Care leavers in England are over ten times more likely than their peers to be not in education, employment or training (NEET) in their 21st year, major new analysis shows.
Overall, nearly one-third were NEET compared to just 2.4 per cent in the general population and 13 per cent of 21-year-olds. The vast majority of these were defined as ‘economically inactive’ due to disability – including mental health issues – or caring responsibilities. Among those care leavers who were working, over two-thirds were in precarious roles that were short-term, part-time or poorly paid.
The study was funded by the Nuffield Foundation and based at the Rees Centre at the University of Oxford. It was led by Dr Neil Harrison (now at the University of Exeter) and Jo Dixon (University of York).
Neil Harrison said: “This is the first study of its kind to explore over time what happens to care leavers and other care-experienced young people in early adulthood. We have been able to document the acute challenges they face in making positive transitions towards stability and wellbeing.”
“What we clearly see in the data is that the legacy of earlier disadvantages, such as childhood trauma or disruptions to schooling, gets cemented in early adulthood. While around a quarter of care leavers were able to access higher education or stable work by their 21st year, the majority were reliant on benefits or precarious employment. Urgent action is needed to remedy this.”
Researchers used data, including the newly available Longitudinal Educational Outcomes, or LEO, dataset for young people born between 1st September 1995 and 31st August 1996. A total of 3,850 out of the 530,440 individuals were care leavers and 28,810 had some experience of the children’s social care system. They also interviewed 28 care leavers and 41 professionals across five local authorities, including personal advisers, leaving care team members, virtual school staff and carers.
The research shows a strong link between economic inactivity and higher levels of special educational needs during Key Stage 4, including attending a special school. This was particularly marked for care leavers, of whom 62.4 per cent were identified as having a high level of need.
Neil Harrison said: “Good GCSE grades – especially in English and mathematics – had a very strong role in determining which onward pathways were available. However, many care leavers were not able to attain as highly as they might due to what was going on their lives. This reinforces the vital importance of ‘second chance’ pathways, especially through further education colleges.”
Those interviewed said the support of extended family and other social networks was essential to them finding jobs and transitioning to adult life. Care leavers and professionals reported practical barriers in accessing youth employment schemes like Kickstart. They supported care leavers being given preferential access to employment opportunities by councils as part of their ‘corporate parenting’ responsibilities.
Jo Dixon said: “More can be done to remove barriers and disincentives to work for care-experienced young people. This includes addressing the impact of low minimum wage rates for under 23s in employment and apprenticeships, who are without parental support and thus carry financial responsibility for rent and living costs. This is a particular priority for young people in expensive supported accommodation, which can make taking up work-related opportunities unviable.”
“There is already scope to implement ring-fenced and supported work-related opportunities specifically for care-experienced young people. Guaranteed interviews, targeted and supported work-experience schemes and dedicated employment opportunities should be on offer. Utilising corporate parenting and corporate social responsibility in this way will benefit care-experienced young people and the local labour market.”
Rob Street, Director of Justice at the Nuffield Foundation said: “This important study highlights the range of challenges that young care leavers face in accessing the education, employment, and training opportunities that underpin transition into adulthood. The report makes a number of well-evidenced, practical recommendations to national and local policymakers and others for measures to assist this often multiply-disadvantaged group of children and young people”
Recommendations from the study include:
- Providing strong routes for young people to go into (and back into) post-16 education and training
- National government should provide additional ‘top up’ funding for care leavers to participate in apprenticeships and other schemes to ensure that they are not financially disadvantaged
- Young people leaving care between 14 and 16 should be considered as an ‘at risk’ group with respect to complex transitions into adulthood.
- Stronger links with local employers to improve young people’s knowledge of the range of opportunities available to them.
- Targeted pre-employment and pre-apprenticeship support to prepare young people with the most complex needs to take steps towards work-related opportunities.
- Education providers and employers should have greater awareness of trauma and mental health needs for care leavers and other care-experienced young people.
The views and experiences of over 7,500 children and young people in care on their contact with family members and impact on their wellbeing are uncovered in a new report published today by the charity Coram Voice and The Rees Centre at University of Oxford.
