A Challenge for the New Year

This New Year, let’s resolve to do what we in education can to make the lives of vulnerable children better.

Within weeks one summer, we said farewell to a looked after child in Year 3 who left for a new life on the east coast, and welcomed a Year 5 who joined us from a city fifty miles to the south.  There are 30,000 children in care, 41% of the total, who are placed outside the area “they would call home” and “Pass The Parcel”  is a shamefully apt name for the report on their experiences published by Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner for England, on Christmas Eve.

For a child, being placed in care is traumatic.  I have known children removed from their families for all sorts of reasons: after child pornography was found on a parent’s phone, for example, or parents were arrested for drug offences.  More than one child I know has suffered the anguish of finding a parent unconscious after a suicide attempt, and several times children themselves disclosed sexual or physical abuse.  Almost forty years ago, a boy I taught was held at gunpoint by his father in a stand-off with police.  But whatever the immediate trigger, being in care is NEVER the child’s fault.

In emergency, the social workers look not for what is ideal but for what is possible.  So it’s no surprise that initial placements can be miles away.  But, as a report from the Children’s Society revealed in September 2019, a long term placement at a distance adds to the children’s distress and brings with it huge dangers.  

11,000 children are in care more than 20 miles from their former homes and 2,000 are a hundred miles away.  “Record numbers” of these “are going missing,” the Children’s Society says. We don’t know how many, because the DfE doesn’t publish the figures, but there are more than 70,000 “missing incidents” annually, and the number is rising.  Many looked after children run away because they are unhappy – often trying to run home – others are enticed away to be exploited. 

Of the children in care placed out of their area, 52% have special educational needs and almost half of these (24% of the total) have social emotional and mental health identified as their primary need.  And moving area compromises both educational chances and treatment on the NHS.  These highly vulnerable children are often left without a school place for months on end, and while children typically wait many months for a CAMHS appointment, those who move district go to the back of the queue every time.  The Children’s Commissioner’s report comments: “We heard teens casually talking about having to move home 10, 11 or even 15 times (numbers which we know can go much higher).  We found that over half of children placed out of area have 2 or more moves within 2 years.”  The wait for therapy which was already far too long at months, becomes years, and sometimes never.

There are good reasons why some children have to be placed in care “out of area”.  For example, some children have to go for their own safety as they are being targeted by others locally. But too often the problem is simply a lack of placements, which comes down to a lack of resources. Bluntly, some authorities are trying to save money by exporting what they see as a “problem”, and as with everything, some areas are more affected than others (Kent and Lincolnshire import four times more children in care than they export).  However, as the Children’s Society declares, this “is a national scandal”. Vulnerable children “are suffering additional trauma because local authorities – the very people tasked with keeping them safe – are sending them away.”.

“Pass The Parcel” has several recommendations, most of them for action by the Government.  But we, as educators could do our bit, starting in January.  Without delay we could make some children’s lives immeasurably better with three simple steps.

1. School leaders, open your arms.  The Admission’s Code gives theoretical priority to children in care and those with EHCPs.  Make this theory a reality and stop putting barriers between vulnerable children and school. 
2. Ofsted, stop penalising schools which take in vulnerable children: reward them instead.
3. Anne Longfield, Children’s Commissioner for England, drop your objection to children being placed in schools that Ofsted describes as Requires Improvement.

Shockingly, some of the young people spoken to for “Pass the Parcel” believed that their experiences were so awful they were “punishment” for things the children themselves had done.  Let’s end this national scandal in 2020.