A Bill passing through the House Of Lords wants to give local authorities greater powers to monitor home schooled children in order to prevent instances of neglect and abuse. The proposals raise serious concerns about further state intervention at a time when social work malpractice and resource drained child protection departments are at an all time high.

The Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill, sponsored by Labour peer Lord Soley, outlines a duty on parents to register their children if they elect to home school them, and local authority powers to monitor, vet and assess home schooled children:

Duty of local authorities to monitor children receiving elective home 
education 
(1) The Education Act 1996 is amended as follows.

(2) After section 436A (duty to make arrangements to identify children not
receiving education), insert—

“436BDuty of local authorities to monitor children receiving elective home
education
(1) Local authorities have a duty to monitor the educational, physical and
emotional development of children receiving elective home education
in their area.

(2) A parent of a child receiving elective home education must register the
child as such with their local authority.

(3) Local authorities must assess annually each child receiving elective
home education in their area (hereafter referred to as “the assessment”).

(4) The assessment set out in subsection (3) must monitor the—

(a) educational;

(b) physical; and

(c) emotional development of each child.

(5) The assessment may include—

(a) a visit to the child’s home;

(b) an interview with the child;

(c) seeing the child’s work; and

(d) an interview with the child’s parent.

(6) A parent of a child receiving elective home education must provide
information relevant to the assessment to their local authority when
requested.

(7) The Secretary of State must by regulations made by statutory
instrument specify—

(a) the arrangements for parents to register a child with their local
authority under subsection (2); and

(b) the methodology of the assessment.

(8) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section is
subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of
Parliament.

(9) In this section “elective home education” refers to education given to a
child at home following a decision by their parent to educate them
outside the school system.”

In an interview published today, on Politics Home, Lord Soley explains why he has chosen to offer the proposals in his Bill. Soley tells Politics Home that the measures are designed to protect children who have been expelled from conventional schooling for under achievement or difficult behaviour, those not receiving adequate education from their parents at home, and children who have been removed from mainstream education in order to be radicalised, trafficked or abused.

If that is really what Soley wishes to achieve, he won’t with this Bill. Asking social workers to take on what is essentially a teaching role in order to assess educational attainment of home schooled children will create more misery and confusion. The task requires social workers to also carry teaching diplomas, and the extra training that social workers will inevitably have to undertake will cost the government a fortune.

And it won’t be money well spent. If Lord Soley hopes to create a new ground upon which child protective services can enter homes, essentially with the purpose of vetting families – because that is really what this Bill is about – he will be opening up a can of worms.

The current tug of war between social workers who are increasingly calling on the government to stop taking children into care, and the Department for Education’s aggressive drive to rev up adoptions through private agency models waiting to make massive profits off the backs of vulnerable children (and offering these children nothing in return), makes this Bill both naive and dangerous.

We already have systems in place to ensure that vulnerable children are identified, but they are not working as they should because social work training and the culture inside the social care system is not efficient enough. It is also riddled with unethical behaviour and malpractice. This Bill would not make identifying abuse more efficient, it would simply offer more opportunities for miscarriages of justice whilst councils continue to rely on adoption incentives to bolster their budgets.

Lord Soley does not have an extensive background in child welfare. Most of his experience centers around government body reforms, with the exception of his involvement in the Draft Children (Contact) and Adoption Bill (Joint Committee), in 2005, as Chair for the Committee. And though we are sure he means well, and genuinely wishes to protect the rights of every child in the UK, measures to protect those rights must always be viewed within the current state of affairs inside the child welfare sector. That is often a large and complex task, which requires a nuanced understanding of the many different factors at play, at any given time.

As a Private Members’ Bill, these proposals are unlikely to be implemented and ratified into law. But it serves as an important reminder that anyone who wishes to improve child protection and secure the rights of every child can only do so with a complete understanding of the system itself.

A new report by the British Association Of Social Workers has concluded that children should have contact  with their biological families before, during and after adoption proceedings. The country’s leading social work body is also calling on the government to overhaul adoption law in line with this recommendation.

Whilst the view isn’t groundbreaking – anyone who has spoken to an adopted child will tell you the harm severing contact does them – it’s an incredibly brave position for BASW to take. The recommendation if implemented, and it must be, is likely to damage the already ailing adoption and fostering sectors, which have seen huge reductions in uptake, both for foster carers and adopters over the last five years. A significant number of prospective carers are likely to be put off  by the idea of ongoing contact with birth families.

The study was led by Professors Brid Featherstone and Anna Gupta, and included evidence from more than 300 individuals and organisations. The BASW page on the report tells us that social workers, birth families, legal professionals, adoptive parents and adults who were adopted as children offered thoughts for the study.

We know birth families around the country will be thrilled with this development. Whilst the myth persists that birth families are ‘bad’, and don’t care about their children, the exact opposite is true: most are families in need of support and understanding who would do anything to be able to take care of their children.

