10,000 children and young people in care share views on their wellbeing in largest survey of its kind

07 Nov 22

The views of 10,000 children and young people in care on their wellbeing are published in a new report today (7 October 2022) by Coram Voice and The Rees Centre at University of Oxford. The report summarises responses collected through the largest survey of its kind from children and young people aged 4-18 years between 2016 and 2021, giving unprecedented insight into children in care’s subjective wellbeing.

10,000 Voices reports some encouraging findings, with 83% of children and young people feeling that life is getting better. Compared with the general population of children and young people, a higher proportion reported feeling safe where they live, like school and felt that the adults they live with took an interest in their education.

However, a larger proportion of young people in care (aged 11-18 years) rated themselves as having ‘low life satisfaction’ compared with young people in the general population, and by the teenage years, 1 in 6 reported low overall wellbeing. The report also found that girls had lower wellbeing than boys, and a greater proportion of young people living in residential care or ‘somewhere else’ (mostly supported accommodation) reported lower wellbeing than those living in foster care and kinship foster care.

The report highlights other areas where children and young people in care are faring worse than their peers. A higher proportion (29%) of children in care (aged 8-10 years) reported being afraid to go to school because of bullying compared with children in the general population (17%), whilst 1 in 8 young people (aged 11-18 years) felt that adults had done things to make them feel embarrassed about being in care. In addition, around 6 out of 10 children (aged 8-18 years) wrote that they worried about their feelings or behaviour.

The report finds that most children in care felt included in the decisions that social workers made about their care, at least sometimes. However, around 1 in 7 ‘hardly ever’ or ‘never’ felt included. For the youngest children surveyed (aged 4-7 years), one in five did not know who their social worker was – twice as high as for the older children in care – and nearly half of this age group did not feel that the reasons they were in care had been fully explained.

For all children and young people in care, having good friends and trusting and supportive relationships were important. This included trusting carers and social workers, and, for the oldest age group, having trusted adults, as well as being given opportunities to be trusted. Feeling safe where they lived and settled was also important for children and young people across all age groups.

One child (aged 8-10 years) said: “I would like to get a better relationship with my carer so I feel safer where I live. I would like someone who can understand my thoughts and feelings. I would prefer to live closer to my school, my friends and my family because I feel safer.”

10,000 Voices is the latest report to be published as part of the Bright Spots programme and makes five key recommendations to improve policy and practice based on the findings:

  • Listen to children in care’s views – all local authorities should ensure they have mechanisms for capturing how their children in care feel about their lives in the areas that are important to them
  • Children’s rights and co-production – local authorities should co-produce service improvements with children to address issues they say would make their lives better
  • Make life good – services should have mechanisms to address the areas that children and young people say are important to them
  • Build trust – the care system must put trusting relationships at its heart
  • Recognise difference – professionals should be mindful of the wellbeing concerns of different groups of children in care, especially girls and those in residential care or living ‘somewhere else’. They need to be aware of how identity can impact on wellbeing

Linda Briheim-Crookall, Head of Policy and Practice Development at Coram Voice, said: “We need to shift the focus of children’s social care so that what’s important to children’s wellbeing is at its heart. To do this, those that make decisions, from individual social workers to Government ministers, need to understand how children and young people feel about their lives. Whether measuring the impact of new policy initiatives or planning the care for individual children the focus should be on what children in care say makes their lives good.”

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Staying Connected report published

05 Jul 22

  • Over 7,500 children and young people in care share their views and experiences on contact arrangements with their families.
  • Over a fifth of children felt they saw their mums, dads and siblings too little
  • Compared with foster and kinship care, more young people in residential. care were dissatisfied with how often they saw their family.
  • Half of young people didn’t feel involved in decisions social workers made about their lives.

The views and experiences of over 7,500 children and young people in care on their contact with family members and impact on their wellbeing are uncovered in a new report published today by Coram Voice and The Rees Centre at University of Oxford*.

Staying Connected finds that nearly a third (31%) of children (aged 8-10) and a quarter (25%) of young people (aged 11-18) felt they were seeing their mothers too little, whilst over a fifth (22%) of children and 18% of young people felt they were seeing their fathers too little. 22% of children didn’t feel they had enough contact with their brothers and sisters, and this figure was higher for young people (31%). About one in five young people had no contact with either parent and this was particularly the case for those in residential care and boys.

