An active state must play pushy parent to children in care

Young people leaving care often find themselves unsupported - and society thinks it has done its bit

ANY parent will tell you that the job of raising children does not end on the day of their 18th birthday. As they get older and slowly move towards an independent life, the parental role may alter and the type of support and assistance you offer may change, but essentially you still go on worrying about them, you still go on loving them and you still go on giving them someone to turn to well past the time they are able to buy their first legal drink.

So, as a society, why do we not apply the same standards to children in care?

For many, if not most, looked after children, the prospect of leaving care at 18 starts to hang heavily over their adolescent years from the age of 14 and 15 onwards. It is for most the defining moment of their young lives. The stress of dealing with big life choices about education, careers, and relationships is surely hard enough for these young people. Add to that losing the people who have supported you and trying to find somewhere else to live and it becomes hard to imagine how anyone makes it through in one piece.

As anyone who works in the field of social care will tell you, things are now considerably better than they once were. In part because of a refocused effort to raise standards for children in care, and the endeavours we have made to improve the transition for those leaving the system, recent legislation has made a significant difference to the lives of young care leavers. However, there remains much more to do if we are to make significant changes to the long term life chances of those who live their early lives in care.

The concept of corporate parenting – the collective responsibility across the gambit of local services and authorities to safeguard and promote the life chances of looked after children – is becoming well established here in Wales. Many authorities we know do a very good job in assisting young people in the difficult transition from care to adulthood.

Local authorities now keep in contact with most young care leavers after the age of 18 and as corporate parents stay in touch with individuals a lot longer into their adult lives than they used to; in some cases providing pathway plans for care leavers up to the age of 24 if they are in education, employment or training. Indeed many authorities, such as my own in Wrexham, provide a level of care for young people that goes beyond the legal duties set down and help provide much needed assistance in maintaining young people in their current placement beyond the age of 18, where this is identified as meeting the young persons needs. This is to be applauded.

However, more needs to be done to provide a consistent approach across the whole of Wales to improve the life chances of young people leaving the care system and more needs to be done to extend the package of tailored support we offer young adults beyond the age of 18. As an Assembly, our role in both identifying and removing barriers that get in the way of good corporate parenting at a local authority level requires us now to set new and more ambitious structures of support for those leaving care so that we as a society give looked after children the same legal and moral support we would give our own children.

In some interesting work I conducted last year asking councillors across Wales about how they see their role as corporate parents, I began to understand many local authorities are keen to rise to the challenge and to put in place a more comprehensive system of corporate parenting for young people in their care beyond 18. The work revealed a number of important areas of interest and it showed that local councillors generally appear very receptive to proposals for earlier action to support care leavers. This was recognised particularly in three important areas: continuing contact with carers beyond 18; improving employment and training support; and constructing more comprehensive packages of post-care accommodation.

There are a range of options here and a number of ways in which we could move forward – and it would be up to the Welsh Government, in partnership with the Assembly itself, to mark its route of choice. However, my basic argument is that we should stop thinking in terms of young people ‘leaving care’ and start thinking about the continuity and support they need to make the transition from care into adult life.

We should seek to replace the abrupt ending of care with gradual phases tailored to the young person’s needs. Where placement stability has not been achieved by the time the young person wishes to leave care, the objective should be to secure such continuity as is possible in the particular circumstances by enhancing current requirements for continuing contact.

Statistics show the average child does not leave the parental home until they are 24-years-old. Narrowing the gap between the average age of those leaving local authority care and the average age of independence for their peers is a social justice issue and demands a culture change in our attitude to leaving care if we are to provide a more stable transition to adult life for these young people.

It’s hard to overestimate the vulnerability of care leavers at this time, individuals who we already know are behind other young people in terms of educational achievement as well as employment and training and other opportunities. Attainment results for looked after children are still inexcusably lower than the average for all pupils in Wales – in 2009 the average external qualifications points score for looked after children aged 16 was 146, comparing to an average of 356 for all pupils. In addition, only 55 percent of children aged 16 or over who ceased being looked after had at least one GCSE or GNVQ, whilst the numbers of looked after children going on to Higher Education barely registers.

It is therefore even more of an imperative for an active state to play the ‘pushy parent’ role not just in the years up to 18, but beyond and into the first stages of adulthood in order to compensate for the difficulties they already face in their young lives. Again, this is a role we play for our own children every day and it is high time we demanded it for those young people who live their lives in care – because they are our children, too.

Professor Ian Sinclair described the process of leaving care as the “Achilles Heel” of the care system, having the potential to undo whatever work has been done by the system up to that point. While acknowledging the hard work already being done all across Wales, now is the time to be bold and set out an even more comprehensive vision for the future of young people in looked after care.

It’s time to put a more rigorous definition on our role as corporate parents and turn the national debate about the well-being, prosperity, attainment and life-quality of our looked after children in Wales into positive and comprehensive action that goes beyond simply issuing yet more guidance. We have to ensure that the approach and obligation to young care leavers is consistent across Wales.

It is time to be bold and to insist on what we want to achieve for our young people.