Consultation outcome

Guide for children and young people: Stable Homes, Built on Love

Updated 21 September 2023

This was published under the 2022 to 2024 Sunak Conservative government

Applies to England

Overview

‘Stable Homes, Built on Love: strategy and consultation’ is the government’s plan for how we make children’s social care work better. This is a guide to that plan for children and young people.

If you want more information, you might also want to read the executive summary of the full document.

We are asking for your views on the plans so that we can make sure our plans do what children and young people need them to do. Your views are important and we want to hear them.

What is children’s social care

Children’s social care exists to:

• give support to children, young people and families who need extra help
• protect children and young people from harm
• give care and a home to children and young people when needed

Children’s social care is a very important service. This strategy shows how much the government wants the best for every child who needs help or care.

When we talk about care, it means a child is looked after by their local authority if they cannot be looked after by their parents. We believe care should always provide a child with love, safety and stability. This will help make sure that every child can grow up to achieve their best.

A local authority is your local government. Local authorities are responsible for their communities. They make decisions about things that happen in your community and keep children safe.

When we talk about a social worker, they usually work for your local authority. Their job is to help children and families. They listen to children and families. They make decisions to keep children safe.

When we talk about children in this guide, we mean children under 18 and young people over 18 who have left care.

Activities to do as you read this guide

We would like you to give us your views on the proposed changes to make children’s social care work better.

We have 6 ambitions in the government’s plan to do this. This guide is split into these 6 ambitions.

As you are reading this, you may want to:

• think about your own opinions of the changes
• talk to other children, young people and adults about your ideas
• think about what could be done to make them happen

You can then tell us about your thoughts by replying to the consultation questions.

If you are working in a group you might want to:

• talk about which changes you think are the most important
• work through a fictional story to see how these changes could make a difference to children’s lives
• share ideas about different things you could do to create the changes you want to see

We want to hear from children and young people and their families so we can understand what they think about our plans before we finalise them. Throughout this guide there are questions you can answer about our plans.

We are hosting this consultation on another website, which shows you how to answer some questions to give us your views.

Support if you need it

If there is anything here that you do not understand, you can ask an adult to explain it to you. This could be a parent, social worker, teacher or another adult you trust.

If you are worried about anything you read, talk to an adult about it. You can talk to someone you know in person or use one of the services listed below. These are here to help you.

If you are being harmed, or you know another child is, tell a teacher, nurse, social worker (if you have one) or other trusted adult straight away. It is their job to help keep you and other children safe.

Childline is a safe, confidential place for children with no one else to turn to. Whatever your worry, whenever you need help, you can contact Childline 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year on 0800 1111 or through the one-to-one chat on their website.

Childline has a huge online community where you can get support from other children on message boards, as well as resources to help you through any issue you are concerned about.

The Children’s Commissioner’s Help at Hand team can offer free support, advice, and information if you are:

• in care
• leaving care
• living away from home
• working with children’s services

This is to help you with any challenges you are experiencing. You can call the team for free on 0800 528 0731 or find more information on the Children’s Commissioner’s website.

Finally, Always Heard provides advice and advocacy for looked after children, care leavers and young people on the edge of care from 0 to 25 years old. If you need advice or advocacy services, you can get in touch for free on 0808 800 5792. Always Heard is provided through Coram Voice, and funded by the Department for Education.

Ambition 1: Family Help

All families and children need help sometimes. Families, neighbours and friends can usually help each other. Sometimes help might come from a teacher, doctor, nurse, or people like youth workers.

But sometimes families need more help than that. In future, these families will be supported by a new service called Family Help, so they can get the right help at the right time.

At the moment, when families need help from children’s social care, they often go through lots of meetings with different people. We want to make it easier to get that help.

Children and families might also feel like the help they get is not what they need or they might feel that they have too many changes of adults working with them. We want that to change.

We plan to:

• make sure all children and families can get the right help at the right time, no matter what they need or where they come from
• make it easier for children and families to get help
• test a new way of giving help to families in up to 12 different parts of the country
• employ more adults, who do not always have to be social workers, to help children and families
• make changes to the help we give to disabled children including by reviewing how the law works
• make sure Family Help works for people who live in and come from all different places
• give better help to families that are experiencing problems linked to not having enough money

Ambition 2: Keeping children safe

All children should be kept safe from harm.

Most often parents do the job of keeping children safe. But sometimes parents have problems of their own that mean they find it hard to keep their children safe and healthy. Sometimes children are hurt by people from inside or outside their family.

In the future, social workers, nurses, doctors, police officers, teachers and lots of other people will work better together to keep children safe. They should talk to children, their parents and family members about how best to help.

Sometimes, grandparents, aunts, uncles, other family members and family friends can also help. We should do more to make sure this can happen.

Some children might need the help of a social worker with extra training and experience so they can make the best decisions about how to keep them safe.

If a child can’t live with their parents because it is not safe, their social worker and the family court should speak to them and their family about where they will live.

