PLACEMENTS, DECISIONS AND REVIEWS by Phil Ayres

your

Rights! your say

Placements, Decisions and Reviews A Children’s Views Report Dr Roger Morgan OBE Children’s Rights Director September 2006

www.rights4me.org

Contents

Page

About the Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Rights Director

About this report

Who decides what?

Involving children in decisions

Choosing placements

What can go wrong in a placement?

What can be done to stop things going wrong in a placement?

What would make changing placements better for young people?

How can social workers get placements right first time?

The best and worst of reviews

Having a say in your plans

Keeping to plan

The Office of the Children’s Rights Director Dr Roger Morgan OBE, Children’s Rights Director Dr Mike Lindsay, Head of Advice Jayne Noble, Head of Consultation Lilian Clay, Web and Information Systems Officer Alison Roscoe, Consultation Officer Leah Avery, Survey Officer Domonique Ellis, Project Support Officer Eleni Georgiou, PA to Director St Nicholas Building St Nicholas Street Newcastle upon Tyne NR1 1NB Telephone 0191 233 3502 All Children’s Views Reports can be found on our website: www.rights4me.org

About the Children’s Rights Director My legal duties as Children’s Rights Director for England are set out in the Commission for Social Care Inspection (Children’s Rights Director) Regulations 2004. One of my main jobs, with my team in the Office of the Children’s Rights Director, is to ask children and young people for their views about how they are looked after when they are living away from home, or being helped by local councils’ social care services. I then tell the Government, as well as the Commission for Social Care Inspection (which does inspections to check on how children and young people are being looked after and supported) what those children and young people think, and about any concerns they have about the care or support they are getting. “Children’s Views” reports of what children and young people have told me are published for everyone to read. You can find copies of all my Children’s Views reports on our children’s rights website www.rights4me.org. The children and young people I ask for their views are those living away from home in England (in children’s homes, boarding schools, residential special schools, residential further education colleges, foster care, adoption placements, or residential family centres), those who are getting help of any sort from the children’s social care services of their local council, and care leavers.

About this report This report gives the views of children and young people who came to a series of discussion groups with us, and others who filled in and returned question cards for us, together with some views sent in to us by our panel of young people who answer questions for us by text on their mobile phones. When we hold discussion groups to ask children and young people for their views, ideas and concerns to put in reports like this, these are new groups we bring together especially for that discussion. They are not groups of children or young people who already meet together and who have already formed their views about things, perhaps with the help of an advocate or other adult. We have invited them just for the one time we meet them, and we choose at random which places we are going to invite children and young people from, so that the people we meet are as representative as possible of children and young people who are getting childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s social care services or living away from home. We ask children and young people for their views without their own staff in the room with them. This report gives the views of 86 children and young people. We met 65 children and young people personally for discussions about their experiences of being moved into placements to live, about how decisions were made about them, and about care reviews. We held 12 different discussion groups â&#x20AC;&#x201C; some at a wildlife park in the midlands, some at The Deep aquarium in Hull, and one in a secure unit for young people. We spoke to the children and young people ourselves, without their staff or carers in the room. We also had views sent in to us on question cards about the same subjects, from 21 more people. We have also added in the views on placements, decisions and reviews that were given to us in two more groups we met to discuss different subjects, and some of the views that come up often when we are discussing other things for other reports. Like all our Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Views reports, this report says exactly what the children and young people told us. We have not added our own adult or professional views, and we have not selected what we might ourselves agree with, nor left out what we ourselves might disagree with. The messages are simply the ones we have most often received from children and young people in different services in different parts of the country.

We have added together the views given to us by the children and young people, but we have not identified who said what. Where someone said or wrote something we thought summed up well what many others said, or said something in a group that the others in the group strongly agreed with, we have put those words in the report as a “quote”. We have sent the messages in this report to the Government officials who are writing proposals for what should change in the future for children in care or getting social care help from their local councils. The report is being sent to Government Ministers, key people in Parliament, officials at the Department for Education and Skills, to key people in the Commission for Social Care Inspection, to each of the UK Children’s Commissioners, and to all children’s social care authorities in England. Thank you to all the children and young people we met in so many different places, who gave us their views and ideas for this report, and to all the staff and carers who made it possible for them to come to our discussion groups or for us to visit children and young people in their homes, schools or colleges.

Who decides what? Over half the 21 children and young people who wrote for us about decisions told us that they made all their own decisions about things like their social life, food and bedtimes. 4 of the 22 who wrote their views for us said they made their own decisions about everything for themselves (some young people were care leavers). Only 2 said they made their own decisions about their education, and 2 that they made their own decision about where they had been placed to live. Only 1 said they had made their own decisions about contact with their birth family. We heard that decisions about changing placements, moving from one place to live somewhere else, are some of the most important decisions ever made in young people’s lives. There was a lot of difference in how much say children and young people had in these decisions about where they were to live. Amongst the 21 children and young people who wrote about their experience for us, nearly a third said that decisions about the placement they were to live in were made by other people, though 3 “I decided to go said they had made a placement decision for themselves. One young into a children’s person did give as an example of a decision they had made themselves home myself” – “me moving”. Another told us “I decided to go into a children’s home myself”, and another that they had made the decision about “making a foster placement permanent”. A quarter said they had not been able to give their views about where they wanted to live, but another quarter said they had been asked for their views and what they said had made a difference to the decision that was made. One example was that one person had said “what foster placement I would like to go into, eg family with children”, and that was found for them. One point made in our discussion groups was that sometimes young people found that after someone else had made an important decision for them, like a change of school or a change of placement, without involving them in it, huge changes to their lives happened suddenly without much warning or preparation. One child told us how they were picked up from school one day to be moved to foster parents, and had no choice of foster carer and no time to say goodbye to their Mum. Another told us “when I first went into foster care, I came home one time and was told I was going and I felt really upset”. Overall, 2 out of 3 of the people who wrote their views for us told us that they did have some say in the important decisions in their lives. One discussion group told us “people decide their own futures”. Someone else told us that they felt in control of their own lives; “how I spend money, what to do about my life, what to study at college, and my career”. Sometimes, people felt they didn’t have much say in decisions now, but that there were some important decisions coming up when they knew they would have a say, like “about where I live when turn 16”.

