An inquiry led by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Runaway and Missing Children and Adults and the APPG for Looked after Children and Care Leavers has delivered a devastating report on the failings of children's homes in particular and treatment of children in care in general. How many instances are there of children […]
If schools are failing they are being taken over. This morning we learnt that the same will happen to the adoption services of local councils. This is excellent news. In no other area has political correctness been more disastrous. That mentality is deeply ingrained in the social work profession, which is why relying on persuasion […]
The Government is quite right to seek to reduce the number of children in care by increasing the number placed for adoption. But they should also improve the outcomes for those who remain in care. For instance, being shunted between foster carers should be kept to a minimum. The league tables increase the accountability for […]
The BBC reports on findings by Big Brother Watch that 132 local authorities lose sensitive information including details of children in care. The failings were uncovered using Freedom of Information requests and at least 1035 incidents of data being lost and stolen. At least 244 laptops and portable computers were lost. A minimum of 98 […]
One reason social workers are often resistance to adoption is that they dislike the prospect of children from council estates being pleased with middle class households. Yet they also say that children being adopted should have their own bedroom. While the housing department says council tenants can't move to a bigger property until they have […]
The Shadow Children's Minister Catherine McKinnell said in a Westminster Hall debate on adoption: I am concerned that naming and shaming local authorities seriously risks painting too simplistic a picture of an incredibly complex issue. Have Ministers considered what impact the threat of tough action against those local authorities will have on the morale, recruitment […]
Ofsted has published their verdicts for Council's Children's Services Departments. It rates 28 councils (including Hammersmith and Fulham) as "excellent" in this area. Councils judged to be performing poorly are Staffordshire, Gloucestershire, Slough, Birmingham, Calderdale, Cheshire West and Chester Council, Cornwall, Kent, Peterborough, Salford, Sandwell, Torbay, West Sussex and Worcestershire. Of course there is the […]
Local councillors are "corporate parents" of their authority's "Looked After Children." So every councillor should take a look at the new performance tables to see how they are doing. Most of the media interest has been in the "Adoption 3" table that shows the percentage of children actually placed for adoption within 12 months of […]
The Sunday Telegraph has more details on Government plans to boost the numbber of adoption. this follows the news that in the Coalition Government's first year the number of children in care actually rose and that only 60 babies were adopted. It also follow the pledge in the prime Minister's Party Conference speech to do […]
Not all News International journalists will have reason to feel very proud today but those at The Times are entitled to do so. The paper has published as a supplement (£) a report from Martin Narey, the former Chief Executive of Barnado's, making the case for more children to be placed for adoption and full […]
There have been some good themes from The Times on ways to place more children for adoption currently in the care system. There should not be delay to avoid transracial placements. There should not be an automatic decision to keep older children in care. There should be concurrent planning. This means that at the same time […]
In an interview for The Guardian, Martin Narey, the outgoing Chief Executive of Barnado's, says the adoption rate has collapsed to "prejudice." He says: "Only 70 babies were adopted last year compared with 4,000 in 1976. We need that figure to get back into the thousands so we need to quadruple it over the next few […]
Where councils have a Children's Services Dept all the councillors are "corporate parents" to the children in care. We don't do a very good job overall, do we? When the "Looked After Children" grow up they more likely to end up in prison than university. So we should keep the number of children in care […]
Congratulations to my friend Shireen Ritchie, a Kensington and Chelsea councillor, on her well deserved peerage. In March I ran a piece about her work in the complicated but vital area of social workers drowning in paperwork. She has come up with some practical ideas on the Common Assessment Framework, the computer systems social workers use, […]
The news from Doncaster has been pretty grim of late. A report has shown that an incident last April of two brothers, now aged 11 and 12, torturing two innocent boys was "preventable." The perpetrators of violence had themselves been growing up in a violent family. Social workers were very well aware of the situation but […]