CHILDREN’S VIEWS ON PLACEMENTS, DECISIONS & REVIEWS

1. CHILDREN’S VIEWS ON PLACEMENTS, DECISIONS & REVIEWS Dr Mike Lindsay Office of the Children’s Rights Director NORTH WEST CHILDREN’S PROVIDER CONFERENCE

2. Functions of the Children’s Rights Director • Personal Statutory functions Under Section 120 of the Education & Inspections Act 2006 & the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Children’s Rights Director) Regulations 2007 • Given a specific remit for: i) children living away from home (in children’s homes, foster care, adoption, residential family centres, boarding schools, residential special schools & FE Colleges) ii) receiving children’s social care services, and iii) care leavers (up to the age of 21 or 24)

3. Children’s Rights Director Regulations 2007 1. To advise & assist HMCI on safeguarding and promoting rights & welfare of children 2. To ascertain the views of children about services (The CRD advises and publishes reports directly on children’s views) 3. To raise matters of policy or individual children’s issues that the Children’s Rights Director considers significant

4. About this report “Placements, Decisions and Reviews: A Children’s Views Report” (Dr Roger Morgan, Children’s Rights Director, CSCI, September 2006) • This report gives the views of 86 children and young people • 65 were selected at random to take part in a series of discussion groups (twelve in all) • 21 more chose to complete question cards • Report written for “ten year olds and Ministers”

5. Who decides what? • Most children (around two thirds) felt that they had some say in important decisions in their lives • Others told us that they were not really listened to • A few had taken things into their own hands when they did not feel they were listened to (ran away, complained etc.) • Whilst children wanted to be listened to, some conceded that it did not necessarily mean that the decision was the wrong one if they hadn’t been • Some children had huge changes to their lives happen suddenly, without much warning or preparation, and often against their wishes • Decisions that children thought had been allowed were not always carried through

6. Involving children in decisions CHILDREN OFFERED THE FOLLOWING INSIGHTS: • Simply ask what children think and feel, and really listen (even to younger children or children who might not fully understand) “Talk (to us) like an adult, with respect but don’t use big words” • Give us a choice of who we can talk to • Ask us before the decision is made, so that our views can make a difference “It is hard to shift a decision once someone else in authority has made their mind up” • Children will only share personal views and concerns when they feel safe • Give us different ways of sharing our views

7. Choosing placements • Just over half said they were given a choice • Just under half said that (social) services had decided that they should be where they are living now “… top boss person decided, don’t know his name” • Just about the same number of children had been told that there was “no other choice” • Nearly all children agreed that getting the placement right meant that there must be a choice of more than one possible placement (a central theme of the government’s White Paper) • Just over half thought that their placement was the right one (giving it a score of 5 out of 5) • It can often take six months to find a new placement, even when everyone agrees you need it

8. Getting the criteria right • Best to have a placement near to your home and family • Important to keep brothers and sisters together • Being allowed to keep your own beliefs and religion • Choosing a school is important when changing a placement – stay at the same school, if possible “I’ve been to as many schools as a supply teacher” • Sometimes it is a good thing to live away from home, away from your brothers and sisters and to change schools ... “If you’ve fallen out badly with your Mum, you wouldn’t then want to go to school near where she is” … but you shouldn’t plan on it being so!

9. Not getting on “You don’t like them, or they don’t like you” “You might not like the way your carer is, you may not like the room in the house, you may not like the other people in the house” Having lots of arguments “… disagreement in rules, arguments about money, and argument in education choices” Uncertainty “When they change your placement things can go one way or the other” “Sometimes you might have to move and it might not be your fault” Children gave a mixture of reasons for placements breaking down ranging from the quite serious (risk of harm to self or others) to the downright petty (telling lies, breaking house rules, minor offending) What can go wrong in a placement?

10. What can be done to stop things going wrong? • A social worker visiting regularly • Being able to get in touch directly and talk to social worker alone • Checking with the child how the placement is going … being able to help the child and carer talk through any problems • Letting children stay in placements that are working out well, without trying to move them onto “something better”, unless that is really what is right for the individual child • Keeping children up-to-date with news about what is happening to their family at home, and what their own plans are.

11. What would make changing placements better? • Visit the new placement beforehand, and meet their new carers well before they move in “Meeting new parents before moving in, having choice to live there” • Always telling the child exactly what is going on • Giving more notice of when they were going to have to move placements • Taking your property when you move • It helps having photos of places and people you have liked in your past • Being able to take your pet with you • Knowing what educational plans there are for you • If you have just left a placement you liked, you should still be able to keep in touch

12. How to get placements right “first time” To get a placement right, more often: • Social workers should ask and listen to what the child wants and how they feel about the placement • Make sure that the child visits the placement and meets the carers, before a decision is made “Ask what the child is looking for, what they really want, then they may be able to find a family who they can get on with. Not just send you there without asking or saying anything” • Make time to prepare and to adjust before moving • Whether the child wants to move can make all the difference to whether they will settle in a new placement “Could always ask them if they actually want to move” • Stop ending placements for reasons that are nothing to do with the child (e.g. policy or money)

13. What children said about reviews • Children mainly saw reviews as somewhere they could find out what was going on; or, so they could have their say about what will happen to them • Some thought that their views weren’t getting across “I don’t like my reviews because there are lots of people there and I don’t get my points across” • Others found it difficult talking about personal things in front of strangers • Children described the worst thing is when you have to sit and listen to people saying bad things about you (not always true either) “They talk about you as though you’re not there … you wave your hands to say hello I want to speak. You feel like you are invisible”

14. Having a say in your plan • Just over three quarters of children said that they knew they had a care plan • But only just under half felt that they had been able to have much say about what was in them • Over a quarter claimed to have had little or no say • This reflected in what children told us about whether they agreed with what was in their plan; and in how they rated them • Only just over half of children, who knew their plan, told us that it was being kept to • Where it wasn’t, many children were confident that they could take this up with their social worker, whilst others argued that they should be able to go to court if their plan was not being followed

15. Care Matters: Time to deliver (2008) “Our aspirations for children in care are no less than those each parent has for their own children. Children in care are often in much greater need than other children but much less likely to get the help they require. We aim to create a care system that provides every child with a safe, happy, healthy, secure and loving childhood, nurturing their aspirations and enabling them to fulfil their potential.”

16. TEN ideas for achieving this … STABILITY WORKS! • Come up with a funding formula less susceptible to short term budget-driven goals; and, demonstrably, more capable of meeting the needs of the child (e.g. use of individual care allowances) • Contract with placements that are resilient enough to “stick with the child” (as any good parent would) • Avoid placements that are too inflexible in how they meet children’s needs (n.b. ‘reasonable parents’ do not organise care around arbitrary age criteria, length of stay or narrowly-defined purposes; neither should ‘corporate parents’) • No one builds a care system by relying on prohibitively costly, unplanned, out-of-area or crisis placements. However, multiple moves suggest the need for better service planning and commissioning strategies. • Re-think matching processes to give children more of a say

17. TEN ideas for achieving this … STABILITY WORKS! 6. Only move children when it is demonstrably in their interests to do so, taking account of their views and feelings 7. Local councils who place a long way from home often experience difficulty in negotiating or supervising those placements effectively, and so children’s care and education can suffer as a result. 8. On almost every social indicator children with only a few placements in their care history do better than children who have experienced a large number of placements. 9. STABILITY is the key from which all good outcomes for ‘looked after’ children are necessarily derived. 10. “Children need a consistent person, not to replace their own family, but to act as their one good parent in care”