Visits being arranged at inconvenient times, long distances, the costs of travel, their family’s circumstances, and workers failing to make necessary arrangements were among reasons cited by children and young people for seeing family less often than they wanted. Children in care who felt they saw family members too little reported feeling sad, angry and unsettled, while in contrast, those who felt contact arrangements were “just right” felt they were being listened to and looked forward to seeing their family.

Quote: I don't know why I don't see my dad. I worry about it because he might be dead.

One young person (aged 11-18) commented: “I want to see my family more. My social worker is supposed to be doing police checks. I have been here since September and the checks have not been done. It’s not like I can just visit. I live five hours from home.”

Whether children and young people felt that they saw parents often enough was statistically associated with length of time in care, type of placement and which local authority was caring for them. Analysis shows that young people (aged 11-18) in residential care more frequently reported that they had too little contact with family compared to young people in other types of placements. The number of placements experienced also had an impact, with 60% of young people who had only had one placement reporting they were satisfied with their contact frequency, compared to 39% who had experienced 11 or more placements.

In addition, 50% of young people surveyed did not feel involved in decisions social workers made about their lives, and half of the comments about involvement focused on contact arrangements. Children and young people commented on arrangements being inflexible, not changing as they got older or as their family’s circumstances changed. One child (aged 8-10) commented: “I used to see Mum and older brother three times a week. It has been cut down to once a week and this makes me sad. I don’t know why contact was cut down.”

Comments also highlighted that children and young people wanted to see extended family members, pets and other adults who were important to them, and that the key people in their lives were not always included in contact plans.

Staying Connected is the latest report to be published as part of the Bright Spots programme* and it makes seven key recommendations to improve policy and practice:

Work with all children in care to identify the key relationships in their lives.
Make arrangements for children and young people to maintain contact, develop relationships and reconnect with people who are important to them.
Listen to and involve children and young people in decisions about the arrangements to see and keep in touch with family and others who are important to them.
Keep children in care informed about their families, why they can or cannot see them, and what arrangements have been made for them to spend time together.
Ensure plans are regularly reviewed and reflect the current circumstances, wishes and needs of children and young people and their families.
Normalise family time whenever possible, minimising the use of contact centres and supporting children and families to meet in the community.
Make sure the workforce has the skills and knowledge to prioritise and confidently support children in care to stay connected to the people who are important to them.

Linda Briheim-Crookall, Head of Policy and Practice Development at Coram Voice, said: “The recent Care Review suggested the primary objective of the care system should be promoting the formation of lifelong loving relationships around children in care and care leavers. This can only be achieved if more is done to build rather than break relationships with the people who are already important to children in care. Our research showed that there is still some way to go to make this happen.

“Services and workers must listen to children and young people about who they want to see, when and how and seek to make this happen. Children in care should have the opportunity to spend time with the people who are important to them doing everyday things like playing games, having a meal or going for a walk with the dog.”

Julie Selwyn, Professor of Education and Adoption at The Rees Centre at University of Oxford, said: “While previous UK research has emphasised that the quality of contact is more important than the frequency, from young people’s perspective frequency was equally, if not more important. Feeling contact was ‘just right’ was associated with higher levels of wellbeing. Staying connected to the important people in life is essential for children’s wellbeing. Greater efforts need to be made to ensure that this is achieved for all children in care.”

Read the full report

Learn more and use the findings:

Work with us

We have funding to work with a small number of local authorities to explore ways of implementing the Staying Connected recommendations – Email brightsport@coramvoice.org.uk if you are interested

We have helped over 60 local authorities understand what their children in care and care leavers feel about their well-being. Find out more becoming a Bright Spots partner.

 

Always Heard Report 2022

30 Mar 22

We have today (30 March 2022) released our Always Heard Report 2022 which gives an overview of how the service has performed in the last year and the barriers faced by children and young people in care who have accessed the service.