Staying Connected finds that nearly a third (31%) of children (aged 8-10) and a quarter (25%) of young people (aged 11-18) felt they were seeing their mothers too little, whilst over a fifth (22%) of children and 18% of young people felt they were seeing their fathers too little. 22% of children didn’t feel they had enough contact with their brothers and sisters, and this figure was higher for young people (31%). About one in five young people had no contact with either parent and this was particularly the case for those in residential care and boys.
Visits being arranged at inconvenient times, long distances, the costs of travel, their family’s circumstances, and workers failing to make necessary arrangements were among reasons cited by children and young people for seeing family less often than they wanted. Children in care who felt they saw family members too little reported feeling sad, angry and unsettled, while in contrast, those who felt contact arrangements were “just right” felt they were being listened to and looked forward to seeing their family.
One young person (aged 11-18) commented: “I want to see my family more. My social worker is supposed to be doing police checks. I have been here since September and the checks have not been done. It’s not like I can just visit. I live five hours from home.”
Whether children and young people felt that they saw parents often enough was statistically associated with length of time in care, type of placement and which local authority was caring for them. Analysis shows that young people (aged 11-18) in residential care more frequently reported that they had too little contact with family compared to young people in other types of placements. The number of placements experienced also had an impact, with 60% of young people who had only had one placement reporting they were satisfied with their contact frequency, compared to 39% who had experienced 11 or more placements.
In addition, 50% of young people surveyed did not feel involved in decisions social workers made about their lives, and half of the comments about involvement focused on contact arrangements. Children and young people commented on arrangements being inflexible, not changing as they got older or as their family’s circumstances changed. One child (aged 8-10) commented: “I used to see Mum and older brother three times a week. It has been cut down to once a week and this makes me sad. I don’t know why contact was cut down.”
Comments also highlighted that children and young people wanted to see extended family members, pets and other adults who were important to them, and that the key people in their lives were not always included in contact plans.
- Staying Connected is the latest report to be published as part of the Bright Spots programme* and it makes seven key recommendations to improve policy and practice:
- Work with all children in care to identify the key relationships in their lives
- Make arrangements for children and young people to maintain contact, develop relationships and reconnect with people who are important to them
- Listen to and involve children and young people in decisions about the arrangements to see and keep in touch with family and others who are important to them
- Keep children in care informed about their families, why they can or cannot see them, and what arrangements have been made for them to spend time together
- Ensure plans are regularly reviewed and reflect the current circumstances, wishes and needs of children and young people and their families
- Normalise family time whenever possible, minimising the use of contact centres and supporting children and families to meet in the community
- Make sure the workforce has the skills and knowledge to prioritise and confidently support children in care to stay connected to the people who are important to them
Linda Briheim-Crookall, Head of Policy and Practice Development at Coram Voice, said: “The recent Care Review suggested the primary objective of the care system should be promoting the formation of lifelong loving relationships around children in care and care leavers. This can only be achieved if more is done to build rather than break relationships with the people who are already important to children in care. Our research showed that there is still some way to go to make this happen. Services and workers must listen to children and young people about who they want to see, when and how and seek to make this happen. Children in care should have the opportunity to spend time with the people who are important to them doing everyday things like playing games, having a meal or going for a walk with the dog.”
Julie Selwyn, Professor of Education and Adoption at The Rees Centre at University of Oxford, said: “While previous UK research has emphasised that the quality of contact is more important than the frequency, from young people’s perspective frequency was equally, if not more important. Feeling contact was ‘just right’ was associated with higher levels of wellbeing. Staying connected to the important people in life is essential for children’s wellbeing. Greater efforts need to be made to ensure that this is achieved for all children in care.”
To read the full report, watch a video on the findings and download resources for agencies and local authorities, please visit coramvoice.org.uk/staying-connected-report.