Some people in discussion groups described how they were asked about important decisions which were then made by social workers after listening properly and carefully to what they thought. One young person was surprised at how something had changed because of what they had said; they had not got on with a new social worker, had explained this (and why they didn’t get on) to their foster carer, and their foster carer had got them a new social worker. Opinions differed on how much difference their views had actually made, though. Some thought their views had made a big difference to the final decision. “I was always involved and was willing to be involved”, “I’m involved with any decisions made”. Others thought they had been asked but not really listened to and what they had said had not really been counted into the final decision. “You get asked when you move in to another home, but it doesn’t really make a difference”; “I had a say at a home that I didn’t like. I didn’t get listened to but eventually got out.” “You can request things that you want, like more contacts, but that doesn’t change”. Sometimes, a young person was asked their view, but told by their social worker “I’m not willing to support you in this”, without always knowing why. It was also hard if the young person was given a reason, but disagreed with it. We heard from the young people in one family that their social worker had moved them from London to a city hundreds of miles away and told them this was solely in order to get them away from other young people they were mixing with. The young people thought there were other less disruptive ways of keeping people out of a problem group of friends than sending them hundreds of miles away, and to a different school, but had not been able to change the decision even though they thought it was a bad decision for them. Some of our discussion groups reminded us that although sometimes a decision had been made by other people without the child or young person having much say, that didn’t necessarily mean the decision was the wrong one. They thought this was not the right way to make decisions, but still the right decision could come out in the end. As one person put it, they had no say in it when they came into care, but believed that “it’s in your best interest”. We did hear examples of where children had taken things into their own hands when they did not feel they were listened to about big decisions affecting them. One young person had decided they wanted to stay in one particular foster home, but they were moved on. They said they “started playing my face up” in every new foster placement so that they were moved out, until social services agreed to return them to their original foster carers, where they then behaved well again. The point was made in our discussions that sometimes children do find it hard to make difficult decisions for themselves, or to be clear about what they want to happen. People thought they should still always be asked, but not forced to give a clear view if they really couldn’t work one out. As an example, one young person told us that social services had wanted them to say whether or not they wanted to have

contact with their Mum, but they had found it impossible to say yes or no to that sort of question. When we talked to the young people in a secure unit about decisions, they told us that in a secure unit there is very little that a young person can regularly decide for themselves. “They always tell you what to do unless you are asleep”. Young people in secure care told us they would like more scope to make some decisions for themselves in secure units, which they didn’t think would harm security or bring any particular risks. They gave us some examples of decisions they thought they could safely take: activities to do, what time to get out of bed at the weekend, what time food is served, and to decide when you want to be alone in your room to think and have time for yourself away from others. In our discussion groups we heard many examples of the sort of everyday decisions that were made by carers rather than children themselves – such as how children in the placement should be kept safe, whether they are or are not allowed to smoke, and the sort of healthy or non-healthy food that is given to children in the placement. We also heard that children and young people often made their own decisions about what hobbies and activities to do, although it always depended on what there was to choose from. In different discussion groups we heard the example of learning dancing as something young people had decided to do for themselves. 1 in 7 of the children and young people who wrote views to us said their opinions had made a difference to decisions about their social life and hobbies. Sometimes very clear decisions children had thought they had been allowed to make didn’t stay made. One young person told us they had been asked what colour they wanted their bedroom, had chosen their colour, and then it had been decorated a totally different colour after all. Another person told us they had been asked what activities they wanted to do. Everyone had agreed with staff on a particular activity. Then a totally different activity happened instead, without any explanation.

Involving children in decisions We asked children and young people to tell us the best way to ask young people for their views when making important decisions in their lives. By far the most usual answer was that adults and professionals should simply ask children what they think and feel, and really listen to what they say. Over half of the people who wrote their views in to us said this. No-one said there needed to be any special way of going about this. “You basically talk to them in a mature manner”. “Talk like an adult, with respect but don’t use big words”. “Just ask what they think”. Sometimes it helps to talk “one on one”, not in a group, and not only to the few children that usually get asked things or who are particularly good at giving their views all the time. It is important, we heard, that a young person feels comfortable talking to the person asking them for their views; having a choice of who to talk to is helpful, and the personalities of the young person and adult do matter a lot. Some made the important point that children and young people should be asked for their views before a decision is made, so that their views can make a difference, and not just be asked what they think about a decision that has already been made. One young person told us they were often asked something like “do you think that you will be happy here” when they arrived at their new placement, when it was too late to say much and the decision had obviously been made. It is hard to shift a decision once someone else in authority has made their minds up about it.