We are the only national service that provides the No Child Turned Away advocacy guarantee. Our team has worked incredibly hard to maintain this guarantee throughout last year by:

  • Ensuring every young person who contacts us looking for advocacy gets an advocate. We do this by supporting young people to access their local advocacy service. If young people’s local service cannot help we give them an Always Heard advocate so they get the support they need.
  • Bringing about wider change to the systemic barriers to access to advocacy.
  • Sharing the voice and experience of young people who face barriers to advocacy with their local authorities.
  • Supporting and challenge local authorities to put in place the advocacy service their young people are entitled to.
  • Sharing information about barriers to advocacy with the Department for Education, Ofsted and the Children’s Commissioner to help them address these.

In the last year  we have continued to find that too many young people are being denied the local independent advocacy they are entitled to. We have increased our work with young people on the edges of care denied the support they need. This includes children seeking asylum who are being disbelieved and treated as adults through to children who are homeless.

Despite the challenge of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the difference we made in 2021 includes:

  • Supporting more children and young people to access advocacy from their local advocacy services. Helped these services reach more children and young people.
  • Provided more children and young people with direct Safety Net advocacy.
  • Helping some of the most vulnerable and excluded children get the care and stability they needed.
  • Promoted advocacy and challenged local authorities to focus on the need to have a proper advocacy service in place for the children and young people who need their care.
  • Amplified the voice of children and young people by sharing local authority data and young people’s stories with Ofsted, the Department for Education, and the Children’s Commissioner to help them target local issues and tackle national problems.

READ THE FULL REPORT

Coram Voice report finds positive extra measures for care leavers in Covid response

27 Jan 22

In a report released today (27 January 2022), Coram Voice has found that during the Covid pandemic, care leavers well-being did not decline as expected and in some areas improved slightly, suggesting additional support made available at this time made the difference to young people’s lives.

This report is a follow up to our ‘What Makes Life Good?’ report published in 2020 about the views of care leavers on their well-being using responses collected between 2017 and 2019 through the Your Life beyond Care survey. In this report we compare the ‘What Makes Life Good?’ pre-pandemic data from 1,804 care leavers to data from 2,476 care leavers who responded to the survey in the first year of the pandemic (2020-2021).

We asked care leavers aged 16 to 25 the same questions at both time points; about where they lived, feeling safe, financial well-being, and relationship with workers, emotional support, stress, loneliness, overall well-being, and more.

Pre-pandemic we found that, when compared to the general population, a higher proportion of care leavers experienced anxiety, felt lonely, struggled financially, had lower life satisfaction and lacked good friends.

Given the greater challenges care leavers faced we expected that their well-being could have deteriorated further during the pandemic given the additional strain Covid-19 placed on everyone’s lives. However, on most measures we found few differences in care leavers well-being. They experienced similar levels of stress, anxiety, life satisfaction and loneliness as care leavers pre-pandemic. Indeed, the proportion struggling financially and having access to internet at home had decreased. Our own work and research from the University of Bedfordshire has shown that many local authorities put in place additional support for care leavers during this period. There were also national initiatives that supported care leavers including the uplift to Universal Credit and free laptops and internet access for care leavers. There appears to have been a greater focus on well-being and challenges that young people were experiencing during this period, which may have staved off a decline in well-being and accounted for some of these slight improvements.  Care leavers’ own hard-won personal resilience may also explain the improvements.

Trusting and supportive relationships are essential to care leavers well-being and leaving care services play an important role in building these. Half of care leavers reported that their leaving care advisors were a source of emotional support, up from 47% pre pandemic.

“The support given to me recently from Social services has been phenomenal as due to Covid I lost my job and have been struggling to pay my bills ever since… I have little to no work and can’t claim universal credit, so without the help of social services I really don’t know what I would do!” – Care leaver

Head of Policy and Practice Development, Linda Briheim-Crookall says: “This report shows that challenging times do not inevitably lead to a decline in well-being for care leavers. Investment in support can start to chip away at the gap between care leavers and their peers.  It is now all the more imperative that the gains made during the pandemic are not lost. We need to explore further and share the practice that makes care leavers lives better. With the independent review of children’s social care

“We also need to recognise that many of the challenges that were there before the pandemic are still there and it continues to be imperative to recognise and address them.”

