Abstract
What’s happened in children’s services since new local authority departments were set up by the Act of 1948? They are certainly different, but are they better or worse? There have been obvious gains and losses and the world of today is a different place, but as the generation who created past frameworks passes away, many older practitioners have an ‘end of era’ feeling as social markets and tick-box practice appear to displace old-fashioned care.
Roy Parker is among those early pioneers. He was a child care officer and residential worker in the 1950s but moved to become one of the first researchers in this field, looking initially at foster care and later at policy and history. Now aged 84, he has brought together and updated some of his essays in a new book, Change and Continuity in Children’s Services, which is the subject of Michael Little’s review article. Of course, change can lead in a variety of directions or be stubbornly difficult to achieve. Monolithic structures can diversify (e.g. into a plethora of specialisms) or amalgamate (e.g. child care with education). In each decade fresh issues arise that make old approaches no longer fit for purpose while old problems persist. So, as the book title suggests, there is both continuity and change.
Looking back, how do we judge what has happened or in some cases not happened? Do we side with Dr Pangloss and argue that everything is getting better or concur with Henry Lyte’s despairing observation, ‘change and decay in all around I see’? 1
Whatever one’s opinion, the changes over the past 67 years have been considerable. In terms of policy, the Children Act 1948 only permitted expenditure on children who were in care but, in 1963, departments were allowed to devote resources to preventing admissions, so expanding their activities and transforming the role of boarding-out officers into child care officers, the forerunners of modern social workers. The Children and Young Persons Act 1969 brought young offenders into the care system, although this arrangement was later reversed. The Children Act 1989 widened horizons further by introducing overarching concepts like ‘children in need’ and incorporating disabled children, divorce proceedings, safeguarding, day care and much more into a single legal framework. The legislation of 2008 allowed local authorities to outsource services, with the result that in some areas over half of foster placements and nearly all residential ones are now purchased from commercial companies and independent providers.
Sceptics might suggest that administrative reforms and new policies are all very well but have little impact on what happens in day-to-day practice. But a long-term view challenges this claim by highlighting major differences between then and now. Three are particularly noticeable. The first is the startling decline of residential care. In 1949, there were some 30,000 young people in children’s homes, approved schools and remand facilities in England and Wales (a figure that rose to nearer 40,000 in the late 1960s); now there are barely 6000. The second is the huge rise in the proportion of children in care who live in foster homes. 2 Only 35% of all those in care in the first year of children’s departments were fostered (boarded-out); now the figure is 75%, although interestingly it was traditionally higher (nearer 60%) in Scotland. Nevertheless, despite this overall rise, fostering rates across local authorities have always varied – in 1952, from 18% to 80% and now 59% to 86%. The third difference is the rise in the number of adoptions from care, a threefold increase since 1980 to over 5000 in 2014 with the proportion of under-ones in this group dropping from 23% to 2%. 3 Contrasts are just as great for some aspects of children’s and parents’ experiences of care. In the early years corporal punishment was allowed, birth parents had to pay, parental rights were assumed without rigorous scrutiny and many children got ‘lost’ in the system.
It seems from these facts that services today are better resourced, staff are more qualified and there is a stronger ‘needs-led’ and ‘evidence-based’ focus to practice. Pressure groups are well organised, there is more research evidence, rights are protected and the relationship between preventative and care interventions is more balanced.
But other problems endure. Parker’s book highlights the wearying appeals for services to work together, the need to improve the image of social work, continuing angst about the plight of care leavers, high levels of placement breakdown and unjustifiable practice variations by postcode, gender and ethnic group. It is not surprising, therefore, that some observers who knew the ‘good old days’ feel that basic care and nurture have suffered. This is illustrated in the essay on the first children’s officers whose activities bear no resemblance to those of today’s service directors.
If we follow Dr Pangloss, we can expect continuing progress. But the journey will be bumpy. Each success makes the remaining task increasingly difficult. It has been relatively easy to find foster homes for many of the children in residential care but the needs of those who remain are more complex, making each future transfer more arduous. It would be a pity if complacency caused us to brush aside serious issues and underestimate the size of the task. I offer three illustrations.
First, the present government appears to have retreated from the directive approach that followed the Children Act 1989, maybe for ideological reasons or from confidence that professionals can be left to do the job. But Michael Little reminds us that discussion about the relationship between the state and the family that preoccupied post-war policy analysts like Richard Titmuss has virtually disappeared, despite the fact that current benefit changes indicate a major boundary shift.
Second, the residual groups left behind by reforms are inevitably the most difficult cases. So efforts to fashion innovations for children and families who have little going for them, or in technical parlance have no protective factors, must not be abandoned. Future progress relies on effective work with ‘hard-to-reach’ groups.
Finally, the value of fundamental theoretical research on human behaviour must not be underrated. Although I lean more to Pangloss than Lyte, there is a lurking fear that future practice developments will be hampered by short-term thinking, faddish ephemeral projects, a disparate array of providers and an anti-intellectual culture. Social work is still confounded by the tenuous relationship between what people say they want and what they actually do. We know what promotes successful fostering and adoption but how do we get carers to do it? Similarly, we have all been disappointed when those eager to change their behaviour fall at the first hurdle. Until we can find out why, progress will be limited.
This is the second edition of Adoption & Fostering published by the new CoramBAAF Adoption & Fostering Academy. The combined experience of the two established charities expands the ability to review what has happened since 1948, learn from it and use that knowledge constructively.