Estimating known breakdowns in SGOs: children returning to care

It seems that local authorities can make a difference to how quickly orders are made, whether they are to relatives and friends and whether they are made to the carer who has been looking after the child. A crucial question is whether these differences make a difference to outcome and if so

whether they make enough of a difference to justify the fear that variations in practice could lead to an undesirably high level of breakdowns.

Our measure of outcome was whether or not the child was shown as having returned to the care system following the first SGO. Across the sample as a whole, only 136 children (2.3 per cent) were known to have done so. At first sight this looks like encouraging evidence of the durability of SGOs. Here, however, there are three reasons for caution. First, as explained in the footnote, the measure ‘returned to the care system’ is a very imprecise measure of the degree to which SGOs ‘disrupt’53. Second, many of the children in our sample were very young and in no real position to disrupt placements in which they were unhappy. Third, the length of follow-up varied from a matter of days to years. The chance that an SGO would break down is clearly much greater if it has three years in which to do so than if it has three weeks.

In practice the last of these problems may have made little practical difference. An estimate of the proportion of children who returned to the care system over three years was around four per cent and not much greater than the unadjusted figure (using Cox regression). This is consistent with findings from Selwyn and colleagues’ study which, working with the same administrative dataset and using a similar methodology, estimated an SGO disruption rate of 5.7 per cent over five years,

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The Bristol team correctly pointed out that some of those who appeared to have returned to the care system were in fact almost certainly on ‘an agreed series of short breaks’. These breaks should have been excluded from the data but because of miscoding may sometimes have been present. Their own enquiries with local authorities had indeed established that this error did occur. In considering this problem we took into account the fact that in theory an agreed short break should last no longer than 17 days. Examination of the data identified 11 children who appeared to have had episodes of care after their SGO but where the episodes had never lasted longer than 17 days. Of these 11, one had had two SGOs implying that the first one had indeed ceased. Two began the putative episode within 17 days of the cut-off date of 31st march 2011 and had no end date. It is likely that these two actually lasted longer than 17 days, although we cannot tell. The largest group (seven) had a code of E4 for the end of the relevant episode(s) and this is supposed to be given when the child returns to parents but not when a child returns to a Guardian or on a residence order. So it is most likely that at some point the child left the Guardian and returned to parents. One did have the E8 code for the ending which would be correct for a short break, but it is possible that this child too had returned to parents. It seems therefore that the great majority of those we identified as returning to the care system will have had SGOs that did not last. Our measure can therefore be useful in analyses of the kinds of children whose SGOs are least likely to last and we have not changed it.

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higher than the equivalent rate for adoption (0.72 per cent) but much lower than for children on residence orders (14.7 per cent) (Selwyn et al., 2014).54

As might be expected, the risk of breakdown rose with age. Examination of the differences by age suggested that children who were older at the time the SGO was made were at greater risk of a disruption. Table 5.10 shows the proportion of children in different age groups (at the time the SGO was made) who it was estimated (using survival analysis) would continue to reside with their Special Guardianship family after five years.

Table 5.10 Percentage of children that had not returned to the care system over five years by age group

Age group (at time of SGO) Number Per cent55 not returned to

care after five years

0-1 1571 98 2-4 1704 96 5-6 747 95 7-8 626 90 9-10 476 86 11-12 388 94 13+ 424 92 Total 5936

While, overall, the estimated percentage of children known to return to the care system averaged just over one per cent per year, this rose to an estimated peak of nearly three per cent per year for those aged nine to ten when the SGO was made (14 per cent in total over five years), before settling back again for those who were older than this.56 The higher rates of return to care among these smaller groups of older children almost certainly reflect two rather different influences. First, it reflects the greater difficulties that are found in achieving all forms of permanence among those who enter the system relatively late and, second, the greater risk of breakdown among children passing through early adolescence.

One final caveat to these findings should also be noted. The fact that the placement does not disrupt (in the way we have defined disruption) does not necessarily mean that the placement has

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Both studies employed survival analysis to calculate rates of disruption over time. In this study, we used Cox regression and life tables. Selwyn and colleagues employed Kaplan-Meier to estimate these rates. Although different techniques were used, the results are essentially the same.

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Percentages shown are life table estimates. 56

Of course, children aged 13 or over at the start of their order will have had a reduced length of time at risk (they could not legally return to the care system when aged over 18 and would be very unlikely to do so when aged 17. Similarly they probably had more options open to them if they decided they no longer wished to live with their Guardian(s) when aged 16 or over.

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not ended or, if still there, that the child is happy and doing well. For example, the child may have been looked after in a different authority or have moved to live with people other than their special guardians, such as other family members or, if old enough, out of family altogether to live alone or with non-related adults or friends. Sinclair and his colleagues (2007) also found a number of children who, when young, had spent a long time in placements where they had been acutely unhappy but from which they were unable to move. There is, of course, no evidence in these figures that anything of this kind is happening here. However, the possibility does underline the need for the kind of detailed look at the placements that comes later in this report.

