From
Professor Ewan Anderson,
President of FICE-England and Wales / Caring for Children
Looked after Children and Young People
A
fundamental idea behind Choice Protects is that looked after children
and young people are matched with an appropriate living environment.
One choice is residential care and this tends to be equated almost
exclusively with children's homes. The Green Paper, Every Child
Matters, currently under discussion, does make passing mention
of residential schools but the figure given for the number of
children and young people in residence is 7,000, which is the
total for children's homes alone.
The
Children Act (1989) extended consideration of children and young
people from those solely looked after by Local Authorities in
children's homes and rationalised the legal framework for safeguarding
the welfare of children and young people living away from home
in institutions such as private and voluntary homes, independent
and maintained boarding schools and private and National Health
hospitals. Enhancements to the Act together with the Care Standards
Act (2000) mean that the framework has been further extended to
include young people under the age of eighteen in Further Education
(FE) colleges and those in custodial care. Therefore, all children
and young people living in residence, in ex-familial settings
are covered except for those under the age of eighteen in military
training establishments. If all these are taken into account,
some nineteen different types of setting can be distinguished
and the total number of young people involved is approximately
145,000.
Why
is this of relevance to Choice Protects particularly since it
obviously involves education? Realistically, residential care
should be restyled residential education and care since, apart
from any classroom activity, there should be "parenting"
or the education which results from living and learning together.
Such residential education, resulting from the interactions of
the young people and the residential staff, is one of the benefits
which looked after children and young people can enjoy when in
residence.
The
main point is, however, that young people looked after by the
Local Authority can be placed in or referred to any of the nineteen
settings. Many will have special educational needs and could be
placed in special boarding schools. The Department for Education
and Skills is at present looking at the possibility that some
of these children and young people might go to mainstream boarding
schools. In fact, probably the majority of boarding schools already
have some statemented pupils and there is a blurring at the edges
between special and mainstream boarding. Some children and young
people may go to a variety of health settings from hospital schools
to hospices or psychiatric units.
In
many cases, it is a matter of chance whether a young person goes
to a secure children's home run by a Local Authority or to a secure
training centre or young offender institution. Therapeutic communities
deal primarily with those who are looked after. At the age of
sixteen some young people, classified as looked after, go to FE
colleges or military training establishments.
There
is potential for looked after children and young people to go
to any type of setting in the residential and boarding education
and care field. The choice of establishment is therefore far greater
than is commonly realised. If Choice Protects then, with the greater
range of settings available, there is greater protection. This
does mean however that the unnecessarily narrow view of residential
care needs revision.
Already,
as a result of the Children (Leaving Care) Act (2000), Local Authorities
may have continuing responsibility beyond the age of eighteen
for young people in any of these settings. If the entire spectrum
of establishments in residential and boarding education and care
is seen from the viewpoint of looked after young people as essentially
one entity, then transfer of good practice, staff and young people
between the different settings becomes a reality. As should have
been apparent in Quality Protects, it is important not only to
identify good practice but, beneficially, to transfer it from
one setting to another.
Note
“Looked
after” children are those in the care of their local authorities.
“Statemented “ children are those who are subject
to an educational assessment and statement of their needs by their
local authorities.
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Ewan
Anderson (MA, MA, PhD, MEd, PhD, DPhil. Emeritus Professor University
of Durham, Honorary Professor Social Work Research and Development
Unit, University of York) a former housemaster and resident tutor,
holds a doctorate in residential education and established the
PGCE boarding/residential education courses at the universities
of Newcastle and Durham. He has been on most of the government
and non-governmental organisation committees concerned with residential
child care over the past 15 years, including the Wagner Development
Group and the Department of Health's Advisory Group on Caring
for Children Away from Home. He is a Fellow of Dartington and
a member of the Residential Forum and the Boarding Schools Association.
Professor Anderson is a member of the National Standards Committees
for Boarding Schools, Children's Homes, the Custodial Care sector
and of the TOPSS (Training Organisation for Personal Social Services)
Steering Group for National Occupational Standards for Registered
Managers in Residential Child Care.
