Children’s care monitor spotlights the real issues

England’s Children’s Rights Director Roger Morgan has released the annual children’s care monitor.

The survey of 2,000 children in care suggests that:

• more than half of children in care are given a week’s notice or less of being moved to another foster home
• nearly a quarter are given no notice at all
• three-quarters of those in care with siblings reported they had been separated into different placements

Nushra Mansuri, BASW professional officer, comments:

“These are the care issues that merit serious attention, more so than the government’s current posturing on adoption. This is an issue that BASW has always campaigned on and will continue to do so.

“We know that there is a chronic shortage of placements in our care system. In a crisis, or because of budgetary constraints, changes of placement can occur which are less than ‘child centred’.

“Social workers working with looked after children find themselves dealing with heart breaking situations such as siblings being separated, because of lack of provision, although in some cases, there can be advantages in terms of children with complex needs being placed in more specialist placements.

“We commend Roger Morgan for shining a spotlight on this situation, and we now want to see a concerted commitment to address such challenging issues in our care system, so that we can improve the day to day experiences of some of the country’s most vulnerable children”.