The judge in the family court should listen to what everyone has to say. It’s their job to make safe decisions for that child and their family. They should make a decision as quickly as they can.

We plan to:

• test a new way of keeping children safe in the same parts of the country that we are testing Family Help
• make sure social workers with lots of experience and training work with children and their families to keep them safe
• be clearer on how adults like teachers, doctors, nurses and the police should work together to keep children safe
• encourage adults who work in children’s social care to make sure they listen more to children
• help parents and other adults close to children to understand what they need to do to keep them safe and healthy
• make changes so that children are kept safe from things that can hurt them outside of their home
• think about how teachers might have more of a role in keeping children safe, as they usually see and speak to children a lot
• improve how family courts work so that the decisions they need to make about children’s lives are made quickly, and to make sure the courts work well with parents

Ambition 3: Supporting families to help children

Even with lots of help, sometimes parents are not able to keep children safe. When that happens, it is important that social workers talk to other family members about this.

This could be grandparents, aunts, uncles or other family members. It could also be family friends or other adults that children know well.

If children can’t live with their parents, they should live with someone they already know, love and trust if it is possible and safe.

In children’s social care we call this ‘kinship care’.

If children need to live in kinship care, then their kinship carers should be given help to make that happen. That help might be money, or it could be things like help to get a child to and from school every day.

We want to give more help to children and kinship carers.

We plan to:

• tell local authorities that it is important to put family first, when it is safe
• ask local authorities to find and support family members so they can help children and parents to be safe and healthy, when they need it
• make sure children who can’t live with their parents are asked if there is anyone that they already know and would want to live with
• ask local authorities to use their money differently, to help kinship carers and children
• test new ways of supporting kinship care and children with Family Network Support Packages in up to 19 different parts of the country – these packages are different types of help that local authorities can give to kinship carers, like helping them build an extra bedroom or giving them some extra money to pay for things a child needs
• offer training and help to all kinship carers in the country to help them look after children
• create a new ‘kinship strategy’ about how we support family members to help children, with more information about how we support children and kinship carers

Ambition 4: Make care better for children in care and care leavers

We want lots of support for children to stay with their families, but even with help for families, sometimes children need to come into care to keep them safe.

Some children in care live with foster carers and some live in a home with other children.

Sometimes, the home that children in care live in does not make them happy or keep them safe. Sometimes children in care move home too much and their home isn’t close to their friends, family and school.

We need to make sure that every child in care has a safe and loving home where they are happy.

We want children to stay close to the people and places they know. This means government and local authorities need to work together to find more homes for children to live in.

We want to make sure children in care have loving people in their lives all the time. This could be brothers and sisters, other family members or friends.

We want to make sure children in care have everything they need to do well in school and learn new things. Everyone should make sure children in care are able to stay healthy and can see doctors or nurses if they need to.

If you are in care your local authority is your ‘corporate parent’. This means they should act like any loving parent would and provide you with the best possible support and care.

If you are leaving care, you should continue to feel safe and loved. You should be able to stay living in your community in a safe home. You should be helped to go to university, get an apprenticeship or to get a job.

No one should ever feel ashamed or be treated differently because they are, or have been, in care. Every child in care and care leaver should be listened to – their wishes and feelings should be prioritised when making decisions about their lives.

We have 6 missions to improve all aspects of life for children in care and care leavers.

Mission 1

Social workers and other practitioners make sure children and young people can see and spend time with the people who love and matter most to them.

Mission 2

We want to have more people and organisations act like, or be, corporate parents.

Mission 3

We want to make sure there are enough good foster homes and children’s homes for children to live in. We will do this by:

• increasing the number of foster homes across the whole country, so that children can stay nearer to their friends and family when they come into care
• building more children’s homes in areas where there aren’t enough, so children do not need to move so far from home

Mission 4

We want to make sure children in care are supported to do well in school or get good jobs, including older children aged 16 to 19 years old. We will do this by:

• creating more training and jobs for care leavers
• increasing how much money we give to care leavers who do an apprenticeship
• working with universities to support care leavers to go to university and to succeed and do well when they are at university
• offering more support in school and colleges such as working with a tutor
• giving more money to the Care Leaver Covenant which supports care leavers aged 16 to 25 with jobs

Mission 5

We will make sure more care leavers live in safe homes by:

• helping young people who leave care to stay living with their foster family or give help and support as they start to live on their own
• increasing the amount of money young people get when they leave care

Mission 6

We want to make sure adults working with children in care and care leavers know how to support them with their physical and mental health needs.

We will give people more training on this. We will make sure children in care and care leavers can see doctors or nurses more easily.

Ambition 5: Children have great social workers

Lots of children already have social workers. Social workers support children and families every day. Many children find their social worker is a big help in their life.

Some children with a social worker do not have such a good relationship with them or find their social worker changes too often so they can’t get to know each other well.

We want every child who needs one to have a great social worker. They can change the lives of children and adults for the better.

