The Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 is based on the Government consultation document, Me, Survive, Out There? – New Arrangements for Young People Living In and Leaving Care (July 1999). It enacts commitments made within the White Paper, Modernising Social Services(1998), and The Government’s Response to the Children’s Safeguards Review(1998). The Act realises two fundamental policy objectives: young people should not leave care until they are ready to do so, and leaving care should not mean the withdrawal of personal support. The Act recognises that different approaches have been developed to the delivery of services to young people leaving care. Many local authorities have developed specialist services for care leavers. There are various models, including those where the local authority provides the service “in house” and others where the services are bought in from the voluntary sector. The principle that preparation for leaving care is to be regarded as an integral part of any care placements from the outset should underpin the development of specialist services. The Children (Leaving Care) Act exists in a wider policy context of work to secure a better future for both care leavers and other young people. It is part of the Government’s wider programme to modernise public services, improve inter-agency working, strengthen family life, reduce social exclusion, tackle youth crime, and reform the welfare state.
1. Quality Protects Programme
In September 1998, the Secretary of State for Health launched ‘Quality
Protects,’ a three-year programme (now extended to March 2004) to improve children’s services. It set out eleven objectives for children’s social services, including the following:
Objective 4: To ensure that children looked after gain maximum life chance benefits from educational opportunities, health care and social care.
Objective 5:To ensure that young persons leaving care, as they enter adulthood, are not isolated and participate socially and economically as citizens.
In relation to looked-after children, the programme emphasised the importance of local authorities improving their performance as corporate parents. The Quality Protects Programme included payment of a Children’s Special Grant (from the Social Services Modernisation Fund), and one of the six priorities for use of the grant money was increasing support for care leavers. The grant was also designed to assist local authorities in taking steps to prevent the
2. Social Services and health and education
In September 1998, the Department of Health issued National Priorities Guidance for Modernising Health and Social Services. The lead priority for children’s welfare is: “To promote and safeguard the welfare of socially excluded children, and particularly of children looked after by local authorities.” The Guidance set targets to improve the level of education, training and employment of looked-after young people. In addition, the Beacon Council Scheme was established, and helping care leavers was set as the Social Services priority for the first year of the scheme. Improving leaving-care services was further supported by the publication in July 2000 of Getting it Right: Good Practice in Leaving Care Resource Pack. NHS Plan (July 2000) targets include improving the level of education, training and employment outcomes for care leavers aged 19 (also a Connexions Service target), and improving the educational attainment of children and young people in care. Work, expected to take two years, has recently begun on a Children’s National Service Framework.
The School Standards and Framework Act 1998 requires local education authorities to produce Education Development Plans setting out key targets and how they will be met, including the National Priorities Guidance target for looked-after young people. Based on the Act, the Standards Fund was introduced, with ring-fenced funds for the education of looked-after young people.
3. Inter-agency co-operation and the assessment framework
Wider policy and practice guidance on inter-agency working to protect children is contained within Working Together to Safeguard Children – A guide to inter- agency working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children(1999). Inter- agency work to promote and safeguard the welfare of children is supported by the new guidance on assessment, the Framework for the Assessment of
Children in Need and their Families(2000), which will help local authorities make sound professional judgements based on evidence.
New Children and Young Persons Strategic Partnerships are multi-agency strategic bodies that will increasingly take over the responsibility for children’s services planning. They will have to include a multi-agency strategy for care- leaving services in their strategic plans. In the rare cases where local authorities do not form such Strategic Partnerships, the authorities will still be under a statutory duty to produce Children’s Services Plans.
4. Voluntary organisations
Looking After Children System, so that the dimensions in the Assessment Framework will be common to work with all children in need and their families. It will also include pathway planning under the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000. The Integrated Children’s System is designed to ensure that assessment, planning and decision-making lead to good outcomes for children. The Integrated Children’s System will set out what information will be collected when working with children in need, including those looked after away from home, children for whom the plan is adoption, and care leavers.
6. Related social policy initiatives
The broader Government agenda of tackling social exclusion and improving educational achievement and employment opportunities incorporates a
number of policy initiatives with implications for children and young people in and leaving care.
These include a range of Social Exclusion Unit reports in relation to youth homelessness, young people excluded from education, training and employment, teenage parenthood, and the development of the Connexions Service.
The Connexions Service aims to establish a comprehensive service for all children and young people between the age of 13 and 19, including looked- after children. Connexions is being implemented in a phased way as from April 2001. Useful documents, available on the Connexions website
(www.connexions.gov.uk), include the Planning Guidance Document (DfEE 2000) and the Guidance on Personal Advisers(DfEE [now DfES] 2000). The New Deal for young people, implemented in 1998, is aimed at young people aged 18–24 who are unemployed. (See www.dfes.gov.uk/secondchances) It aims to support these young people in finding work or an appropriate
training scheme or getting into a voluntary scheme.
Other relevant documents include the joint DfEE/DH Guidance on the Education of Children and Young People in Public Care (2000), the DH Draft Guidance on Promoting the Health of Looked After Children (1999)and the DETR (now DTLR) Revisions to the Code of Guidance on parts VI and VII of the Housing Act 1996. The latter of these, currently in draft, says:
In the Housing Policy Statement (The Way Forward for Housing, December 2000), the Government proposed to extend the priority need categories of homeless people to include 16 and 17 year olds; care leavers aged 18 to 21; and applicants who are vulnerable as a result of an institutionalised background or as a result of fleeing domestic violence or harassment.
The DTLR recently completed a consultation exercise on the extension of homelessness ‘priority need’ categories – the draft Homelessness (Priority Need for Accommodation) (England) Order 2001.
The Supporting People programme will provide support services to a wide range of vulnerable people. Through working partnerships with local
government, service users and support agencies, the programme is designed to promote straightforward, cost-effective and reliable housing-related solutions that complement available care services and support independent living. It will support young people leaving care to prepare for and move toward