As an organisation constantly striving to understand and improve the ‘big picture’ for children’s lives and the policies that affect them, we should be pleased to read so much analysis converging on what we believe are the systemic issues undermining children’s social care.
After the Competition and Markets Authority study and the Care Review, the Government’s own plan for children’s social care recognises in its very name – Stable Homes, Built on Love – that the current system militates against stability for children in care and undermines loving relationships because local authorities lack the power to commission the care children need and relationships are broken by placement moves, professional silos and piecemeal policy-making.
It is dispiriting to see that the elephant in the room is still there when the analysis begs the question: where is the money?
No one in the children’s sector would disagree love is one of the foundation stones of a system that cares well for children. It motivates the vast majority of us to join the sector in the first place, and is the driving force for foster carers, adopters and kinship carers who certainly are not stepping up to care for a child because they have seen the budgets involved.
Systems don’t work without money, and systems running on too little money end up failing to nurture the people they are designed for.
The data is clear: more children come into care as poverty levels rise and families overwhelmed by poverty are more likely to struggle with providing the stable home life children need to thrive. Not from lack of love, but because families – their food, homes and clothing – cost money, and going without those basics puts immense stress on all generations.
Children’s social care is the same, and yet the Government expects leaders to be able to turn it from an impoverished system into a thriving one with the central investment equivalent of pocket money instead of a living wage.
In light of the £1.6bn additional funding local authorities need annually merely to maintain current service levels – before attempting transformational improvement, or simply better pay and conditions for social care staff – the Government’s offer of £200m to a select few areas looks grossly disingenuous.
We appreciate the Department for Education’s ambition for a system built on love. But children need the Treasury to supply the other vital building block: investment that matches the scale of the task.
Chloë Darlington is director of policy, campaigns and communications at Children England
@Childrenengland