Cuts,Care and Development (Children in the Looked after system)

Cuts, Care and Development (Children in the Looked after system)

In what direction is the care area in the UK heading? The current government promised that it would not cut front line services particularly for those most in need I am sure you will agree that those who are on the ‘at risk register’ or those actually in the Looked after system of the UK are very vulnerable and in need.  One London borough actually said it was going to cut foster care rates by half.  That seems to me to be moving in the opposite direction of what has been announced.  When I contacted central government on this issue I was told, very sorry but this is a local decision, nothing to do with us!

There is a vast burden of regulations imposed on those who care enough to foster or to adopt. Many of the regulations are very good but like all things human, they work at the whim of the humans applying the regulations.  There are excellent social workers out there who I would say have the ability to apply the CS factor, that is, common sense, (which often seem to be very uncommon).  However, in my experience, there seems to be many social workers for whom the ‘power’ of being a social worker has gone to their head and they treat all others as lesser mortals.  I overheard a conversation recently between a key worker for vulnerable adults and a social worker.  The key worker has good university degrees and is a good worker, with experience and expertise.  I noted that the key worker was being very polite and patient.   When the social worker had finished and left, I said “are you all right?”

“Yes I am I suppose,” was the response, “but why is it that social workers think that I am stupid, when I am not, and think that it is ok to treat me in that way and talk to me like dirt beneath their feet.”

It isn’t acceptable, but many social workers seem to display that attitude. Why is it?  Is it the training, or is it the pressure of the job, is it perhaps that they are insecure? I don’t know why it is but I wish it would stop.

I do not believe the code of practice is the problem, below are some extracts:

The General Social Care Council (GSCC) codes of practice

Social care workers must:

• Protect the rights and promote the interests of service users and carers;

• Strive to establish and maintain the trust and confidence of service users and carers;

• Promote the independence of service users while protecting them as far as possible from danger or harm;

• Respect the rights of service users whilst seeking to ensure that their behaviour does not harm themselves or other people;

• Uphold public trust and confidence in social care services; and (i.e. in their dealings with other professionals and working collaboratively)

• Be accountable for the quality of their work and take responsibility for maintaining and improving their knowledge and skills. 

But talk is cheap or rather the words on the page are not worth a jot if they are not observed.

Then there is the element of need; the number of looked after children is around 64,400 on 31^st March 2010 according to government statistics. That does not include those on the at risk register, which is probably about the same number, this brings us to an approximate total of 128,000 children in need of care. Can we afford to cut our service delivery in such areas?  Or should we be improving the delivery and the training of those who are willing to foster or want to adopt.  Alongside the compelling argument to avoid cuts perhaps we should also be looking at the reasons why we have so many children in such need.

I wonder also if smaller agencies might actually deliver a better service for less cost, particularly if the checking procedures were strengthened that are currently delivered by OFSTEAD

Since the ‘60s the whole adoption scene has changed dramatically, at that time single parenting was much less common and abortion and birth control where only just commencing. There were 27,000 adoptions in 1968; large numbers of children were released to adopters, many almost straight from birth.  That whole scene has now changed, now the children who require adoption are more likely to come from parents that have been neglectful or abusive, either physically, sexually, or by the use of substances that damage the children as well as themselves.   Adoptive parents can often face the choice of waiting for years for a young single child or months for older sibling groups. The reality being that as those children get older their experiences of neglect and abuse are likely to be significantly higher due to the length of time they have remained with neglecting parents.   The knock on effect is that adoptive parents are often left to clean up the emotional fallout of their adopted children plus the support is minimal and not a statutory requirement.  The training for adopters’ remains negligible, often has not changed much since the 60’s; and I would reiterate that the kind of children coming into the adoption system has changed dramatically.  Should this be more of a priority in designing the way we help these vulnerable children and how we guide those adopters?  The number of children available for adoption has, of course, dropped as single parent families have become more culturally acceptable. There are now around 3,500 children each year who go from care to adoption To make matters worse, those in the know tell me that of current adopters, something like 1 in 4 situations break down, in other words the child goes back into foster care, or back into a children’s home.  The high emotional and public cost of this surely needs investigating.

And where are we going with the large and unwieldy social service department.  Sometimes, just because of their size, they seem to treat the children, the foster carers and the adopters more like a commodity than like people. I wonder if smaller agencies might actually deliver better service for less cost, particularly if the checking procedures that are currently delivered by OFSTEAD were strengthened.