We are delighted to announce that the University of Oxford’s Rees Centre, at the Department of Education is partnering with Become, the national charity for children in care and young care leavers to define a new measurement of success for care leavers
Organised by researchers Dr Nikki Luke and Dr Áine Kelly at the Rees Centre (Department of Education), this mixed-methods study will investigate what ‘success’ means to a range of stakeholders. Central to the work will be gaining the perspective of care leavers and those just about to leave care. There will be four phases of work, each developed with a care-experienced design group, named ‘Future of Care’, who will co-produce research materials and outputs. The research is particularly relevant following the recent publication of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, in which five ambitious ‘missions’ were suggested to bring outcomes for care leavers in line with the rest of the population.
Kudzai Zimowa, a young care leaver in the design group of the project, says:
“I have thoroughly enjoyed my experience on the Future of Care design group. It has been great working with other care-experienced young people to help define what success looks like for care leavers. It’s been a fantastic opportunity to work on a project that can make a material difference in the lives of many young people. Too often the narrative on what success means for care leavers is controlled by others. Become have done a great job in creating a collaborative space where care-experienced people can all share their perspective on what success looks like and hopefully rewrite the narrative.”
Katharine Sacks-Jones, CEO at Become, the national charity for children in care and young care leavers, says:
“If we are to ensure care leavers are offered the right support and opportunities to be happy and live fulfilling lives, we must know what ‘success’ really means to them.
Too often we make assumptions about what matters to young people without asking or listening to them. And so we focus on and measure certain outcomes without truly understanding what it means to that young person themselves to make a “successful” transition into adulthood.
This research will help us to address the gap of knowledge that exists in understanding the hopes and ambitions of young people in and leaving care. And it’s by hearing directly from young people that we can set meaningful measures for “success” going forward.”
Leon Feinstein, Professor of Education and Children’s Social Care and Director of the Rees Centre at the University of Oxford’s Department of Education, says:
“The concept of a ‘successful’ transition from childhood to adulthood is largely defined by traditional, formal routes to ‘success’ such as education and employment. Parents, carers, educators, policymakers, and other professionals all make assumptions about what a successful adult is and develop policies and practices to fit. This means that outcomes or success factors are at best assumed and imposed on young people, particularly for those in and/or leaving care.
Even where there are defined official measures of success for care leavers, the data is far from consistent and comprehensive. The government statistics that do exist only provide a partial picture of care leavers’ lives. They focus on objective measures and professional assessments i.e., whether the local authority is in touch with care leavers, if their accommodation is suitable, and if they are in education, employment, or training.
That’s why this research partnership is so important to help us understand how young people perceive their aspirations, personal achievements, and attainments. At the end of the 3-year project, we will have measures based on young people in care and young care leavers’ own criteria for success which feels right, timely and much needed.”
More information on the project can be found here.
Ecorys, the Rees Centre at University of Oxford, and Ipsos MORI have been appointed by the Department for Education to explore the potential of a seminal study to independently research the needs, experiences and outcomes for children and young people leaving care on Adoption Orders (AOs) and Special Guardianship Orders (SGOs).
There is currently limited research around how these two routes to permanence affect children’s long-term outcomes as they progress into adolescence and adulthood. We hope to follow the lives of young people aged 12-21 growing up in adoption and special guardianship families.
The purpose is to help:
- Assess the long-term outcomes for children growing up in adoption and special guardianship families;
- Support improved outcomes for children by enhancing our understanding of what influences the support needs and outcomes for adoptive families and special guardianship families;
- Understand the role of key stakeholders in supporting outcomes for previously looked after children, and the impact this has on their outcomes; and
- Support improved decision making by LAs and courts on permanency options for children who cannot return home to live with their birth parents.
Over the next six months, we will conduct a feasibility study to explore how best to approach families and encourage involvement in a longitudinal study. We will consult with stakeholders from the adoption, Special Guardianship sector and families to help us design the research and make plans to pilot the next stage.
The final reporting is scheduled for 2028.
More information on the project can be found on the study’s project page.
We are delighted to announce that the Rees Centre has been appointed as the Department for Education’s research partner to deliver the evaluation of two new initiatives in Virtual Schools.
On 16th June, the Government announced more than £16 million for councils to extend the role of Virtual School Heads from September this year, meaning there will be a local champion for children with a social worker in every local authority in England. This will ensure that more focus is placed on children with a social worker, targeting support earlier on in these young people’s lives and helping improve how they engage with education.