Researching Reform has campaigned for contact between children and their biological families for several years and like Professor Featherstone, we take the view that whilst legislation can be helpful in changing social work practice, a significant amount can be achieved, and much faster, through a shift in culture. The Children Act 1989 already provides a solid backdrop for social work practice to ensure working policies benefit children and bolster their development.

This latest recommendation is a wonderful step forward, and we hope it includes the need to ensure the voice of the child is faithfully recorded in these decisions and properly understood, to avoid the pendulum swinging too far one way or another, yet again. So whilst contact should be given, it should always be with the child’s best interests in mind.

Community Care has offered some quotes from the study and the lead social workers who produced it:

“Adopted children denied contact can experience serious identity issues and when they are free to seek out their birth families at age 18, adoptive parents can be ill-prepared for the emotional consequences.” 

Professor Featherstone:

“You should start from the assumption that direct contact with birth parents ought to be considered… Usually, adopted children go searching when they get to 18 and it can store up trouble if they haven’t had previous contact, enabling them to see their birth parents for good or ill.

They can stop having fantasies about these wonderful parents that they were stolen away from, or equally that they were absolutely terrible people. It’s about their identities. Adopted people told us that identity is a lifelong issue for them. Where do I come from? Who do I belong to?”

The report doesn’t appear to be publicly available, so we have emailed the contact offered on the BASW page to request a copy. The BASW have published their response to the report, which you can read here, and which includes the recommendations from the report:

Recommendation 1: The use of adoption needs to be located and discussed in the context of wider social policies relating to poverty and inequality

Recommendation 2: UK governments should collect and publish data on the economic and social circumstances of families affected by adoption

Recommendation 3: The current model of adoption should be reviewed, and the potential for a more open approach considered

Recommendation 4: There needs to be further debate about the status of adoption and its relationship to other permanence options.

Recommendation 5: BASW should develop further work on the role of the social worker in adoption and the human rights and ethics involved

Many thanks to Maggie Tuttle for sharing the Community Care article with us.

The last ten years have been sobering for the family justice system, and the social work sector. Fighting to stay afloat, government agencies for each have tried desperately to find ways to generate income, often through misplaced incentives and a heavy emphasis on fostering, as well as adoption. None of their efforts have worked. And now, courageous social workers are speaking up about the child welfare system and what really needs to be done to make things right.

Simon Haworth is a former social worker turned academic. He left frontline practice to become a Teaching Fellow at the University of Birmingham, and whilst he doesn’t give a reason for leaving the sector, we did wonder whether the limitations within it were partly to blame. Simon joins a growing number of social workers questioning whether the system is really catering to children’s best interests by pushing adoption and by implication other forms of social care like fostering.

In an article for Community Care, Simon looks at the current child protection policies in place and talks about why he feels these policies are harming children, and society as a whole.

Simon makes several important points. He notes that phenomena like poverty and inequality are often at the heart of vulnerable children’s narratives. He goes on to mention that social work does not address these important grass roots problems or at least incorporate a deeper understanding of them in every day practice and that this in turn leads to decisions which are often not in the best interests of the children involved.

He also questions the care proceedings timetable with its 26 week limit and makes this insightful observation:

“It is explicit in government policy that there has been a drive towards more and faster adoption. We must ask whether this is taking place to the detriment of a social work model that favours family support and interventions to keep families together. Can we expect parents to address chronic difficulties within the 26-week time limit?”

There is also an interesting section in the article about dominant approaches to child welfare practice in the UK. This is the idea that dominant demographics are able to dictate process, policy and legislation which in turn lead to disadvantage and inequality, often for the most vulnerable.

Another important point Simon makes relates to the way we address underlying issues within vulnerable families. He says:

“We should ask ourselves how many children would have their legal rights to private and family life better protected through supportive and anti-oppressive approaches that address the glaring inequalities in our unequal society.”

What Simon is effectively saying, is that we need to be focusing on keeping families together, finding ways to support families and address the core issues they are dealing with, in order to improve society and reduce the enormous cost of social care.

The article finishes with an invitation to the sector to consider anti oppressive approaches which really place children and families at the heart of every decision.

Researching Reform has been saying these things for a decade, and so we are excited to see professionals inside the sector, and those who were once a part of it, coming forward to invite positive change. We very much hope more of you will join the movement.

A new podcast series published in October on BBC Radio 4 called The Adoption, follows a real life adoption and asks some insightful questions about the process.

The series took 19 months to make, and charts the lives of two toddlers, Bethany and Ben, as they find themselves being adopted.

There are currently 16 episodes, with each one looking at a different aspect of adoption. We’ve broken down each episode according to its theme:

Preview: Background information on the documentary.