Amongst the 136 children who were known to have returned to the care system after the SGO had been made, half of them did so after 15 months and half before this. This is consistent with

findings from the Bristol team, where disruptions of SGOs were found to occur much more quickly than was the case for adoptions – 75 per cent within two years compared to just 14 per cent of adoption disruptions (Selwyn et al., 2014). The Bristol team also found that, after a SGO disruption, 82 per cent of children returning to the care system were placed in unrelated foster care and only small minorities were placed in kinship foster care (6 per cent) or residential care (8 per cent).

Amongst our SGO sample, just over half (52 per cent) had only one recorded placement after returning to care, a further 30 per cent had two or three placements, while the remainder had four or more. Twelve out of the 136 children had one more SGO, one of which had subsequently broken down again. However, one child was subject to three SGOs all of which broke down.

5.5.1 Correlations with breakdown

As we have seen, the rate of breakdown, as we measured it, is very low. There are reasons for regarding this finding with caution. However, it is nonetheless important to examine which children are most likely to return to the care system after an SGO. This is partly because, although the event is rare, it is highly significant to those experiencing it. In addition, the factors which are associated with breakdown may also be associated with other negative outcomes which we did not measure but which are also very important to children and their families.

We carried out a variety of analyses seeking to predict breakdown after taking account of the length of time we followed the child after the first SGO. To do this we used the method of Cox’s regression and looked at the following variables:

• Basic variables – age at entry, sex, whether White British, whether had a need code of abuse or neglect at entry;

• First Placement variables - whether first placed with kinship carers, whether first placement voluntary;

• Stability variables – number of placements prior to SGO, number of exits from the system prior to SGO;

• Last placement variables - whether last placement in public sector, whether last placement with kin, whether last placement voluntary, length of last placement;

• SGO variables – age at receiving first SGO, whether SGO within a year, whether SGO to previous carer.

In making our analyses we ‘set the bar high’, only including variables in the final model if they were significantly associated with our outcome at a level of at least one in a thousand, after taking account of the other variables in the model.

Information on these variables is variously available at different stages of a child’s career, but our final model (see Table 5.11) used all the information that would be available to a social worker or court considering an SGO at the point when the final pre-SGO placement had been made. As can be seen children were more likely to return to the care system:

The greater the number of placements they had;

• The older they were at the time of the SGO;

• If they did not go to the carer who was looking after them in the care system;

• If they had not had their last placement with kin.

Table 5.11 - Cox logistic regression with breakdown as dependent variable

B SE Wald df Sig. Exp(B)

Placements (n) .057 .009 39.037 1 .000 1.058

Last placed with kin -1.107 .177 38.881 1 .000 .331

Age at SGO .099 .019 26.389 1 .000 1.104

SGO not with Carer .782 .180 18.796 1 .000 2.185

Note – A positive figure in the B column denotes a positive association with breakdown

These findings are similar to those found with comparable populations. Age at entry is associated with stability in the care system and in adoption. Kin placements tend to be robust and often last longer than others in the care system (Farmer and Moyers, 2008; Hunt et al., 2008; Sinclair et al., 2007; Selwyn et al., 2014). Children who have had many placements in care tend to break down more than those who have had few (Sinclair et al., 2005b) and children who are adopted by their carers are (initially at least) more likely to adapt to adoption (Sellick and Thoburn, 1996; Sinclair et al., 2005a). In these respects, therefore, SGOs seem to be showing similar trends to those already observed in other comparable provision.

Four final points should be made.

First, the positive finding on the effect of kin should be regarded with some caution. Our criterion was return to the care system. Kin carers are almost certainly more likely than stranger carers to react to the potential breakdown of a placement by seeking an alternative within the wider family rather than in the care system.

Second, the finding that SGOs that are made with carers who have not previously fostered the child are more likely to breakdown should, perhaps, make authorities cautious about using such placements for SGOs before they have had a chance to test them out within the care system. In addition, those who are placed with kin are more likely to have a bond with them than those who are placed out-with kin with whom they have not previously been living. As we have seen,

authorities differ very greatly in the degree to which SGOs are made to the previous foster carer so that some might well review their practice in this area.

Third, the final model contained only two of the key variables on which we have shown local

authorities to differ (placement with kin and SGO with previous carer) but not the third (looked after for less than a year). Provided the child is placed with kin and goes to the same carer it does not seem to matter how long their care career is. Where these criteria are met, therefore, there is good sense in making the decision for a SGO early in the child’s care career. Apart from anything else, this would reduce the age at which the child receives an SGO which is one of the factors

associated with breakdown.

Finally although these differences are massively significant they do not seem in themselves large enough to justify ruling certain children out for an SGO. For example, children who are aged over ten at the time of the SGO, were not living with kin and did not go to the same carer should be, on the basis of our model, high risk. Yet out of 60 children who met this definition only 2 (3.3 per cent) were known to have returned to the care system within the period of the study.