“Talk like an adult, with respect but don’t use big words”

We were told in our discussion groups for this report, as we have been in discussions on other subjects for other reports, that children will only share personal views and concerns when they feel safe to do so. We were told that staff and social workers are not as confidential as they should be about what children say to them. Children told us they had stopped telling staff what they were concerned about, or what their views were, when they found that what they had said to one member of staff in private became known and talked about by all the other staff. If children are to feel safe giving their personal views and concerns about decisions, they need to be more sure than they are now that what they say will not be passed on to anyone who doesn’t definitely need to know it. Some young people had some ideas about how they could feed what they thought into the people who made decisions. In a children’s home or a school, it was always possible to hold a meeting about something that many young people wanted to talk about, and this was good although it was important that what was said was then followed through. Meetings were not really possible like this if you lived away from other people in care, for example in a foster family.

Some said that very young children might prefer to draw pictures, but older ones might want to write their own report for people to read. That might be easier than having to speak up to people like social workers, or in front of other people at meetings or reviews. One person said they had managed to sort out what their views were by keeping a diary, and then putting the important things they had written into a report. Some children told us it would be easier for them to give their views by phone, or in a letter, rather than speaking them. Texting their views might be thought about, but would not be very safe for a really important message. One person though told us they had a good system for texting their social worker: “I text my social worker in the car, I email and text to ask her things”. Having a say in decisions affecting them is one of the top messages we have received from children and young people of all ages, throughout our consultations on many subjects. They tell us that this involves asking children what they want, asking children what they feel (without having to argue about their feelings, because feelings “just are like they are”), explaining things in words they can understand, keeping children informed of what is happening (even at times when nothing much is happening) so that they don’t fear the worst or think they have been forgotten, genuinely taking what children say into account before deciding anything, and feeding back what has been decided – and why – even if it is not what the child or young person wanted. It is not, as one person put it, enough for staff just to say “we’ll look into it” and the young person not hearing anything more. We have also been told in our consultations that involving children and young people in decisions involves two more things. Firstly, deciding when a child or young person understands enough to decide some things for themselves, taking into account how much they understand when considering what they say. Children have told us very firmly that this is not just to do with age, but to do with understanding what is being proposed, the reasons for it, the choices that there are and what each of those choices would mean, weighing those choices against each other, and being able to keep to one opinion rather than repeating what someone else has said or changing your mind too often. Secondly, we have heard that involving children and young people also means taking proper account of what even very young children, or children who are not able fully to understand what is happening, want and feel – they may not understand enough to decide something, but how they feel should be asked and taken into account.

Choosing placements As well as knowing how much say children and young people actually had in deciding where they were going to live, we wanted to know who exactly had decided on the placement each child or young person was living in now. Amongst those who wrote in to us, just under half said that social services had made the decision that they should live where they were living now. Apart from the 3 who had already told us they had decided this for themselves, 3 more said that the decision had been made by their own families alongside themselves, and 2 said the decision had been made by a court. Some others said the decision had been made by two people – themselves and somebody else. One said the other person deciding things with them was their social worker, another that it was their leaving care worker, and another that they and their foster carers had together decided on their foster placement. One person told us that when their present placement was chosen by social services, the “top boss person decided, don’t know his name.” We asked children and young people the straight question – did they get a choice about the placement they were now living in? Their answers were nearly half “yes” and half “no” – with getting a choice just winning over not getting any choice at all. Just over half told us they had a choice when their present placement was being decided on, but just under half said that there had been no other choice at the time, and their present placement had been the only one on offer.

“top boss person decided, don’t know his name”

If there had been a choice, or the young person had been involved in the decision on whether to move into their present placement, we wanted to know exactly how they had been able to say what they thought about the placement before the decision to move there was made. About half the people who wrote in to us said that they had talked it over with their social worker. Some, in a discussion group, told us they were able to put their ideas on a form. It was very interesting that only one young person out of the 21 told us that they had been able to get their views across about the placement during a review. Given how many children and young people said they had not had a clear say in the decision about where they were to live, we thought it was important to know whether or not they thought the right decision had actually been made for them. We asked them to give their present placement a score out of 5 for whether they thought it was the right placement for them now (a score of 5 out of 5 meant yes, it definitely was the right placement). Altogether 38 children and young people gave us scores for the placements they

were in now. These included those who wrote in to us, and those we met at discussion groups. Just over half told us they thought their present placement was definitely the right one for them, giving it a score of 5 out of 5. Another six gave their placement a score of 4 out of 5. Four people gave their placement a score of 3, another three people gave it a score of 2, and two people gave their placement a score of only 1 out of 5. Overall, then, most children and young people we spoke to thought their placements were OK for them, but a small number (the five people who scored their “give kids more of placements as worse than 3 out of 5) thought they weren’t. a chance and a choice”

