The Grand Campaign: £3,000 for every care leaver – clear rights, fair support and freedom to choose

29 Oct 24

As stated in the DfE Transition into Adulthood Guidance, all local authorities should help care leavers with the costs of setting up their new home. This help is usually called the Setting Up Home Allowance or the Leaving Care Grant. On 1 April 2023, the Government raised the minimum amount for this allowance from £2,000 to £3,000.

This money is meant to help care leavers buy essentials like furniture, appliances, and other things they need when moving into their first independent home.
Local authorities are in charge of giving out this allowance.

The increase was part of the Government’s plan to improve children’s social care.
A National Voice (ANV) found that not all local authorities are giving the full £3,000, and the rules can be different depending on where you live, so they started the Grand Campaign to look into this.

Read the full report (PDF)

Read a summary of the findings and recommendations (PDF)

Disability, disparity and demand: an analysis of the numbers and experiences of children in care and care leavers with a disability or long-term health conditions

01 Oct 24

This insight paper looks at what we do, and importantly do not know about children in and leaving care with a disability or long-term health condition in England.

It brings together findings from:

  1. a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to local authorities,
  2. learning on disability from the Bright Spots Programme including surveys with
    over 8,000 young people in and leaving care and
  3. workshops with young people and leaving care professionals

The report identifies and illuminates key disparities in understanding, measuring and recognition of disability as well as significant local variations.

Read the full report (PDF)

Read a summary of the findings and recommendations (PDF)

Read our graphic presentation (PDF)

Read Natasha’s blog post about why the report needs to be shared widely

Coram Voice publishes summary of children and young people’s contributions to Ofsted’s Big Listen consultation

05 Sep 24

Coram Voice is proud to have played a part in helping care-experienced children and young people get their voices heard during the Ofsted’s recent Big Listen consultation. We would like to thank all the children and young people who contributed. Read our  Big Listen Summary Report (PDF).

Ofsted, the government’s Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills, ran its consultation from March 2024. It gave professionals, children and learners, parents, carers, and the public an opportunity to give their feedback on Ofsted’s work

You can access the report here: Ofsted Big Listen Report.

The cover of Coram Voice's Big Listen Summary ReportSir Martyn Oliver, Head of Ofsted, is committed to taking action based on the feedback received during The Big Listen. Alongside the report, Ofsted has published a response outlining their next steps, which you can view here: Ofsted’s Response to The Big Listen. Sir Martyn has also created a short film for children and young people about what Ofsted plans to do next, which you can watch here: Film for Children and Young People. Additionally, there is a film for professionals, available here: Film for Professionals.

New journal article published assessing the Bright Spots care leaver survey

31 Jan 24

The development and psychometric validation of  the Bright Spots Your Life Beyond Care survey to measure the subjective well-being of care leavers

Young people who age out of state care are at risk of a range of negative outcomes. In England, national data provides only five indicators of care leavers’ lives and there are no measures of how young people themselves feel about their transition to adulthood.

To fill this gap, the Bright Spots Your Life Beyond Care survey, which measures subjective wellbeing, was co-produced with 31 care leavers. The survey was then distributed by 21 local authorities and completed by 1,804 care leavers.

The responses revealed a steep decline in well-being after leaving care, a wide variation in care leavers’ well-being depending on the local authority responsible for their care, and that some groups, such as those with a disability, were more vulnerable to low wellbeing.

The Your Life Beyond Care survey was also validated using psychometric analyses. Latent factors were extracted, dimensionality tested and differential item functioning (DIF) was used to see if different groups of care leavers responded similarly to questions. The association between the total survey score and the commonly used Office for National Statistics’ four personal well-being questions was examined. The survey had good reliability across each of the statistics but data loaded onto a five-factor solution rather than the theorised four. DIF analysis found differences by sex, ethnicity and disability.

Overall, the survey was found to be a valid and reliable measure of care leavers’ subjective well-being providing practitioners with information on which aspects of life were going well and where practice and policy needed to change.

Download the full report

More children in kinship foster care rate their wellbeing as high compared with children in unrelated foster care

02 Mar 23

An analysis of the views and experiences of over 1,200 children and young people in kinship foster care in 38 local authorities is published today in a new report by Coram Voice and The Rees Centre, Department of Education, University of Oxford.

