The Child Minder

A report published last week by the Immigration Law Practioners' Association, When Is a Child Not a Child? has alleged that some social work managers are pressurising or instructing social workers to assess unaccompanied asylum seeking children as older than they are in order to save money.

The highly comprehensive report highlights the potential conflict of interest in the currrent system where social workers who carry out the assessment work for the local authority who will then have to support the child.

Of course it is unfair for social work managers to exert pressure on social workers in this way but they are not the real villians of the piece. It is only due to the government's constant failure to properly fund services for this group that they feel compelled to try to safeguard their employers' resources.

As anyone working with unaccompanied minors knows the rates given out to councils to pay for unaccompanied minors are too low with the leaving care costs associated with the group being particularly burdensome.

Let me begin by apologising for failing to blog for the last couple of weeks. I have been somewhat tied up with the relaunch of Community Care, which now has a new design incorporating standalone children's and adults' services sections.

I have also been out and about, soaking up the atmosphere in Warwickshire at the last ever spring seminar of the Association of Directors of Social Services - which also doubled up as the first ever spring seminar of the Association of Directors of Adults Social Services.

But in this brave new world of splits and restructures, there are many who are concerned that the result will be new gaps for service-users to fall through, particularly young people approaching adulthood and the children of adult service-users.

It was therefore refreshing to find that, despite the adult-dominated agenda at the spring seminar, children were by no means forgotten. There were numerous references made throughout the two-and-a-half days about seeing service-users in the context of their family as a whole. And I discovered several interesting arrangements that have been set up to try and bridge the divide, such as adults directors sitting on children's trust boards, and at least one even chairing their local safeguarding children board.