Government issues formal response to ‘Stable Homes’ consultation amid concerns over funding and implementation

The Government has responded to its ‘Children’s Social Care: Stable Homes, Built on Love’ consultation, which provided feedback on its proposed reforms from individuals, organisations, charities, multi-agencies and local authorities.

Despite welcoming some aspects of the Government’s response, the Association of Directors of Childrens Services (ADCS) said it still awaits “a lot of detail” on how the Department intends to move forward with those reforms and “what exactly they will look like”.

The proposals set out in the ‘Built on Love’ social care implementation strategy are organised under six ‘pillars’ of reform:

• Family help provides the right support at the right time so that children can thrive with their families
• A decisive multi-agency child protection system
• Unlocking the potential of family networks
• Putting love, relationships and a stable home at the heart of being a child in care
• A valued, supported and highly skilled social worker for every child who needs one
• A system that continuously learns and improves, and makes better use of evidence and data

The Department for Education (DfE) revealed that the consultation respondents showed “strong support” for a focus on love and relationships, a multi-agency approach to safeguarding, including more involvement of education professionals, and recognition of the value of social workers and proposals that strive to improve recruitment, including apprenticeships.

However, concerns were raised regarding implementation of the reform programme including the sufficiency of funding, and a need for clarity on how proposed changes would translate into practice.

Responding to concerns regarding funding, the Government said: “We recognise the financial constraints local areas are facing.

“Building on investment secured in the 2021 Spending Review, we are investing an additional £200 million into reform for children's social care by 2024 to 2025, including investment for testing innovative new approaches to find more efficient and sustainable models of delivery that can offer better outcomes for children and families”.

Other respondents raised concerns over the challenges in delivering Regional Care Cooperatives.

‘Built on Love’ committed to co-designing two pathfinders to test a regional model for providing homes for children in care, called Regional Care Cooperatives (RCC’s).

On this, the Government said: “Our vision for RCCs includes them delivering better collaboration with health and justice to improve services for children in care, better and more accurate information to improve planning for care, better economies of scale and better support for foster carers.”

Although the consultation revealed that many areas see value in coming together to improve the sufficiency of high-quality care placements across regions, some respondents referenced concerns about the size of the RCCs and that, as an organisation, they risk being “too far removed from the child or young person, and may lose relationships with local small providers”.

Some respondents raised difficulties with aligning budgeting, planning and commissioning practices across multiple local authorities.

Responding to the concerns, the Government said: “We remain committed to co-designing the Regional Care Cooperative pathfinders with the sector. Each will have a steering group with representatives from all local authorities involved plus other local and regional services to work through implementation issues.”

The consultation response revealed that children and young people were “positive about the ambitions and the strategy as a whole”. However, some key areas where they felt more could be done included supporting kinship care and keeping siblings together wherever possible, said the DfE.

The Government also separately consulted on a draft Children’s Social Care National Framework (National Framework) and proposals to introduce national rules on the engagement of agency social work resource in local authority children’s social care.

However, it noted that it will formally respond to the agency social work consultation “later this year”.

Commenting on the Government’s response to the consultation, ADCS President John Pearce said: “ADCS is pleased that the Department for Education has responded to its consultation on reforms to the children’s social care system, however, we still await a lot of detail on how the Department intends to move forward with these reforms and what exactly they will look like.

“It is positive to see that concerns raised by ADCS regarding Regional Care Cooperatives (RCC) have been listened to with a more pragmatic approach now being taken. This is a sensible move and it is important that each region is able to decide whether to set up an RCC pathfinder or not. RCCs are not a silver bullet and there are other strands of work that need to take place to address the immediate placement sufficiency issues we face, rising costs of placements and profiteering on the backs of vulnerable children.”

Pearce added: “It is hugely frustrating that the Department’s response to the agency social work consultation is delayed when urgent action is needed to tackle the unaffordable costs and unacceptable practices by some social work agencies. ADCS believes the Department’s initial proposals are the right ones, in the best interests of children and young people, and should be implemented in full and at pace. The costs associated with the use of agency social workers and project teams have risen sharply in recent years, we simply cannot afford to stand still and allow this trend to continue.”

Last week (21 September), the Government announced more support for care leavers as part of its ‘staying close’ programme, which 27 new local authorities are to join.

The programme provides a package of “continued support and guidance” to young people leaving care, ensuring they have accommodation, resources and practical and emotional help provided by a member of staff from their former children’s home, said the Department for Education.

The 27 local authorities have been awarded £27m to run the staying close programme, taking the programme to a total of 47 local authorities nationally, worth £53m overall.

Lottie Winson