We have heard in many of our consultations that children and young people believe that choosing the right placement of course means there must be a choice of more than one possible placement. “Give kids more of a chance and a choice”. Many have told us that all too often they were placed somewhere when there was no choice at all – their social worker had told them they had found them “a placement”, not a choice of placements. A very common message from children is that when they’re being moved, there should be a choice of at least two alternative suitable placements and the child should have a real say in the choice between them, once they move, their social worker should keep checking that the placement is working out, and there should be a backup placement ready in case the first one doesn’t work out. As some pointed out to us, all this means that children’s social care services need to have a big enough range of possible placements to give real choices and have backup placements for each child. Social workers keeping in very close touch with people who have just moved into a new placement was seen by many children and young people as an important way of making sure that people were settling in and problems didn’t become big enough to make a placement break down. One person said how they had felt when this didn’t happen for them; “they’ve taken their eye off my situation”. A point made in one of our discussion groups was that sometimes it can take a very long time to find a new placement, and that meant that you could be staying somewhere you didn’t get on, or where you were not really wanted, for a long time even if you and everyone else wanted you to live somewhere else. We heard from some that it can often take six months to find a new placement, even when everyone agrees you need it. Living in the wrong place for that long can have a bad effect on you.

“they’ve taken their eye off my situation”

Some children and young people are placed a long way away from the council that is placing them. Most young people told us they

thought it was best to have a placement near to your home and family if that was possible, but that there were times when that was not the right thing, and you either needed special help that you had to go a long way to get, or you really needed to be out of reach of someone in your family. You might need to get as far away as you could from that environment. So it all depends on what is right for each child. The same was true about keeping brothers and sisters together if possible. Almost everyone told us that it was very very important to keep brothers and sisters together whenever possible, and not to break families up. But again, it all depends on the circumstances, and sometimes brothers and sisters may need different placements because they have very different needs. We heard that another important thing about choosing the right placement is being allowed to keep your own beliefs and religion. That includes being allowed to stay that way if you don’t have a religion or particular beliefs, even if the new placement does. Children told us that along with choosing somewhere to live, choosing a school is important when changing placement. As well as getting the right school, having to keep changing schools because you have to keep changing placements also spoils your education and means that you don’t do as well at school or in exams as you would have done if you didn’t keep moving around. As one person told us, having 18 placement changes just mucks your education up. One person told us “I’ve been to as many schools as a supply teacher”. Most told us it was a good idea to be able to stay at the same school when you changed placement, if this was possible.

“I’ve been to as many schools as a supply teacher”

As with a lot of decisions about placements though, we heard too that it all depends on what is best for each child – sometimes it was a good thing to change schools if you are not getting on in the school you are in, or if there are family problems that mean it is best to change schools as well as placements; “if you’ve fallen out badly with your Mum, you wouldn’t then want to go to school near where she is”.

What can go wrong in a placement? To get an idea of what children and young people think are the most common things that go wrong for them in placements, we asked everyone who wrote in to us to tell us three things that might go wrong in a placement and mean having to move. The most usual things they told us go wrong with placements are listed in the box (with the number of young people who wrote each one given in brackets): Arguments (13) Getting into fights and violence (7) The child or young person hurting the feelings of other people (4) Being unhappy or depressed, or sometimes suicidal (4) Breaking the law (3) Not getting on with carers (or their family) (3) Running away (3)

“You don’t like them, or they don’t like you”

The message from children and young people is that the most likely thing to go wrong with a placement, and lead to it breaking down so they have to move on, is having arguments. People in our discussion groups said the same as those who wrote in to us about this. Arguments could break out about all sorts of things, but some of the examples people gave to us were arguments about money, arguments about school and school work, and arguments about rules and rule breaking; “disagreement in rules, arguments about money, and argument in education choices”.

It is important to note what the equal third and fourth things are that can cause a placement to break down. One is the child or young person themselves hurting the feelings of other people where they are placed, and the other is the child or young person being unhappy, sometimes so much that they try to commit suicide. “You

don’t like them, or they don’t like you”; “falling out with foster carers”. Stealing things was the main example given to us by the 3 people who said that breaking the law was likely to cause placements to break down. In our discussion groups, we heard that often there is a mixture of reasons for a placement going wrong, not just one major thing. “Arguments, not feeling happy, family issues”; “you may not like the way your carer is, you may not like the room in the house, you may not like the other people in the house”; “doing something wrong, doing runners, trying to commit suicide”.

“When they change your placement things can go one way or the other"

Also in our discussions, we heard that the more you are moved from one placement to another, the less likely you are to settle in to a new placement, the more likely people are to expect things to go wrong, and the more likely you are to expect another move soon. “When they change your placement things can go one way or the other”. Being separated from your brothers and sisters could lead you to either not settling down in a new placement, or even trying to get out of a placement that was actually OK for you, in order to try to be with your brothers and sisters somewhere else. “If you get separated from your brothers and sisters you could pretend you don’t like it, so you could be with your brothers and sisters.”

“Sometimes you might have to move and it might not be your fault"

Another important message is that usually adults assume that when a placement breaks down, it is the child’s fault, and that they are “difficult to place” – but it is not always the child’s fault. Often it is nobody’s fault: many placements were not likely to work out anyway. “Sometimes you might have to move and it might not be your fault – it might have nothing to do with your behaviour, it could be that you are too old for the carers”.

