A report by the Children’s Commissioner on children’s experiences inside the care system highlights the appalling way in which children are being treated, and evidences the serious emotional harm the sector is causing these children.

The report, which is 14 pages long and features 22 children and young adults aged between 9 and 21, offers extracts from interviews in which children and young adults describe how the care system treated them and how that treatment made them feel.

While there are a few good experiences shared by children (most of which stem from support given by individuals outside of the care system), the report makes for a read which is both embarrassing and deeply troubling.

The most concerning revelation comes from several children in care who explain that the lack of proper care inside the system directly damaged their mental health, highlighting once again that the child protection system is causing tangible harm to the children it is supposed to be looking after.

One example given was that a change in social worker caused children to have to relive past traumatic events, because they had to talk about their past again.

An exceptionally high turnover in social workers around the country means that children are often having to relive painful past experiences – including the act of separation itself – multiple times.

Despite the volumes of research available on how to look after children, and the very obvious knowledge gaps inside the child protections system – which existed long before austerity – children are also still being left to languish on their own, separated from their siblings and moved sometimes hundreds of miles away from anything familiar to them.

The same tired themes of stability and mental health feature in this document, themes which have been clearly labelled and identified a thousand times over, in child welfare campaigns, scientific data and pioneering social work.

This report is not insightful, or trail blazing, but it is worth sharing the quotes from the children who took part in these interviews, because every one of their voices matter.

You can access all of the quotes published, here.

Below are a selection of quotes which we think broadly capture the key sentiments of the children interviewed. Please read all of them, if you can:

“[Social services] don’t do enough to guarantee the emotional wellbeing of that child, and the psychological wellbeing, it can have a big impact on kids because there’s all that stability gone. … It can have a lot of psychological damage on a kid, and you get the kids acting out, you get kids being rebellious, going off and doing drugs, and they turn down paths, and get involved with the wrong people, and I feel like, a lot of the time, that can be prevented. If they just put more measures in place to make sure kids really understand why this is happening, it’s not their fault, and I just feel like a lot more should be offered, like counselling definitely.” (Female, Care leaver)

“My behaviour got a bit uncontrollable [when moved placement to another town]. It’s because I still wasn’t given the help I want, I needed… Like I needed therapeutic help and I didn’t get it. And then when I moved to [new town following another placement move], I finally got it … It [therapy] made me get rid of all my anger … I haven’t kicked off as often as I used to.” (Female, 13)

“I probably cried myself to sleep each night, the first week.” (Male, 17)

“I was worried a lot at the time. Because it was unknown to where we would be going, how it would be like.” (Female, 16)

My social worker, I ask her so many times, what’s going to happen in my future, I’m really scared. I want to know what’s going to happen in my future and she’s just, she can’t be arsed to talk about it.” (Female, 15)

“But the more you move to different places and then the more you just get used to it … It’s just [breathes out], it’s just tiring … I don’t know how to explain it, you do literally feel tired, you hear it and it’s just like [breathes out] go back to bed.” (Female, 15)

“I think it [moving placements] just had an impact on … how I act, how I controlled my emotions. If I felt angry now, I’d just hold it in but then I would just lash out.” (Female,16)

“I was going through a lot of instability at the time… and I was making decisions that I probably wouldn’t rationally make normally, like running away from school and things like that. Yeah, they well and truly were [due to the instability], and it I guess it was a coping mechanism.” (Male, 17)

“Well they just said that he’s getting adopted to North England. That’s all I’m now allowed to know. … When she told me that he was gone, I just broke down… It was hard, I would cry every single day at school. I’d get taken out of lessons because I just couldn’t cope with it.” (Female, 18)

“I was out of school for three weeks rather than two, because the woman we was given to help me find a new school didn’t really do her job properly… I understand that she’s busy with loads of other people, but she left me and my mum on a voice message for a whole week, then a second week. We gave her a call and we actually got through to her and said, OK, we said to her, oh what’s happening, why haven’t you found a school yet, haven’t you found a school yet or are you just ignoring us, and she said, well I haven’t found a school yet, let me, just give me time. And she left us for another week.” (Male, 16)

“I didn’t meet my new social worker for quite a while, and then I met her a couple of times, and then I got another one. And it’s just like, well I only saw you three times and you’re already leaving, am I that bad? And it just makes you feel like you’re worthless, you’re not valued, and you’ve done something wrong all the time. It also makes you feel like you’re not important to them, and they don’t want to be with you, they don’t want to work with you, they’re just doing it because they have to. So it just makes a real downer on the young person, it makes them feel like, have very low self-esteem and low confidence in themselves.” (Female, 17)

Many social workers and their managers believe so strongly that an authoritarian approach to child protection is right that they not only feel comfortable trying to control families going through child welfare proceedings but also advocate strongly for such practices, according to research published by Dr David Wilkins, a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at Cardiff University, Assistant Director of CASCADE, and project lead at the What Works Centre which assists regulatory body Social Work England. 

