News

Most children's homes in England and Wales are now relatively small in size, compared with those in use even a decade ago. Research conducted by Sinclair and Gibbs has identified that smaller homes generally provide better care than larger ones. Sinclair and Gibbs also went on to suggest that, when a home becomes as small as one catering for around four residents, the question needs to be asked: "Why not go the whole way and use foster care instead?"¹

The published research looking at outcomes for children and young people has produced little conclusive evidence that foster care is intrinsically better than residential care, except for young children, although, for many practitioners and young people themselves, a foster placement is still the preferred choice, and a residential placement closer to "the last resort".

Other recent research has confirmed what we have suspected for many years, that children looked after within the area of their local authority generally do better than those placed outside the area^.2 Sadly, for some children and young people, there may simply be no foster placement choice locally. The Children Act Report 2000 has confirmed the unthinkable: that it is likely any recent increases in the overall numbers of foster carers have been utilised in meeting the increased demand for placements, rather than building up a pool of vacancies to allow for greater placement choice.³ This problem is likely to be exacerbated by the introduction of new local authority duties to support, maintain and accommodate many care leavers in their existing foster placements under the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 this October.

The lack of foster care provision is clearly more acute in some parts of the country compared with others. For example, many inner London authorities have found it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain carers, not least because of high housing costs. The main implication is that, if authorities are to provide good quality local foster placements for looked-after young people in the local authority area, they now need to invest in local services, including:

- Targeted recruitment of foster carers. There is a growing body of research-based material on effective recruitment techniques, for example, emphasising the needs of local children, or using word of mouth.

- Developing individualised packages of support for placements. Well targeted and need-specific support may not only be crucial to the success of many individual placements, but has also been linked with greater levels of carer retention. Ongoing research conducted by the team at the University of York aims to establish the extent to which outcomes may be influenced by the various types of support available.⁴

- An increased ability to secure responsive and well-co-ordinated access to "specialist" support services across health, social services and education in particular. The Health Act 1999 offers authorities the necessary flexibilities to enable transfer of monies, pooled funds, the delegation of functions, lead commissioning, and integrated provision.

- Developing systems which allow placement options to be viewed "in the round", and which are capable of providing information about placement quality as well as cost. Many researchers in this field have argued that central to the ability to provide appropriately for looked after children is the need to be able to plan across a range of placements, whether these are in residential or foster care.⁵

While foster care is generally seen as most desirable for looked-after children, managers and practitioners need to ensure that the quality of local foster care services is maintained, to avoid reliance on expensive, out of authority placements over which much less control can be exerted, and which are less likely to meet the needs of their looked after children.

Katy Burch is senior researcher at the Social Services Research and Development Unit (SSRDU), Institute of Public Care, Oxford Brookes University.

References

¹ Children's Homes: A Study in Diversity (1998) and Caring for Children Away from Home: Messages From Research (1998)

² Department of Health, The Children Act Report 2000, DoH, 2001

³ Ibid

⁴ Gibbs, Sinclair, Baker and Wilson, What Happens to Foster Children? DoH, 2001

⁵ Hayden et al, State Child Care: Looking After Children, Jessica Kingsley, 2000