Understanding Permanence

1. Understanding Permanence Bruce Clark and Janet Boddy CAFCASS and University of Sussex

2. The working group Ian Sinclair Emeritus Professor, Social Policy Research Unit, University of York June Statham Professor Emerita of Education and Family Support, Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education June Thoburn Emeritus Professor, Centre for Research on the Child and Family, University of East Anglia Caroline Thomas Honorary Research Fellow, University of Stirling and co-ordinator of the Adoption Research Initiative

3. Our aim • To inform an understanding of permanence that addresses all children who fall within the public law functions of the Children Act 1989 • addressing lifetime needs; and • based on the best available evidence.

4. Policy milestones

5. A diverse and dynamic population Children looked after at 31 March, 1992-2012

6. Understanding permanence ‘The best possible care involves giving children security, stability and love through their childhood and beyond.’ (DfE: An Action Plan for Adoption, 2011, p6)

7. Where children live • Experiences vary by ethnicity • Black Caribbean children more likely to experience residential care • Mixed ethnicity children can be seen as ‘hard to place’

8. A diverse population: age Children starting to be looked after Source: Children looked after at 31 March, DfE

9. Attending to diversity 57% The Pursuit of Permanence (Sinclair et al. 2007)

10. The purpose of placement? ‘If placed at this age [10-15 years of age] we’d see that as a failure. We try to keep them out, once in we try to get them out of care, if we can’t, then try for permanency.’ Senior social care manager, England ‘The law doesn’t say that placement should be the last option […] it can be a good option for older young people’ Senior policy advisor, Germany ‘When things go so wrong in a home that a child has to be placed, you can’t make changes so quickly at home that the child could go home in a few months.’ Social worker, Denmark (Quoted in Boddy et al. 2008 p130; p139)

11. Pathways to permanence? Age at adoption Source: Children looked after at 31 March, DfE

12. Pathways to permanence? Children who ceased to be looked after through adoption1, special guardianship2 and residence orders3 – 1999 to 2011 New statutory guidance on adoption launched in Feb 2011 promoting adoption as an important permanence option for children Adoption and Children Act 2002 (in force 2005) Special Guardianship introduced Government review of adoption Source: Westminster Government

13. Where children liveUnrelated foster care • Intentionally short-term or time-limited • respite; emergency; assessment; treatment foster care • Long-term, aimed at care and upbringing Messages from Fostering Now (and beyond) • Matching and planning • Child’s wishes; ‘chemistry and fit’ • Quality of carers • Child factors • Age; behaviour; schooling • Contacts with birth family

14. Family and friends care • Extensive local authority variation • Most family and friends care is informal or private arrangement • Comparisons between approved kinship carers and unrelated foster care • Children have similar levels of need • Carers older, in poorer health, less well educated, financially worse off • Children do just as well in outcomes and placement stability Source: Nandy and Selwyn (2012) Source: Nandy and Selwyn (2012)

15. Residential child care • A neglected sector, within the ‘family agenda’ of children’s services? • A declining sector? • 19% of looked after children in 1990 • 9% of looked after children in 2012 • High levels of need • High levels of turnover • A last resort or a specialist service? Source: Children looked after at 31 March 2012, DfE

16. Quality and continuity ‘Placement instability ... may compound existing difficulties and further reinforcement of insecure patterns of attachment’ (Munro & Hardy 2006, p2) • Short- and long-term placements? • Planned and unplanned moves? • What children want?

17. Permanence and return home? • 37% of children who ceased to be looked after in 2012 returned to their parents • Return home most likely within first 50 days • Assumption that swift return home is better?

18. Quality and continuity ‘perhaps the most serious problem [facing the care system] has been the low expectation of success’ (Aldgate 1989, p32)

19. Return home Case closure or permanence? • Messages from Safeguarding Children Across Services • Addressing underlying problems? • Time? • Evidence of change? • Overoptimism about reunification? • Likelihood of return to looked after system • Experience of further abuse or neglect • Poorer outcomes and greater instability

20. Quality and continuity Working with families? • Many children in care have weekly contact with a parent • Less in long-term foster care • More for babies during care proceedings • Purpose and quality • Beyond ‘contact’ • Involvement in everyday life? • Work on relationships (and ‘parenting at a distance’) • Intervention with underlying problems

21. Continuity and leaving care • Disadvantage and instability • The importance of self-continuity and identity ‘a sense of belonging and connectedness’ • Past and present discontinuities • Including: education, living arrangements, culture, personal possessions. • Contact with carers and birth families • Support across the life course • In care, leaving care and into adulthood

22. Conclusion A differentiated understanding of permanence? ‘there is very little that is true of all the children who are looked after by the state’ (Sinclair et al. 2007) Recognising this diversity, how do we ensure ‘security, stability and love’ • For all children who come under the ambit of CA89? • In childhood and into adulthood?