It is worth us telling those reading this that only one child who wrote in to us about this question said that bullying was something that often went wrong enough in a placement to cause it to break down. As well as the list of things that can go wrong with a placement that came from the young people who wrote in to us, it is worth listing things that we heard had each led to problems in just one child’s placement. These were:

• If the people there are being unkind to you • If you are spoken to with bad language • If the house is in a bad state • If other children there are unpleasant to you or bully you • Bad environment for you around the establishment • Risks from the kind of people you meet in the local streets • If you don’t know what will happen to you • If they can’t cope with your disabilities • If you are not allowed to make and be with friends • If they decide against and dislike your family • If you are treated differently from people who are not in care • When you do not behave well • When you have already moved lots of times • If you can’t cope with being separated from your family • If you think foster carers have taken you just for the money • If you are putting other children there at risk • Telling lies • Being told the new placement is your very last chance • Bad communication • Lack of support for your problems • Being left on your own and to your own devices too much • Being moved in too suddenly • “Getting given up on and not listened to”

What can be done to stop things going wrong in a placement We wanted to know not only what children thought often caused a placement to break down, but what could be done to help placements not to break down. Of course, one way is to deal better with the problems children tell us often cause placements to break down – arguments, the child hurting other people’s feelings, or the child feeling very unhappy. There were two other ways of saving placements that children wrote to us about – one was a social worker visiting the placement regularly, and the other was the child and the carer or social worker being able to talk problems through. Things work out best if “everyone listens to each other and discuss any problems.” It is important that social workers come round “kind of fast” to check with the young person on how a new placement is turning out for them. Many people suggested that social workers should also phone someone very often when they have just moved to a new placement, to check up on how they are doing. A social worker might visit and phone in the first one or two days, then ask the child how often they would like the social worker to check on things after that, and whether they would prefer visits, phone calls, or a mixture of both. We heard it is a social workers job to “check that we’re happy in the environment they’ve put you in”. When children and young people have told us what they want from their social workers, one of the most frequent requests is that children should be able to get in touch with their social worker directly whenever they feel they need to. This is often to talk about what is happening in a placement. We have heard that this can be especially important for those placed a long way from the council where there social worker’s office is. Being able to get in touch with your social worker directly and quickly, for a chat rather than only in a crisis, is an important way of making sure that problems in placements are talked through or sorted out early on, before they become a crisis and lead to the placement ending. Another vital message from children about social workers has been that they want to be able to talk to their social worker alone, without carers being with them or nearby. We have heard that many children, such as those in foster homes, are not often given the chance to talk to their social worker on their own, even during social worker visits to check that all is well in the placement. Children have said that you need to go out of the house or building to feel free enough to discuss problems about

the placement with your social worker. Many have suggested that this can easily be done if social workers go out for, say, a walk or a coffee or a meal with the child as a usual thing on every visit. A very special point made to us by foster children is that they sometimes feel that childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s social services staff want to move children on from foster care to be adopted. Some tell us they think this is to do with targets social workers have to try to meet, rather than what each child wants. Many have told us that they are happy to stay as foster children, and not be adopted â&#x20AC;&#x201C; either by their foster carers or by anyone else. A message from many children is to let children stay as they are in placements that are working out well, without trying to move them on to adoption, unless that really is what is right for the individual child and is what they want to happen. A final point from one discussion group was that people are more settled in any placement they are in if they are kept up to date with news about what is happening to their family at home, and what their own plans are. Not knowing what is going on can make it harder to settle and stay settled in any placement.

What would make changing placements better for young people? One of the main problems we hear about being in care is that very many children and young people get moved on from one placement to another, sometimes many times. We asked children what could be done to make changing placements better for young people when it did have to happen. “meeting new Two answers stood out above any other ideas. The most usual answer was that the child or young person should visit the new placement beforehand, and meet their new carers well before they move in; “to know more about where they are going and to know more about the people you stay with”; “knowing the people you’re moving in with.” This answer was given by nearly half of the children who wrote to us with their views. This needed to be linked to having a real say then in whether they did in the end move there or not; “meeting new parents before moving in, having choice to live there”.

parents before moving in, having choice to live there”

The other usual answer was that changing placements can be made better by always telling the child or young person exactly what is going on, and not keeping them in the dark about moves that are likely to happen until the last minute. It all adds up to always “knowing what’s going on.” As well as being kept informed about what is going on, many told us they wanted more notice to be given of when they were going to have to move placements, so that they could prepare and get to know where they were going to. One discussion group told us they thought children should have a right to have at least two months notice before being moved, unless it was a real emergency.

“knowing what’s going on.”

In our discussion groups, we have heard how it can help if you are able to take your property with you when you move. Just as photos are important to help you find out about a new placement before you move in, many people have told us that it also helps having photos of places and people you have liked in your past life to take with you when you have to move on.

If you have a pet of your own, being able to take your pet with you can be extremely important – whether the pet is something very big and major like a horse or dog, or something small in a cage. One person told us that a dog, if you have one, “is like a bit of your own life, a bit of stability, a safety blanket. The only living thing you can talk to.” Many in these discussion groups though agreed that you might not be able to take a pet to some placements, and that sometimes having a pet might be unfair on other people, for instance if they are frightened of it, or are allergic to it. One suggestion was that “if you can’t take it, take a picture of it to keep under your pillow and be allowed to visit it somewhere else”. Two other important points came from our discussion groups. One was that because being moved can mess up your education, knowing what educational plans there are for you, which school or college you will be going to, and how you can carry on with studies you are in the middle of, are all important things in making a new placement work. The other point was that if you have just left a placement you liked, you should still be able to keep in touch and visit there sometimes, if you wanted to, so that your life there wasn’t just stopped when you left.