A further £3 million in funding has also been confirmed for a new pilot, where Virtual School Heads will support looked-after children and care leavers in post-16 education. Launching in October, the pilot will enable Virtual School Heads to expand their work into further education settings.
Both programmes will build on the existing role of a Virtual School Head, who help champion and improve the educational outcomes for children in or on the edge of care, enhancing relationships between schools, colleges and local authorities so that pupils receive support from professionals that will help them develop and progress throughout their time in education.
The Rees Centre evaluation will help to build an evidence base of what works, which will be used to inform any future support for this cohort, including sharing learning and best practice identified through the Virtual School Head role extension programme and post-16 education pilot with all local authorities across England. The evaluation will be jointly led by Professor Judy Sebba, Dr Neil Harrison and Dr Nikki Luke.
Nikki Luke of the Rees Centre explains why the group of children known as ‘Children in Need’ should receive more attention in policy and research. This is one of the main themes emerging from a new report ‘Children in Need and Children in Care: Educational attainment and progress’ published today.
Funded by the Nuffield Foundation, the report resulted from a collaboration led by Nikki Luke at the Rees Centre and David Berridge at the University of Bristol. The findings were drawn from:
- Quantitative analysis of data from a whole birth cohort of children (471,688) born in England in 2000/01, starting school in 2006/07 and tracked through to their GCSE exams in 2017.
- Interviews with 123 children, parents/carers and professionals.
The report examined the ‘attainment gap’ between children with a social worker and other pupils, and aimed to identify the factors that might explain this gap. Our analysis showed that educational attainment was lower for children who had any social work intervention during their school years compared with those who had no intervention: from 10-16% lower at the end of primary school, and 34-53% lower at the end of secondary school.
One important theme from our research is the need for greater attention to Children in Need in educational policy and research. Historically, attention has been focused on Children in Care; a reasonable direction given that Children in Care generally represent the most challenging home circumstances and severest levels of need. However, our report suggests that for a number of reasons the focus should be broadened to include the education of Children in Need.
Solely in numerical terms, Children in Need represent a larger issue: of the 69,246 children in our dataset who needed a social worker at some stage between school Years 1-11, only 13% were ever placed In Care. Most children receiving social work services live at home with birth families. Like Children in Care, most Children in Need have a social worker because of challenging family circumstances. They are also similar in terms of other forms of disadvantage: living in significantly more deprived areas than the national average, being 3-4 times as likely as children without social workers to be eligible for Free School Meals, and 2-6 times as likely to have an identified Special Educational Need or Disability.
These similarities in the characteristics of Children in Need and Children in Care come as no surprise when another finding is taken into account: 85% of Children in Care had previously been identified as Children in Need. The centrality of Children in Care over Children in Need in policy and research belies the fact that these are generally the same children at different points in their experience of social work intervention (and instead places the focus on the child’s legal status).
In practice, of course, Children in Need dominate the work of Children’s Services, and attention is paid to their educational progress as well as to other areas of their development. Indeed, our interviews revealed that many social workers were active regarding the education of Children in Need, often working to empower and advocate for parents to help ensure an effective education.
However, in policy terms, Children in Need are not afforded the same levels of educational support as Children in Care. They do not fall under the official remit of responsibilities for Virtual School Headteachers, a role that has made much progress in championing the education of Children in Care. They also do not attract the enhanced Pupil Premium Plus funding that is available for Children in Care, which might go some way to mitigating the educational difficulties of families living in poverty, as revealed in our interviews.
With this in mind, our research findings support and build on the recommendations of the Government’s Children in Need Review. Our report outlines some of the specific changes that we feel would help to improve the educational attainment and progress of Children in Need:
- Efforts to increase the visibility of the Children in Need group should continue, including raising the profile of Children in Need within schools and in Ofsted reports.
- With appropriate resourcing, there would be strong advantages in Virtual Schools, or a similar service, overseeing Children in Need as well as Children in Care.
