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The Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 is one year old this month.

The legislation marked a watershed in the way care leavers were viewed and treated by local authorities. Instead of being a safety net, the role of councils changed to one of "corporate parent", responsible for trying to provide the stability that most parents would give their own child on leaving home.

The fact that change was needed is supported by statistics. Care leavers are more likely to leave school with no qualifications, be unemployed, suffer mental health problems, fall into homelessness, serve a prison sentence and be a teenage parent.

A new report by the Prince's Trust shows that the lot of a care leaver continues to be a difficult one. It reveals that more than half had been excluded from school at some stage, 44 per cent were involved in crime and that only about 30 per cent had regular contact with a social worker.

The act was introduced to address the issues behind these statistics, improve the life chances of young people in care and care leavers and reduce the gulf between them and the general population.

Local authorities are being given the main task of delivering this, through new statutory responsibilities for supporting care leavers up until the age of 21 (see panel).

While some believe that the scope of the act should have been broadened to include all care leavers regardless of age, most charities believe the act could make a major difference to the life opportunities available.

However, so far the act has failed to deliver one of the government's key targets. Last month, the government's social exclusion unit reported that, in four out of five local authorities, children in care failed to gain the target of one GCSE this academic year, with only a 1 per cent improvement in the number of children achieving the national average of five GCSEs or more.

Improving educational attainment, while only one way of measuring the act's impact, is important because of the government's emphasis on judging the success of policies by the number of targets reached.

However, the act's supporters believe that it will take several years before the benefits are reflected in examination results.

Norman Tutt, director of housing and social services at Ealing Council, in London, says the problem stems from the fact that educational attainment is not traditionally a social services priority.

"You can't start at care leavers - you need to look at which 11 to 14-year-olds need support," he says. "If you did something then, they might not be so far behind at 16 when they leave care."

Improving services to care leavers has been something of a passion for Tutt. Ealing has opened a drop-in centre to give care leavers careers and education advice and is supporting 15 care leavers at university through grants of £5,000 a year. It has also extended its services to care leavers older than 21 who want to return to education and training.

"If you're going to have any kind of career prospects you've got to have some kind of educational or vocational training after 16. We can't afford looked-after people to slip out of mainstream society and we must have high expectations for them," Tutt says.

Jane Sufian, policy manager at care leavers charity First Key and spokesperson for the Action on Aftercare Consortium group of charities, says that, by providing ring-fenced money to fund care leavers through higher and further education courses, the act has already improved educational opportunities.

"There's not going to be a quick fix but there's more people going to university and it shows that the government considers that examination results are important," says Sufian.

"This will make people focus on care leavers' qualifications and forces local authority and government departments to work together."

Another issue the SEU was particularly concerned about was the failure of local authorities to develop a clear model of outstanding practice in meeting the new act's requirements.

This was a clear theme at a First Key conference last week to mark the act's first year. Although some councils have grasped the challenges of the act, others have not.

The act calls for greater involvement of care leavers in developing and shaping the services they use. Some councils have addressed this by allowing young people to help select the care-leaving team members they will work with, while others have simply canvassed care leavers' views on services.

Sufian gives another example of councils failing to abide by the spirit of the act. She says that some have used ring-fenced money to pay for looked-after children placements for 16 and 17-year-olds because they come under the remit of the act. Previously, this would have come out of the general budget.


Sufian says: "We know that some local authorities are not complying with the legislation and we want to make sure there's monitoring."

It is paramount to find the balance between providing equality in terms of the services offered nationally yet maintain the flexibility for councils to tailor their leaving care services to their clients' needs.

At the First Key conference many care leavers talked of the importance of their corporate parent offering stable and consistent support, something often lacking in much of their previous life.

It is hoped that the new role of personal adviser will provide that support, by keeping in regular contact with care leavers and acting as a link between agencies. The advisers are popular with clients because, as one care leaver at the conference put it, "they are not social workers, are selected by care leavers and can spend more time with us because they have smaller caseloads".

But the role itself is viewed sceptically by some in the profession as the government's way of getting social workers on the cheap and reduce the time in the field - "the best part of the job" - open to specialist care leaver social workers.

Sufian says that if local authorities could next tackle the problem of supported accommodation for care leavers' stability in their lives would improve further.

Despite these issues, most young people, charities and councils are enthusiastic about the act and genuinely believe it will lead to a better life for care leavers.

The Prince's Trust, The Way It Is - Care Leavers, from www.princes-trust.org.uk

Duties under the act:

- Councils need to assess and meet the needs of 16 and 17-year-olds.

- Councils need to keep in touch with their care leavers until they are 21, or 24 if they are receiving education and training support.

- Councils should introduce pathway plans based on the assessment of care leavers' needs.

- New role of personal adviser must be implemented.

- Councils should help with education and training during holidays.

- They must provide ring-fenced arrangements for financial support.

Inclusion by the sea

When the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 came into being last October, it provided the catalyst for Southend-on-Sea, in Essex, to introduce a scheme aimed at building links between care leavers and the wider community. In January, Southend Council began recruiting volunteers to act as mentors for care leavers. The programme began in April and now has 35 volunteers ranging in age from 20 to 70 who have been matched with young care leavers aged between 16 and 21.

John Stock, the council's leaving care services manager and initiator of the project, says the act focused the council's mind.

"When it came to selling this to the council's cabinet I was able to quote the act as a reason why it was needed," he says.

Mentors devote a minimum of one hour a week to their young person, with the idea that the relationship will last for at least a year. They receive training and supervision on a regular basis.

"It's aimed at helping people through the process of leaving care to being a care leaver," Stock says. "Young people like the voluntary aspect of this and the fact the people who act as mentors have the time and energy to give to them, unlike a lot of social workers who may have up to 30 cases each to handle."

He says the programme helps improve the self-esteem of care leavers and broadens their horizons with the long-term goal of making them "effective members of the community and believing in themselves".