Children's social care reform accelerates with more support for care leavers

• 27 new areas join the Staying Close programme, which provides significant extra support to help care leavers move to independent living up to the age of 21
• New guidance on advocacy for children in care launches for consultation, ensuring children and young people’s voices are heard
• Government continues to deliver against the children’s care strategy, publishing responses on reforming children’s social care and the new National Framework and Dashboard

Thousands more young people will soon receive additional crucial support when leaving care as today 21 September, the Government announces 27 new local authorities to join the Staying Close programme.

The Staying Close programme provides a package of continued support and guidance to young people leaving care. This includes ensuring they have accommodation, resources and practical and emotional help provided by a member of staff from their former children’s home, to help them thrive as independent adults.

The 27 local authorities have been awarded £27 million to run the Staying Close programme, taking the programme to a total of 47 local authorities nationally, worth £53 million overall. This funding means more care leavers than ever before will have access to this support.

To further demonstrate the Government’s commitment to supporting the most vulnerable children, it has today launched a consultation, seeking feedback on the National Advocacy Standards and Statutory Guidance. The standards seek to improve advocacy provision for children in care and care leavers and address gaps and barriers to services, to ensure all voices are heard.

The Government also introduced a new standard on non-instructed advocacy for very young and non-verbal children and young people. These updates set expectations for what high quality advocacy provision should look like and place the voice of children and young people at the heart of the system.

Today’s updates are part of the Government’s continued work to improve children’s social care, as set out in the children’s social care strategy, Stable Homes, Built on Love. Backed by £200 million over the next two years, the ambitious and wide-ranging strategy will transform the current care system to focus on more early support for families, reducing the need for crisis response at a later stage.

Children and Families Minister, David Johnston, said:

“We are making significant strides in our ambition to transform children’s social care services for some of our most vulnerable children and young people across the country.

“At the heart of today’s developments are the needs of children in care and care leavers. Our work on advocacy standards will make sure they’re listened to and supported, while the fantastic Staying Close programme is helping give them the tools they need to thrive as young adults.”

Today, the Department has also published the Government’s responses to two consultations: the first response on the overall strategy for transforming children’s social care, Stable Homes, Built on Love, and the second on the National Framework and Dashboard. The National Framework, when published later this year, will clarify expectations and outcomes for what local authorities should achieve in children’s social care.

Stable Homes, Built on Love responds to recommendations made by 3 independent reviews - the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, the National Panel’s review into the murders of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson, and the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) report.  

Stable Homes, Built on Love set out how we will help families overcome challenges, keep children safe, and make sure children in care have stable loving homes, long-term loving relationships, and opportunities for a good life.

The strategy outlines six pillars of support to achieve this, which includes bolstering family help, bettering multi=agency working, better supporting children in care and care leavers, and ensuring the children’s care system continuously learns and improves, making better use of evidence and data.

ENDS

Notes to editors

The 27 areas to receive support from the Staying Close programme are:

The six pillars of Stable Homes: Built on Love are:

Introducing more effective, joined-up family help for those that are struggling

Up to 12 local areas will get over £45 million to test a new approach to family help to provide increased, evidence-based support for families to overcome issues to prevent problems from escalating. In a welcoming and non-judgemental way, the new service will help families with issues such as addiction or poor mental health, giving them access to local support with the focus on the help they need rather than bureaucratic boundaries and assessments between services and professionals.

Where a child is at risk of harm, experts will intervene swiftly and decisively to protect them

A new Child Protection Lead Practitioner role will have advanced, specialist training, and will work in a fully joined up way with other services such as the police, to better identify and respond to significant harm. The change will mean services work more effectively to protect children from harms that happen outside of the home, such as criminal exploitation and serious violence.

Harnessing the value of family networks by supporting the kinship care system

There will be a focus on improved support and reducing barriers to kinship care, including investing £9 million in a kinship care training and support offer for all kinship carers. The government will explore the case for a new financial allowance, possible additional workplace entitlements and options for an extension of legal aid for kinship carers who become special guardians or who hold child arrangement orders.

Transforming the experiences of children in care and care leavers, by prioritising children in care living in homes close to their family, friends, communities and schools

In addition to the recruitment programme and the above inflation increase to allowances, the government is investing up to £30 million in family finding, befriending and mentoring programmes to support children in care and care leavers to find and maintain loving relationships.  The government will also increase the leaving care allowance from £2,000 to £3,000 from April this year, an above inflation increase to help them set up home independently. For care leavers undertaking apprenticeships, there will be an increase to the bursary available from £1000 to £3,000.

Expanding and strengthening the children’s social care workforce

Local authorities will be supported to recruit up to 500 new child and family social worker apprentices and there will be consultation on proposals to reduce over-reliance on agency social workers. The government will also introduce a new early career framework for social workers that will make sure that social workers have the knowledge and skills they need to support and protect children.

Setting clearer direction for everyone who works in the system, through a new children’s social care national framework and dashboard

The children’s social care national framework consultation published today, sets out clear outcomes that should be achieved across all local authorities to improve the lives of children and families, raising the quality of practice across the country.