We want all children who have a social worker to have a strong relationship with them. That means we want social workers to change jobs less often.

To make that happen, social workers need leaders and the government to support them more and they need to know how valued they are.

If you have a social worker, we want to make sure they spend enough time with you. We want you to feel like you can talk to them about anything and that they listen to you.

We plan to:

• increase the number of people becoming social workers
• help social workers stay working at the same place for longer – this will mean children do not have to tell their life stories lots of times
• reduce the amount of office work social workers do so they can spend more time with children and families
• give social workers more and better training
• celebrate social workers who are doing a good job so that everyone knows what an important job they do for children and families

Ambition 6: Improving the whole system for children and families

We do not think that everyone who works in children’s social care always shares the same views about what it should do for children and families.

We want it to be clearer for children and families what social workers and other workers should do for them.

While we make these changes, we want to make sure we keep learning how to make the system better. We want to know we are getting it right for all children and families no matter where they live or who they live with.

This means we need to be better at understanding what is working and what is not working.

That means listening to children much more and including their views.

The government makes sure there are checks that children and families across the whole country are getting good services. They do this by having local authorities, children’s homes and fostering agencies inspected.

When children and families are not getting what they need, we want those services to get better faster.

We plan to:

• create new guides for people working with children and families, and the people who are in charge of children’s social care, about what they need to do for them
• listen more to children and young people
• listen more to parents, families, friends and the people that love children
• collect better information about the difference social care is making to children and families’ lives
• make sure services improve more quickly when they are not good
• make sure the money given to local authorities to do their work is given fairly based on the needs of people living there

Questions on the strategy

We would like you to answer the following questions on the strategy. You can use another website to send us your responses.

Question 1: What difference do you think our 6 ambitions for change will make to the lives of children and families?

Have a read of our 6 ambitions for children’s social care in our children and young people’s guide.

Do you think we have covered everything? Do you think our ambitions will make a difference to the way things currently are? What difference do you think it will make?

Select one from the following:

• I think they will make a positive difference
• I think they will make things worse
• I think it is too soon to tell what difference they will make
• I do not think they will make any difference to the way things currently are
• It does not matter. I do not believe that anything will change
• I do not know

What more, if anything, could make things better?

Question 2: If a friend told you they were having serious difficulties with their family at home and they wanted help, which trusted adult would you recommend they speak to?

You might want to think about the following adults they may have in their life:

• their immediate family (such as their mum or dad, older brother or sister)
• a member of their wider family (such as their cousin, aunt, uncle, grandparents)
• a family friend
• a teacher or another member of staff at school
• their youth worker or participation worker
• their doctor, school nurse, or someone else they speak to about their physical or mental health
• their sports coach, or an adult who runs an activity or hobby club they go to
• somebody else (you tell us)

You might think it is more likely you would look for help online. If that is the case, which websites or organisations would you advise they go to for help?

Question 3: Do you think the missions for children in care and care leavers are the right things to focus on?

Yes or no?

If you like, give any further feedback you have. This can be about any of the missions. You might want to consider what else the government can do to help children in care and care leavers.

Question 4: What makes, or would make a great social worker?

You might also want to tell us what you think about the things we plan to do. Do you think if we do those things, children who have a social worker will have great social workers?

Question 5: If you were the Prime Minister, what would be the most important thing you would want to change in children’s social care?

Look again at our ambitions for children’s social care, and what we have said we will do in our children and young people’s guide. These are the sorts of things the Prime Minister can change.

What would be the most important thing you would want to make sure happens? Do you have any ideas on how this could happen?

Question 6: What did you think of the children and young people’s guide?

Choose a score from the options below:

• 5 – great
• 4 – good
• 3 – OK
• 2 – not good
• 1 – very bad

If you want to give further feedback, what could we do next time to make it better?

Question 7: In the future, what do you think is the best way to ask children and young people what they think about our plans for children’s social care?

We chose to ask you questions about our ambitions using a website. We have also asked an organisation to work with some children and young people with lived experience of care and gather their views for us.

We know we may not have got this right.

We want to keep listening to you in the future. What is the best way for us to do that?

Question 8: How old are you?

Choose one from the following options:

• under 11 years old
• 12 to 15 years old
• 16 to 18 years old
• 19 to 25 years old
• prefer not to say

Question 9: Who you are

Choose an option from:

• a child or young person with a social worker or family support worker
• a child or young person in care
• a care leaver
• none of the above
• prefer not to say

What will happen next

We will read all the answers you have given us and think about them carefully. We will also talk to groups of children and young people about what they think of our plans.

In autumn 2023 we will publish a document showing what people told us.

We will keep track of the progress we are making to improve services for children and young people over the next 2 years.

In 2 years’ time, we look at how much progress we have made and what extra changes we might need to make. This includes spreading the changes we have been testing to more local areas. We might also need to make changes to the law.

We will keep talking to children and young people as we make changes to find out what they think. We want to make sure that changes make a big positive difference to children’s lives.