Episode 1: The family court process and a look at who makes the decision for a child to be adopted.

Episode 2: The foster care portion of the process with thoughts from the foster mother.

Episode 3: An introduction to the children themselves and some input from their social worker.

Episode 4: How the biological grandparents fit into the adoption process.

Episode 5: Insight into how Bethany and Ben’s father is coping with the adoption.

Episode 6: A look at how the mother is processing news of the adoption, which also raises the question of wrongful removal.

Episode 7: How potential adopters view the process and what they’ve done to prepare for the children coming to stay.

Episode 8: The potential adopters attend an Information Day and learn more about the children, to see if Bethany and Ben are ‘right for them.’ (We object strongly to this notion, so we’re putting it on record here).

Episode 9: What happens when the birth family find out prospective adopters have been found Bethany and Ben.

Episode 10: Issues around telling the children they are being adopted.

Episode 11: How the Adoption Panel works, what it does and how it comes to its conclusions about adoptive parents.

Episode 12: The parents say goodbye to the children.

Episode 13: Bethany and Ben’s father reflects on what’s happened.

Episode 14: The children move in with the new family.

Episode 15: Ben and Bethany meet their ‘new’ mother and father.

We have not yet had the chance to listen, but we would love to hear your thoughts on the series. Was it sensitively produced? Have the team managed to get some nuance in to the series and have they highlighted potential problems with the process? Let us know.

Very many thanks to Rose Watson for sharing this on Facebook and Janie Doe for alerting us to the series.

It was the judgment that brought to an almost grinding halt the seemingly unstoppable tide of adoptions taking place in England and Wales.

During a judgment in 2013, President of the Family Division Sir James Munby told the court and those working in the Family Justice System, that adoption was a method of last resort and that extended family members had to be considered before making such a draconian order.

What followed was a sharp drop in adoption numbers as local authorities feared adoption orders would lead to a backlash. Adoptions are still on the decline four years on, with recent year on year figures highlighting this trend. It’s a trend adoption and foster agencies are keen to stop.

A recent article over at Community Care which looks at whether Special Guardianship Orders are being used safely includes comments from adoption and fostering agencies which suggest that SGOs are reckless arrangements which endanger the lives of vulnerable children. Unlike adoption orders, SGOs usually place children in the hands of extended family, long time carers or a person the child is familiar with.

The article questions whether Special Guardianship Orders (SGOs) are safe, after a serious case review for Keegan Downer, an 18 month old baby who was killed by a relative after being granted an SGO, was published. Adoption and fostering agencies may see this case and others as an opportunity to sway policy back in favour of an implicit presumption of adoption.

Andy Elvin, who is the chief executive of TACT, the UK’s largest fostering and adoption charity slash agency, says the recent serious case reviews “broadly” represent things more commonly going wrong with SGO placements. He told Community Care that child deaths at the hands of Guardians “will continue to [crop up] until someone does something sensible about it”.

Naturally he goes on to defend fostering and adoption processes and suggests they are more robust than SGO procedures:

“SGO assessments just aren’t rigorous enough. It’s not a local authority’s fault, they aren’t being given the time to do them,” Elvin says.

And there is comment from CoramBAAF, too, a fostering and adoption agency and one with a potential conflict of interest, as it merged with a children’s legal centre in 2011 and now offers legal advice on adoptions and related issues as well.

John Simmonds, the director of policy at CoramBAAF, takes the view that the government’s changes to SGO assessments have made no difference at all. An odd view given that the changes John refers to only came in after Keegan Downer’s death. John goes on to say:

“You can try and up the game on regulation, but if you don’t have the time and resources to do what then needs to be done, they become meaningless, so I haven’t seen any difference whatsoever. These are vulnerable children in very vulnerable circumstances – haste does nothing, and the rule of optimism does nothing to help with that.”

Whilst both Simmonds and Elvin have a point about time and resources, this point stretches right across the board to adoptions and fostering arrangements as everyone scrambles to meet the 26 week deadline for care proceedings. It’s ridiculous, and irrational to blame SGOs for child deaths when the entire system is struggling to manage risk and child welfare concerns with borrowed time, fewer resources and inadequate training for such specialist work. We also know that children die at the hands of adoptive parents, too, though no data has currently been collected to highlight whether these kinds of deaths are more prevalent than child deaths at the hands of Guardians.

The article in Community Care, which is balanced and well written, offers a counter point to the adoption and fostering agency’s self interest-driven scaremongering.

Cathy Ashley, chief executive of the Family Rights Group warns about the dangers in making huge generalisations about SGOs, and Judith Harwin, co-director of the Centre for Child and Family Justice Research at Lancaster University, who is researching special guardianship and breakdown rates says the risk is low for most children, and concerns that SGOs are dangerous might be the reaction to a “minority of extreme cases”.

An excellent article, and well worth a read.