social worker changes. As children get older their relationship with their social worker changes and they may begin to realise what a big role their social worker plays in their life. Furthermore, as placements break down, and as demonstrated above, they are more likely to live outside a family unit, young people place more importance on the professionals in their life. This situation is even more critical because, as they get older, young people have a bigger role to play in decisions about their care and so value the advice of those they trust and know well and feel it more keenly when they perceive they have been let down. If their social worker is always changing they can often feel like they have no-one to turn to.
In consultations with young people, we often hear about how one trusted adult can really turn things around. Often that adult can come from a number of services, for example a young carer support worker who helped a young person she worked with to overcome homelessness or a sexual exploitation worker who encouraged a young person she worked with to seek help for drug and alcohol abuse. Young people tell us they want someone who listens, has a plan, gives them choice and is reliable[xii].
Often the system does not provide this. As young people get older their needs often become more specialist and the result is them having a number of professionals in their lives, none of which they feel they can trust or rely on. It would not be unusual for a young person on the edge of the criminal justice system to have a YOT worker, a social worker, a support worker or carer attached to their placement and possibly further professionals from Child and Adolescent Mental Health or Drug and Alcohol services. Young people tell us they donot want this, they want “someone who is focussed on all your needs and not just your specific problem”[xiii].
Professional Attitudes
The attitudes of professionals towards older children also form a risk factor for children in care, particularly because they have so much professional contact. Our report ‘Safeguarding young people’ written in conjunction with the NSPCC and the University of York found that there “appears to be a common professional view that the effects of maltreatment are less severe for older young people than for younger children. This view is not, however, well supported by the limited research evidence that exists on this topic”[xiv]. Professionals often feel older children, close to adulthood, should be able to cope and do not need as much help and support as younger children. This is not the case. Whilst older children may appear confident and behave like adults they can still be very vulnerable. It is even more important that professionals get their responses right, because evidence, like that ofThornberry et al (2010) suggests that persistent maltreatment during adolescence has ‘stronger and more consistent negative consequences…than maltreatment experienced only in childhood’[xv] These effects include criminal behaviour, mental health problems, substance misuse and health-risking behaviours. Getting the response wrong in adolescence can lead to criminal behaviours.
Furthermore, evidence from our work with runaways suggests that even with professionals who are not closely involved in their lives young people often receive negative and unhelpful responses. A practitioner working with children and young people at risk of child sexual exploitation (CSE) told us that a young girl he worked with reported being called “slag” and “white trash” by a police officer. A young person said she was told after disclosing sexual abuse “what do you expect dressed like that, you’re looking for it”[xvi]. These attitudes are not helpful and they do not encourage young people to engage constructively with services. This can lead to them becoming more isolated and more at risk of entering the youth justice system.
Wellbeing and Mental Health
The final issue that may have consequences for young people coming into contact with the youth justice system centres on young people’s emotional wellbeing and mental health. Looked after children have their mental health assessed frequently through the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire up to the age of 16 but in later adolescence there is no embedded way of measuring mental health or wellbeing and therefore it is difficult for practitioners to assess how able young people are to deal with problems, how much support they need and for them to spot issues early before they get more serious. This is so important considering looked after children are five times more likely to develop a mental disorder than children living at home with their families[xvii]. Our own national research into subjective wellbeing has found that children living outside their family unit have significantly lower wellbeing compared to those living with their family[xviii]