The paper argues for an inclusive form of social work, where families feel empowered and safe. Dr Wilkins explains, “Working in a participatory way with families means, at the least, seeking to collaborate with rather than control or unduly influence them.” 

The research, which was published in 2017 in the British Journal of Social Work has been uploaded onto free research site Academia, and was co-produced with Charlotte Whittaker, the curriculum lead at social work training school The Frontline.

Charlotte is responsible for developing the teaching, learning and assessment of a practice model called motivational interviewing (MI), which Psychology Today describes as a practical, empathetic, short-term counselling method which helps people find the internal motivation they need to change their behaviour while taking into account how difficult it is to make life changes. It is this form of counselling that the research paper focuses on.

Dr Wilkins’ research highlights positive social work practices using MI which have made a difference to families’ lives while also pointing out the dangers of trying to control and coerce parents during child protection proceedings. The research also calls for ground-level reform within social work as well as structural reform to make sure that social workers can put children and families at the heart of their practice.

Parents reacted to the research on social media. One mother told Researching Reform:

“My Cafcass officer doesn’t collaborate on any level. She won’t even contact me directly. She does it through my solicitor costing me more money. Having been in a controlling relationship I definitely feel I have stepped straight into another with her.”

It’s incredibly important to point out that we don’t tolerate coercive behaviour in almost any other context – all we need to do is look at current legislation which prohibits people from using controlling behaviour in a relationship to get what they want from each other. We call that kind of conduct abusive because we know it damages adults, and children.

The paper is a must-read for anyone working with families in a child protection setting, and for families too who have either experienced the child welfare system or are going through it at the moment.

The research is also an important reminder that coercion never resolves an issue as families are never fully on board with an idea they haven’t engaged with or feel any agency towards. It traps families inside a cycle which sees them return to the child protection system over and over again.

This kind of control also creates a deep and lasting mistrust of social workers and the sector.

The research makes several interesting observations about social work practice:

“Participatory principles such as collaboration, empathy and the right to self-determination are embedded in many of the codes of ethics that underpin professional social work practice (BASW, 2012; Levin andWeiss-Gal, 2009). Unsurprisingly, almost all the workers we spoke to believed they embodied these principles in their work (or said they aspired to even if they were not always able to achieve them). And yet our analysis of observed practice suggests that many workers find it hard to acknowledge parents’ feelings, to respect their choices or to draw on their expertise. In discussion with these workers, we found that, whilst they could explain what principles such as collaboration and empathy meant in theory, they found it more challenging to describe how they might be shown in practice.”

Dr Wilkins is part of a growing group of social workers who believe that working collaboratively with families is essential to excellent social work practice and that the system is there to serve families and children. Researching Reform agrees with this view.

You can follow David over on Twitter at @David82Wilkins.

A Labour MP is hosting a debate in the Commons this evening to draw attention to growing confusion around local authorities’ responsibilities towards children.

The debate, which has been brought by Kate Osamor MP, will explore the issues around access to children’s services for families under the “no recourse to public funds” (NRPF) condition. Families who fall within the NRPF condition are usually migrants in the UK who are unable to access public funds, which means that they cannot access standard benefits and housing assistance.

Osamor says the confusion is causing extreme suffering in the form of acute poverty along with a high risk of homelessness and exploitation for thousands of children. 

Although children in the UK are covered by section 17 of the Children Act 1989, which places a duty on local authorities to promote the welfare of all children in need in their local area, the condition is causing confusion among parents and councils. In some instances, Politics Home reports that councils are wilfully refusing these families the support they are entitled to.

Osamor will use this evening’s debate to call on councils to adopt Project 17’s Children’s Charter, which commits local authorities to upholding the rights of children living in families with no recourse to public funds.

The debate will take place in the Commons Main Chamber at around 7pm and is an adjournment debate, which means that no formal question needs to be asked before it can be instated. Adjournment debates take place daily at the end of each day’s sitting in the Commons and usually run for 30 minutes.