How can social workers get placements right first time? When we asked children and young people what they most wanted from their social workers, another of the most usual answers we got was that social workers should get placements right first time more often. For this report, we followed this up by asking children and young people exactly what social workers should do in order to get placements right first time. One answer stood out above all others, and was given to us by over half the children and young people. That answer was that to get placements right first time more often, social workers should ask and listen to what the child wants and how they feel about the placement. We have already heard from many children and young people that having a choice of placement and a backup placement if the first one starts to go wrong are important ways of helping to make sure that the child finds a good placement that will last. The next most usual answer to this question was that social workers could get placements right first time more often if they made sure that the child or young

person did visit the placement and meet the carers before the decision was made and the move happened. Having good information about a placement before making a choice helps to find the right placement – including information about the carers, the building, other children there and any new school. Many children and young people have suggested that having photographs (of people, buildings, their bedroom, where the placement is, the school) would be an important way to begin to think forward to a new placement and to help make choices between placements. We have already come across this answer to an earlier question. Getting to know the placement before you move in helps to make sure the right placement gets chosen, and also helps the placement not to break down later on. Getting to know a new placement gradually helps to make placements work better. “I had an introduction to see if I liked it, by visiting and sleeping over”. Being suddenly “dumped with strangers” is not likely to help someone settle down and make a placement work. It is important to have time to prepare, and time to adjust with a number of visits before moving. When the child is visiting a possible new placement, the social worker should, we are told, directly ask the child if they actually like it – and if not, do some research into what the child doesn’t like about it. Some children told us that they feel more at risk of abuse from carers they don’t know, until they get to know and trust them. This makes it all the more important that you can get to know them before they finally become your carers. We have also already heard that it is important though that a choice in the first place goes along with having a backup placement to go to if the first choice doesn’t work out after all, or proves to be the wrong one when you actually move there. Some children warned that it can be difficult for a child to find out enough about what a placement is could always ask really like from a visit or trial stay before they actually move in, so them if they there needs to be a choice of a change if it doesn’t work out for you actually want to once you get there.

move”

A point made by some in our discussion groups was that whether the child wants to move from the placement they are in makes all the difference to whether they will settle in to a new placement they are moved to. As one young person suggested, social workers “could if they actually want to move”. Where a child or young person is moving into a children’s home, we were told that social workers and children’s home staff should think more about looking at both the new person and the people already in the home to make sure that the mix of people living there is right. If this doesn’t happen, children are more likely to get bullied, and many placements will break down as a result of them being the wrong placements to begin with.

One special kind of placement is the accommodation found for those leaving care to live in on their own. Care leavers have very often told us that this needs to be reasonable and safe – but that often they find themselves alone in an area or with others where they feel very unsafe living alone, or which they have to move on from to an uncertain future. That can for some mean finding friends to stay with or even living on the streets. Their message has been that social workers and leaving care workers need to take especial care to make sure that care leavers are OK with the accommodation they move on to when they leave their last care placement. Another important message from children and young people is that sometimes a placement is going really well for them, but social workers end the placement for reasons that are nothing to do with the child or young person themselves, or what they believe is best for them. This can happen when someone is placed a long way away from the council they are placed by. What we have heard happens is that the council has a policy of bringing people back from distant placements, or those placements were only made for a definite period (like two years) and the money runs out at the end of that time and so the young person has to leave, even if they don’t want to and their social worker thinks the placement is going well. We hear sometimes that children have to leave a placement for reasons like this just before they take vital school exams, so that their education can be seriously damaged by the move. Many of the individual children and young people who contact the Office of the Children’s Rights Director for help and advice are those about to be moved from placements they think are going well and where they want to stay. As I write this report, I have another letter on my desk from a young person asking for our help for just this reason. Usually, when we write to the Director of Children’s Services about situations like this, the decision to move is checked out and the child is able to stay in their placement. I am grateful to Directors for this – but the problem is definitely one that children and young people keep telling us needs sorting out. The request from children and young people placed away from their council area is that once they have been placed there, they should only be brought back from that placement if that is really in their own best interests, taking what they want to happen into account, and not for any other reasons like policies or money. It is also important that when social workers say they will do something, arrange something, change something, or pass on information about something, they actually do what they have promised to do. Children often tell us that social workers mustn’t make promises they can’t keep, and this is especially important at the time a child or young person is on the move from one placement to another.

One young person summed up for many others how they thought social workers could make a placement more likely to last by discussing it with the child first: “ask what the child is looking for, what they really want, then they may be able to find a family who they can get on well with. Not just send you there without asking or saying anything”.

“make sure kids get support and that they know what time to go to bed.”

Another person summed up for us how making a placement work out is a mixture of getting the right support for the big things you need help with, but also of knowing the little things that you need to know for everyday living anywhere: “make sure kids get support and that they know what time to go to bed.”

