The Education Committee will launch an inquiry into children’s care homes, it announced today.

The Committee has decided to launch the investigation following ongoing concerns about the levels of care children inside England’s care homes receive and consistently poor outcomes for children in care.

In a tweet published today, the Committee said it would be “welcoming contributions from anyone with experience of working in children’s homes, and young people who live or who have lived in a children’s home.”

The press release offers the following statistics on children in care:

• Just 7% of looked-after children achieve a good pass in GCSE English and Maths compared with 40% of non-looked after children;
• Approximately a quarter of both homeless people and those in prison are care-leavers;
• Looked-after children are four times more likely to have a special educational need (SEN) than other children;
• Children aged 16-17 living in children’s homes are 15 times more likely to be criminalised than their peers of the same age.

The Committee will be looking into several areas incuding:

• The data on academic outcomes and progression to destinations such as employment, apprenticeships and higher education for children and young people living in children’s homes.
• What can be done to improve educational and longer-term outcomes for children and young people living in children’s homes.
• The disproportionately high rates of criminalisation of young people in children’s homes.
• What further support is needed to improve outcomes for children with special educational needs in children’s homes.
• The quality of care, support and safeguarding in children’s homes.
• The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the children’s residential care sector, and on the demand for children’s home places.

Announcing the inqiury, Robert Halfon MP, Chair of the Education Committee, said:

“With many children in care struggling to achieve good basic qualifications and leavers more likely to end up in prison or on the streets, those in the care system are falling behind every step of the way. As part of the Committee’s unerring focus on supporting disadvantaged groups, this inquiry will get to the bottom of why children and young people living in children’s homes are facing such an uphill struggle to get on in life.

There is also worrying evidence of the consequences of a lack of oversight in some homes. The most basic of rights for a child must be to have somewhere safe to live, where they are not at risk of abuse or preyed on by gangs. We will be examining whether more needs to be done to protect young people in unregulated provision.

Children coming into care will already have had a traumatic start to their lives. We therefore owe it to them to ensure that their homes are safe and secure and that they are given every helping hand to access the ladder of opportunity and succeed in education and beyond.”

Australia’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has endorsed legislation which will abolish Australia’s family courts.

The Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia Bill will merge Australia’s existing Family Court network with the Federal Circuit Court, to create a single point of entry for family law cases and which will work under a universal set of rules, procedures, and practices.

The merger of the two courts will create one court, called the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia.

The aims of the merger are to ensure that Australian families have a consistent and clear pathway to use, to enable their family law disputes to be heard in the federal courts; to improve the efficiency of the court system; and ensure outcomes for families are timely, well informed and cost effective.

A ‘division one’ with family court judges and a specialist appeals court will also be created under the new proposals.

The bill is now set to pass after winning support from independent senator Rex Patrick, who has said the changes must include the retention of a minimum number of family law judges.

Opponents of the bill, which include law societies, legal centres and women’s legal support groups say the court merger will jeopardise the outcomes of family law cases and place victims of domestic abuse and violence at risk of further harm. Political parties including Labor and the Greens have also expressed concerns about the move.

A letter released by Australia’s Law Council opposing the bill has been signed by 155 stakeholders in Australia’s family justice system. The letter, published on February 16 and addressed to Australia’s Attorney-General Christian Porte, warns that the abolition of the standalone Family Court will have a devastating impact on families and dismantle ‘expertise’ developed within the Family Court.

Senator Patrick said critics of the merger did not understand the bill and that the changes would make it much easier for families to navigate the court system, particularly those without legal representation.

The decision to dismantle the Family Court in Australia will likely come as a shock to other countries like the UK, who have long considered Australia to be a pioneer of the family court system. Credited with the creation of the first in-house family consultants; the introduction of alternative dispute resolution in the form of conciliation conferences; and the development of a specialist appellate division in the Family Court of Australia, the country has been a source of inspiration for legal bodies and experts in Britain since the 1970s.

So why has Australia decided to get rid of its standalone Family Court? Much like the family courts in England and Wales, Australia’s family justice system has been buckling under the weight of ever growing case loads, and ineffective processes and procedures which have consistently failed to protect the most vulnerable inside its territories for decades.

Will the British government follow suit? If it does, much like Australia’s government, it will have to face strong opposition.