“While the pandemic has highlighted the strengths of local authorities and practitioners in responding to the needs of care leavers in challenging times, the report also shows that local authorities and practitioners need to continue to be proactive in contacting care leavers and responding to their needs, offering financial and digital support and keeping in touch more frequently and in different ways in order to secure a long term impact.”

READ THE FULL REPORT

ANV Response to the Care Review Published

28 Oct 21

Today (28 October 2021) we have released our A National Voice (ANV) response to The Case for Change report published by the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care.

We heard from over 300 care experienced children and young people. They have highlighted an end to the unfair “postcode lottery” which, sees young people receive varying levels of support not only across the country, but sometimes within the same local authority and the negative impact of “cliff edges”, following the sudden withdrawal of support that leaves many care leavers struggling to cope both emotionally and financially, as key issues.

 

In March 2021, the independent review of social care announced it would work with ANV to enable care experienced children and young people across the country have their say on what needs to change. To gauge responses to The Case for Change report, ANV Ambassadors, created workshop packs for Children in Care Councils across the country, supporting them to run sessions locally. ANV received feedback from a diverse mix of 309 children and young people across 31 local authorities with extensive geographical coverage across England. The respondents also represented a broad range in terms of age, gender, ethnicity and Special Educational Needs status.

The report, finds that care often felt like a lottery to children and young people, with good support dependent on being lucky enough to live in the right area. In one case, twin sisters, who were taken into care separately within the same local authority, reported vastly different experiences, with one twin staying in five placements over the course of her time in care while the other twin had lived in 49 different placements over the same period. The level of financial support also varied with one twin receiving a £1,000 leaving care grant while the other was given £2,000.

Young people reported that “cliff edges” had not only put them in a precarious financial position but also left them feeling disregarded and ill-equipped to move on to independent living. One young person said: “Being in care was life-changing. Every aspect of my life is still affected by it. I don’t think there is enough time to process all the trauma before you leave care and all the stress and headaches come back.”

 

Children and young people also reported feelings of loneliness, struggling with their mental health and the difficulties they face in accessing mental health services. They believed that social workers and other professionals should have more training to recognise and understand trauma and the impact it has on young people’s lives. One young person said: “It can be lonely during the harder times, like significant changes, like when you’re first put into foster care. You have just left your family and moving into a place with people you don’t know.”

 

Young people also felt that they would benefit from a more integrated service and that care-experienced young people should automatically receive counselling and other mental health services. The responses also highlighted the need for early mental health intervention before issues escalate, as one young person put it: “Should be able to access a therapist not just when thinking about self-harm.”

The need for better practical and financial support to prepare young people for independence was also highlighted. Many noted the importance of gaining experience earlier in cooking, budgeting and other household skills in the run up to independent living to soften the transition. Young people also wanted better and clearer financial packages and called for local authorities to reduce the costs they faced in areas such as travel, council tax and housing.

Responses collated also showed that children and young people wanted fewer changes in social workers, to feel listened to and participate more in decision making, and time with their birth families. They reported that they felt good care was where you felt safe, supported and had fun. One young person said: “A home is where you feel safe, it’s homely, comfortable, and decorated nice, you feel part of the family, you’re listened to and you have your own space.”

Linda Briheim-Crookall, Head of Policy and Practice Development at Coram Voice, said: “I would like to thank the hundreds of children and young people from all over England who have told us very clearly about the changes they would like to see.

“They want to be treated fairly and this means an end to the postcode lottery and abrupt cliff edges that put their wellbeing and financial stability at risk. There is a need for better and more consistent practice across the country and professionals who are trained to fully understand the emotional and financial issues that young people are facing.

“Services need to be well resourced and designed with young people in mind if we are serious about transforming children’s experience of care for the better and preparing them to succeed in life. It’s so important as the care review progresses, that children and young people’s voices, views and experiences are at the heart of change.”

Josh MacAlister, Chair of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, said: “It’s fantastic to see the work of the A National Voice ambassadors come together with this report.

“It echoes what we have found across all of our engagement so far – care experienced young people are able to bring a unique and valuable perspective and have lots of ideas about how to make a positive difference.

“Some really important issues have been highlighted and we will be carefully analysing the feedback to help us develop the best possible set of recommendations. I’d like to thank everyone who contributed to this important piece of work for sharing your insight so generously.”

Read the full report

Read the summary