The best and worst of reviews Three quarters of the children and young people who wrote their views in to us said that they do go to their review meetings. When we asked them why they went to their reviews, those who wrote in to us gave two main answers: to find out what is going on, and so that they could have their say about what will happen to them; “so I have a view and can say what I think”; “I go because I want to be a part of it”. One person summed things up for most others when they said they went to their reviews “so I know what is being said and think it’s important for me to be there because it’s about me”. Only two children told us they went to their reviews because they were told they had to go. Of those who didn’t go to their reviews, some thought their views weren’t getting across, and others that reviews were boring. Some had mixed feelings about them: “reviews can be boring but they do listen and try to get your views heard”. Others were concerned about the number of people, with many people they didn’t know, who attended reviews and said that it was difficult talking about personal things in front of a lot of strange adults. Some of those who did go to their reviews said that as well as finding out what was going on and being able to have your say, you also heard the reasons for decisions that were made about you, which you might not know otherwise. When we asked what children and young people thought were the best things about reviews, we got the same answers as we got when we asked why people went to their reviews. Those who wrote in said the best things about reviews were finding out what is going on, and being able to have your say about what will happen to them. These answers tell us that for many children and young people, reviews do what they want them to – they keep them posted on what is happening, and they give them a say. Some of the best things about reviews were: “it is helpful to see how you are progressing” “you get to give your opinion on what you want in your future” “you can get things said directly to the people you want to talk to” “get to give your own opinion about things when they ask if you like where you are or you want to move” “hearing what other people have to say about me” “get a clue to understand what they are going on about” “helps make the right choices for when you are older”

“decisions aren’t made behind your back” “you get your review typed out so you know what’s been said” “you know things are happening”. Since we had asked what people thought were the best things about going to reviews, we also asked what they thought were the worst things about reviews. People who wrote in to us gave lots of different ‘worst things’ – the only one that came back from more than one or two people was that a worst thing about reviews is when you have to sit and listen to people saying bad things about you – and this was worst if you didn’t think what was being said was true about you. Knowing that one of the best things about reviews is having the chance to have your say, it is important to say that only one young person told us that the worst thing about all their reviews was not being listened to properly. However, if you did feel this sometimes, things could go very wrong – you could shout, cry and storm out of your review meetings if you felt nobody was listening to your point of view. Many people wrote in, or told us in our discussion groups, of things they thought were bad about their own reviews in particular. Some of these were: “feeling nervous about talking in large groups about personal feelings” “questions and someone who is there that you don’t want to be” “having things you wrote said out aloud” “having people from school there” “its boring” “they last a very long time and you can get very tired” “they bring stuff up about your past and they bring stuff up you don’t want to hear and talk about it in front of you” “they delve into your personal life” “having a new reviewing officer who pushes something I don’t agree with” “they make you fill in forms that you don’t want to” “always going into your past – but you can change” “just sit there listening to what they’re doing to you”. There was a lot of discussion about how the adults behave towards the young person during a review meeting. A young person on their own amongst a lot of adults discussing personal things about them already feels in the spotlight,

“just sit there listening to what they’re doing to you”

and what the adults did often made this worse. Examples were adults who “butt in while I’m talking”, or don’t look at the young person but spend all their time with their heads down writing notes. Some children find the words used by the adults difficult to understand (“I wish they could use terms I could understand”). Two young person in a discussion group summed up for us how a review meeting felt to them: “I walked into a panel meeting as about 12 people sat around the table and it put me off. I got an introduction, but that wasn’t enough. My social worker ended up doing most of the talking as I was too nervous.” “They talk about you as though you’re not there, you feel like you’re invisible. You wave your hands to say ‘hello, I want to speak’ and you’re aware they’re thinking you’re not there and why should they listen to her?” Reviews are especially difficult if you happen to be the sort of person who doesn’t like speaking in front of other people anyway; “I’m not a people person, so I don’t like my reviews because there are lots of people there and I don’t get my points across. The last word on what it feels like to be at a review goes to the young person who just said: “like watching your life”.

I don’t like my reviews because there are lots of people there and I don’t get my points across"

Some of the proposals from children for improving reviews were: letting children write their views more; letting younger children draw more to show what they felt; explaining things in more simple words; holding reviews in less worrying places (or even outdoors sometimes), having an advocate you could brief to speak for you at reviews, using a computer like “View Point” to help get your views across, having fewer people there (but making sure they are the important ones), and having better and more interesting forms to fill in. It is important to give plenty of opportunity to young people to get their views across, and to ask questions that are right for the person’s age group. Some told us the questions or forms they were given to fill in were obviously for much younger children, and ‘didn’t cover the ground’. It is also vital that reviews are the right length, not so long that they keep going round the same things without getting anywhere, but not so short that as one young person felt “it seems like everyone wants to get home”.

We have often heard that young people are uncertain about who actually has the final say in making a decision after it has been discussed in a review. For this report, we asked children and young people who they thought had the final say in their own reviews. Over half of those who wrote their views in to us said they thought their social worker or the person who ran the review meeting had the final say in making any decisions after the review had happened. In our discussions, some thought their parents always had the final say. Some thought their social

worker had to ask their manager to decide things if they weren’t there at the meeting anyway. A few thought the final decisions had to be made after the review by a court. Two people thought they could make the final decision for themselves if they wanted to, and two more thought the final decision was whatever most of the people decided at the review, and was not made by any one person at all. Some others in our discussion groups believed that there were various mixes of people who made the decision: “me, Mum, foster parents, social worker”, “reviewing officer, and also me”. Children and young people told us they would like to be certain who actually does have the final say in making a decision after things have been talked about in a review meeting. Sometimes a child or young person might not be happy with the decision that is made at a review or after it. So we asked for this report what people thought they could do about it if they were not happy with decisions about them after a review. The people who wrote their views in to us had two main thoughts on what they would have to do. Just under half thought that they would need to say something at the review itself if they were not happy with the decision that was being discussed. Another quarter said they thought they would be able to raise it with their social worker if they were unhappy with what came out of a review for them. One point we heard was that it was not so much a matter of going to the person who you were supposed to go to, but going to someone you felt comfortable talking to; “I think it depends on who the young person trusts” If a review meeting decided on moving a young person somewhere they didn’t want to go, they might just run away as soon as they got there. This was also something that people told us was the reason for running away when we were doing a report about running away. A few young people said that they were not able to cope with it if they thought their review meeting was making the wrong decisions for them, and instead of being able to argue with the professional adults there, they would probably just walk out. One said they would then “hit objects, privately”.