- There are strong arguments for Pupil Premium Plus (PPP) payments to be extended in some form to Children in Need.
- Approaches that address the impact of poverty on education should be promoted (e.g. ‘Poverty Proofing the School Day’: http://www.povertyproofing.co.uk/).
- Teacher training for pupils’ well-being should include the specific circumstances of Children in Need and Children in Care, for example ‘attachment awareness’ issues and effective and acceptable behaviour management techniques for vulnerable pupils.
This research study built on our previous collaboration (published in 2015) which was the first research to statistically link education and care factors and complement this with interviews of secondary-aged Children in Care in England. In that project, we had found that children in longer-term care did better educationally than those receiving a social work service but not living In Care.
Following this report, in 2016 the Department for Education’s annual statistics on educational outcomes for Children in Care began including a comparison with Children in Need. In 2017, the Conservative party’s election manifesto included a pledge to “review support for Children in Need to understand why their outcomes are so poor and what more support they might require, in and out of school”. This was fulfilled by the publication of the Children in Need Review in 2019.
Dr Nikki Luke, Senior Research Fellow, Rees Centre
Contact Nikki: nikki.luke@education.ox.ac.uk
By Sam Turner from Become, the charity for children in care and young care leavers
This month, we released our manifesto – A system that cares – which outlines our key asks of the next government to support care-experienced children and young people.
We’re calling for all of the main political parties to commit to a comprehensive independent review of the care system which listens to those with lived experience, to focus on the continuity of relationships and stability for all children, and to ensure all care-experienced young people can access the mental health support they need to heal and thrive.
However, change isn’t only required within the care system itself.
Young people’s experiences in education can have a huge impact on their ability to manage the difficulties which arise from experiences of trauma and the instability of life in care. For some children, school might be a place of support and sanctuary, but for others, their experience in the classroom might act to compound the difficulties they face outside of the school gates.
Training and support – Every young person in care deserves a place in an inclusive school which welcomes them, addresses their needs and works closely with children’s services and Virtual School teams so they are well supported to pursue education and realise their aspirations.
Within our manifesto, we highlight our concerns about the increasing use of ‘zero tolerance’ behaviour policies on pupils who have experienced childhood adversity. The work of the Rees Centre and others in exploring teacher training in attachment and trauma awareness demonstrates the value of this approach in improving wellbeing and learning outcomes for whole cohorts, not just those with experience of care.
Our own Teachers Who Care report released last year highlighted a significant training gap in the needs of children in care: 87% of respondents received no training about looked after children before they qualified as a teacher. We want to see mandatory pre-qualification and continued training for all teachers which emphasises a compassionate understanding of childhood trauma and the impacts of care on learning and behaviour.
Admissions and exclusions – We are also calling for a revised School Admissions Code which ensures children in care are not denied a place in the school which is best for them. The current Code acknowledges that a local authority “has no power to direct” an Academy school to admit a looked after child.
A parliamentary question from Emma Lewell-Buck last year highlighted that 28 appeals had been made by local authorities after a refusal by an Academy from March 2017 – May 2018, and the Secretary of State was forced to provide formal direction four times to ensure a child in care was given the place they deserve. Academy and free schools now make up 75% of secondary schools and must be required to follow the same rules as local authority-maintained schools.
In addition, we want to see new initiatives which bring together local authority and school staff to prevent the growing use of fixed-term exclusions with children in care. As identified in the recent Timpson review, looked after children are more than five times more likely to have a fixed-term exclusion than all children. Repeated time away from the classroom impacts not only on children’s attainment, but their emotional wellbeing, sense of identity and belonging.
We look forward to working alongside the Rees Centre and others to ensure the next government makes a commitment to improving educational experiences of all children in care. Not all challenges can be solved in a classroom, but creating a caring and supportive school environment for all pupils must be a top priority for whoever comes out ahead on December 12th.
Sam Turner, Voice and Influencing Manager, Become
Contact Sam: Sam.Turner@becomecharity.org.uk
The Rees Centre welcomes guest blog posts from professionals across the sector. Views expressed are the authors’ own and do not represent those of the Rees Centre.