In the first analysis of its kind, The Views of Children and Young People in Kinship Foster Care on Their Well-being finds that on a number of wellbeing indicators, children (4-10 years) and young people (11-18 years) in kinship foster care were doing better or at least as well as those in unrelated foster care and that on some indicators they scored the same or better than their peers in the general population. These findings reinforce existing evidence that kinship care can be a positive experience for children who cannot remain with their birth parents and support current guidance to give preference to suitable placements with family and friends.

Relationships with kinship carers were generally very positive with the majority of children (94%) and young people (91%) reporting that their carers were sensitive to their feelings. One child (aged 8-10) said: “Nanny and Grandad help me with my worries, and they know when I’m sad.”

Nearly all (98%) of the youngest children (4-7 years), 89% of children aged 8-10 years, and 87% of young people aged 11-18 trusted their carers ‘always or most of the time’. More young people in kinship foster care also reported talking frequently to their carers about things that mattered to them compared with those in unrelated care (71% compared to 64%).

There were significantly more children (91%) and young people (87%) in kinship care having contact with at least one of their parents compared with children (87%) and young people (71%) in unrelated foster care, and felt their contact arrangements were ‘just right’. Young people in kinship foster care reported more positively that the things they did in life were worthwhile than those in unrelated foster care (74% compared to 67%). Having a sense of purpose and meaning in life is an important indicator of positive functioning and a protective factor against risky behaviours and poor mental health.

However, there are also a number of well-being indicators on which children and young people in kinship foster care score rated themselves lower than those in unrelated care. There is a common assumption that kinship care is less stigmatising than other forms of substitute care. Yet there was a higher percentage (over a quarter) of kinship children and young people who felt afraid to go to school because of bullying.

Compared to the 5% in unrelated foster care, significantly more of those in kinship foster care (8%) disliked their bedrooms. There were complaints of overcrowding and comments about their carers having financial difficulties. Lack of space may also have been a reason why fewer kinship children (65%) lived with a pet compared with 71% in unrelated foster care.

Relationships with social workers were more complicated. Fewer children in kinship foster care knew their social worker than those in unrelated care (87% compared to 92%). Some of the comments left by young people revealed that they thought the social worker was for their relatives and not for them and some did not know they had a social worker.

It was surprising that only half of those aged 11-18 years were placed directly with their kinship carer. More than a third (35%) had lived in two to four previous placements, and nearly one in ten (9%) had five or more placements before moving in with their kinship carer.

Recommendations

The report is the latest to be published as part of the Bright Spots programme*. Based on the research findings, the authors make eight key recommendations to improve policy and social work practice:

  • Ensure that every child knows who their social worker is, how to contact them and that social workers visit regularly and see children on their own.
  • Try to ensure that a child’s first placement is their only placement by searching for and assessing relatives or friends as quickly as possible.
  • Ensure children and young people have an age-appropriate understanding of why they are living with a kinship carer and support carers around how to talk sensitively to children about their past and the reasons why they are not living with their parents.
  • Review contact plans regularly with children and young people and make sure they know where to turn if they are unhappy with how often they are seeing key people in their lives.
  • Talk to children about how they feel about their homes and bedrooms and explore creative solutions to make things better if they are unhappy, for example, funding space saving furniture.
  • Support kinship carers with income maximisation and ensure they receive all the benefits and allowances they are entitled to.
  • Work with the kinship carer(s) and the family network to create a plan for the child’s care in case the kinship carer becomes unable to continue care, reassuring children that adults have planned and will keep them safe.
  • Work with schools so that children and staff become more aware of the needs of children in different types of care and consider how they can support children in kinship care with bullying.

Linda Briheim-Crookall, Head of Policy and Practice Development at Coram Voice, said: “These findings show that living with friends and family in kinship foster care can be a positive experience for children and young people who are unable to remain with a birth parent, and also supports current practice to prioritise these placements where possible. However, this analysis also clearly underlines the importance of not treating all children in care as if they are the same. Services need to carefully consider the areas of greater difficulty and complexity for kinship children such as accommodation, financial support, bullying at school and relationships with social workers.”

Julie Selwyn, Professor of Education and Adoption at The Rees Centre at University of Oxford, said: “Most children in kinship foster care are happy and feel that their lives are going well.  Yet too many start by having multiple placements. Social workers and agencies need to prioritise locating relatives and friends who are able to care for the child and ensure that there is adequate support to make it happen.”

Download the full report

Download key findings

Go to the Bright Spots Resource Hub page