Having a say in your plans Children who are in care or looked after by their councils should all have a ‘care plan’ which says what should be done to help them and what should happen in the future for them. For this report, we asked children and young people about their care plans. Just over three quarters of the children and young people who wrote their views in to us said they knew they had a care plan. Three children (one in seven) of those who wrote in thought they did not have a care plan at all. In our discussion groups, we found that some young people didn’t know whether or not they had a care plan. A few said they knew they had one, but they hadn’t seen it. When we asked those who had care plans how much say they had been given in what their care plans said, nearly half of the people who wrote in to us said they had been able to have a big say in what was in their care plans. One person at a special school told us they had been very involved in working out their plan - “a lot, I sit with my LAC teacher and we do it together”. Over a quarter, though, said they had had either only a little say or no say at all in what was in their care plans; “nothing much, I had a little input towards the plan”. Sometimes how much say you had in your care plan depended not on you, but on how good your social worker was: “in general I am listened to and sometimes get my views taken forward, but this is to do with my social worker who treats me more like I’m an adult and not like I’m in care”. When we asked whether children and young people agreed with what was in their care plans, regardless of how much say they had in what was in the plan, two thirds of those who wrote their views to us said that they agreed with what their care plans said. Only 3 children told us they didn’t agree with their plans. We asked for a bit more detail from those who wrote their views in for us. We asked them to give their care plans a score out of 5 for how good they thought the plan was for them. 5 out of 5 meant top marks for a near perfect plan. Out of fifteen young people who told us about care plans they knew about, five people (a third) gave their plans top marks of 5 out of 5. Another five people gave their plans 4 out of 5. Two thirds of those who gave their plans a score therefore scored them as good enough to score 4 or 5 out of 5. Four people gave their plans a score of 3 out of 5, and another three scored their plans as only good enough for 1 or 2 out of 5.

Keeping to plan 15 of the children and young people who knew about their care plans wrote to tell us whether they were being kept to. 8 of the 15 (over half) told us that everything their plan said should be done was being done for them; “everything has been done how I have wanted it”. Where some, but not all, of the plan was being kept to, the part usually being done was sorting out contact with their birth family. One young person told us they had a plan, but that it didn’t get properly talked about at review meetings, which always seemed to focus on problems, and then didn’t get carried out either: “at reviews we don’t talk about a care plan. They bring up a load of old stuff, but don’t do it.” When we asked what children could do if their plan was not being kept to as it should be, those who wrote in to us had two main ideas. Nearly half said that they could take this up with their social worker. “If social worker said something was going to happen and it didn’t I would ask why it didn’t”. One in three told us this was something they could put in a complaint about to their council. This had sometimes made a difference after feeling they were not being listened to any other way; “then they knew I wasn’t messing about ”. In our discussion groups, others suggested that they might go to their foster carer, and others again that they might go to an advocate if they had one. One person commented that when their advocate took up the fact that their plan wasn’t being kept to, their social worker “backed off”. Advocates were useful to explain things and give you support if you felt that you were being pushed into a situation you didn’t want to be in.

“then they knew I wasn’t messing about”

A few young people told us that they had told visiting inspectors that they were not being cared for as their plan said they should be, but inspectors didn’t usually do anything about that, and didn’t pass it on to the right people to deal with the problem. Some of the young people we spoke to suggested that people should be able to go to a court to get things sorted out if their plan was not being followed. There were mixed views about this in our discussion groups. Many thought that courts would be supportive, and some said that a court, although not quick, would be likely to get something sorted out before social services were likely to make a decision on something complicated. Some though said that going to a court “is not a nice thing to do” and that there was a danger that it would “draw a line between you and the staff” which could make life difficult afterwards.

In discussion groups we asked whether children and young people knew that the person who runs their review meetings could go to an organisation called “CAFCASS” if their care plans weren’t being carried out, and that organisation could take the matter to court. Hardly anyone had heard of CAFCASS, but many thought more people should know this was a way to get a court to look into things if they were going wrong. A few said that if their plan had gone badly wrong, they might run away or do something harmful to themselves. In one group we were told that if someone’s plan had gone very wrong, “some people might commit suicide”. The last word in this report goes to someone who told us what should happen with care planning: “have been asked about care plan, and had a say in agreeing it”.

If you have any comments regarding this report please send them to: Dr Roger Morgan OBE Children’s Rights Director for England Office of the Children’s Rights Director Commission for Social Care Inspection St Nicholas Building St Nicholas Street Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 1NB Children’s Website www.rights4me.org September 2006

Further copies are available free of charge from csci@accessplus.co.uk Order line 0870 240 7535

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