A new report from the Children’s Commissioner has raised concerns about the quality and consistency of support for some of England’s most vulnerable children, with decisions about their care often driven by local capacity and resource rather than the needs of families.
Families whose children are deemed as ‘in need’ under Section 17 of the Children Act have told the Children’s Commissioner that under the care plans put in place to help them, they feel ‘monitored but not supported’ – with many of these plans lacking measurable actions, timeframes for improvements or clarity on how frequently visits from professionals should take place.
Child in need plans are a fundamental part of the child protection system in England, and the earliest statutory intervention available by the state to prevent families facing difficulties from being split up and children being taken into care. Around 400,000 children are considered to be children in need, with around a quarter of these children provided with child in need plans – but new research reveals that support families receive under these plans is poorly monitored and progress is hard to track.
Analysing a sample of plans, the Children’s Commissioner found:
- In more than four out of five (85%), it was difficult to assess what had been done to protect the child named in the plan or whether progress had been made, such was the poor quality of the actions set out;
- Nearly three quarters (72%) of actions for families and professionals had no timeframes for completion, making it hard to track progress between visits and review meetings; and
- Frequency of visits varied by area – almost one in 25 children (4%) named in a plan for reasons to do with their safety had not been visited in more than three months.
Ahead of the government’s anticipated Children’s Wellbeing Bill to be introduced to Parliament before the end of the year, the Children’s Commissioner is making the case for bold reform for children and families, by defining clear national thresholds of need to guide good practice everywhere and a national outcomes framework that assesses the effectiveness of help given to families.
Children’s Commissioner for England Dame Rachel de Souza said:
“Child in need plans play a fundamental role in the child protection system and, where implemented well and with care, can make the difference between a family overcoming difficulties to stay safely together, or a child being removed and put into the care of the state.
“Many of the children on child in need plans experience neglect by the adults in their lives – but instead of receiving support that is tailored to their needs and to improving their circumstances quickly, this neglect is often compounded because no-one is listening to their voices.
“No child’s family life should be compromised by poor local decision making or the workload pressures of the professionals there to support them. A child’s individual needs should be at the heart of how these plans are produced – but often they are an afterthought in a fragmented system driven by whether there is capacity locally to help.
“Alarmingly, my research shows that both families and professionals involved in child in need plans do not understand their purpose, with too many plans lacking timeframes or measurable actions. There must be national guidance and a universal way of measuring progress so that every family, no matter their circumstances, is helped to safely and effectively overcome the challenges they face in their lives.”
Today’s report builds on findings published earlier this year, which – driven by a lack of available data and understanding on who ‘children in need’ are – highlighted variations in the use of child in need plans among different groups of children and across local authorities in England.
To enhance understanding of Section 17 interventions, today’s report draws on data on how often children on child in need plans are visited by social workers, and a sample of child in need plans, both collected from Local Authorities under the Children’s Commissioner’s statutory powers. It assesses their content, whether they achieve the outcomes they set out and how families’ progress is measured.
It reveals confusion about the purpose of child in need plans, with a disconnect between parents’ and social workers’ understanding. While some social workers see the plans as tools for coordinating support, many parents told the Commissioner they were unclear about their purpose, saying they felt monitored without receiving adequate help and unsure of a plan’s objectives.
The report also found that without detailed statutory guidance, or a universal template for local authorities to draw on, there were inconsistencies in how child in need plans are used to support families, with support varying between local authorities.
Other key report findings included:
- Lack of child’s voice: Despite statutory guidance setting out the need for the child’s view to be captured, 35% of assessments and plans did not include the child’s voice – meaning the needs and experiences of this group of vulnerable children are not being heard.
- Lack of parental consent: Families are supposed to consent to their children going onto child in need plans, but only 57% of plans and assessments had parental consent recorded.
- Frequency of social worker visits: Local authorities are responsible for publishing their own timescales for how often visits should take place, which most meet the majority of the time.
- Children on plans to receive support for their disability or illness appear to be visited less frequently than other children.
- Concerningly, almost one in 25 (4%) of children on child in need plans for concerns around their safety and development, had not been visited in over three months.
- Issues measuring effectiveness of plans: Due to lack of national guidance, local authorities vary widely in how they structure and record progress in child in need plans – analysis of a sample of plans found:
- An overwhelming majority (85%) of actions recorded within them did not meet my criteria for a ‘high quality’ action, meaning for the majority of actions it was difficult to assess what had been done and whether progress had been made when the plans ended; and
- Over half of the actions in plans (52%) had no measures given, and 72% lacked timeframes, making it difficult to assess if actions had been completed or track progress between visits and review meetings.
- Reasons for plan closures: Analysis found child in need plans do not always close because a family’s need have been met, in some cases closures are influenced by local authorities’ varying threshold for need, meaning in absence of national guidance defining threshold of need, decisions to close plans can be influenced by wider level need in a local area, rather than clear resolution of the family’s challenges.
There were also variations in the length of assessment times, while most children were assessed for child in need plans within the statutory maximum length of time, at least three children waited for a year, instead of 45 days.
In today’s report, the Children’s Commissioner has set out a series of recommendations in which she urges the government to use its proposed Children’s Wellbeing Bill as an opportunity to address these issues. Key recommendations include:
- Setting national thresholds for determining the level of need that qualifies families for support.
- Developing clear national guidance on expectations for how often children receive help and how frequently that help is reviewed when on a child in need plan.
- Establishing a National Child in Need Outcomes Framework to track families’ progress and ensure they receive appropriate, timely support.