These big departments are being hit by cuts whatever central government is saying to the contrary; departments have been slimmed down, in some instances this may be the right decision, but in light of the cuts can they still deal effectively with those 64,000 children in a manner that does not increase the damage that all agree should be avoided. The fact remains that those in the looked after system are less likely to leave school with good qualifications, are often more likely to end up in the prison system, with all the ensuing expense, or, as Big Issue founder John Bird likes to say, they could become “….a great ‘big issue’ seller!”

It is also still true that if you are part of the black and ethnic minority, your chances of being in care are greater and your chance of finding an adoptive parent is less likely.

26% of children within the English child care system were from a black or ethnic minority origin in 2010 as compared to 11% within the general population (Department for Education, 2010; Office of National Statistics, 2010). Frazer and Selwyn (2005) noted that in 2003 only 10% of approved adoptive families were of Black, Asian or mixed parentage and in the same time period only 13% of all the children adopted were from a black or ethnic minority origin.

Maybe smaller units of foster care, and a better training programme for adopters would be a step in the right directions.  I know that a lot of work has been done in this area in the past, and of course tragic events like baby P make us all want to see change, however after the press fever has died down we go back to doing what we did and sort of forget.  These young people can be a great resource to the nation; we should not short change them. And the current round of cuts should make us take a fresh look at how we can improve their life situations. (25,000 children leave care each year)

Further reference:

Frazer, L. and Selwyn, J. (2005) ’Why are We Waiting? The Demography of Adoption for Children of Black, Asian and Black Mixed Parentage in England’, Child and Family Social Work, Vol 10, pp135 – 147.

Great Britain. Department of Health (2010) DfE: Children Looked After by Local Authorities in England (including adoption and care leavers) - year ending 31 March 2010 [Online]. Available at: http://www.education.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000960/index.shtml (Accessed: 23rd April 2011).

Office of National Statistics (2010) Adoptions. Available at: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=592 (Accessed: 12th April 2011).

Figures quoted are usually for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate statistics.

Adrian Hawkes

With Help from Al Coats

31^st May 2011

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Morality

Morality.

The subject I observe presents such problems.

I was part of a government think tank looking at OFSTEAD inspections of schools; one of the things they look at is the moral part of the schools ethos.  My problem is how does one obtain morals?  In my small discussion group there where Moslems, Catholics, Jews, Evangelicals, and humanists; all of us apart from the humanist agreed that morals have to come from some kind of Law giver, and actually in all of our thinking that must be God, apart, that is, from the humanist, who said there isn’t a God so morals must come from somewhere else.

I went on to argue that in terms of generosity, in such things as tsunamis, famines and the like the UK is actually quite generous in its giving, I put this down to the Judeo Christian influence in the background of the nation. The humanist said, “now don’t be silly, its due to the fact that we were once great colonists.”   To which I responded, “I thought that was about greed, trade, and getting lots of things for ourselves?”

I was one of those interviewed by Richard Dawkins for his ‘Religion is the root of all evil’ programmes. After which I found stuff all over the internet, usually from many of the so called ‘learned’ atheists poking fun at my opinions.  Funnily enough I have read Richard’s book, The God delusion, and one of the things that struck me is how often the base of whom we are and where we are comes down to ‘luck’, at least according to that book.  God seems a better thesis to me.

And of course both in the programme, on the net, and definitely in Wikipedia comes the discussion of mortality.  I am amused that in at least one article, the fact that we live in a moral universe and one ‘without God’ according to the ‘atheists’ is argued from the fact that some fish have a symbiotic relationship with ‘cleaner’ fish, the action of the one fish on the other fish actually protects them; therefore arguing that we don’t go around on our streets killing each other because it’s wiser not too.  One of the things that Richard Dawkins said to me in the interview for his programme, (which I have not seen on the programme or the Utube repeats, so I guess it’s on the cutting room floor), was, Richard said “I am more righteous than you. “ I of course said, “Oh and how is that?” to which he replied, “I don’t go around pillaging and raping, and I don’t need a God to stop me, you need one to stop you.” To which I answered, “bully for you, you maybe ought to watch the news!”

One Swallow does not a summer make.

 Richard Dawkins often says that being an atheist is not one with a depressing philosophy, actually he say it makes one appreciate life more and love life.  Again I say, ‘bully for you’, the problem is that you don’t have to travel very far to find people who are starving, people who have been enslaved, people who have every reason not to love life, if you now want them to believe that this atheism is the truth, and not be depressed by such a philosophy all I can say is HELP!  It’s the most depressing view of life that I can imagine; 

So where does morality come from, I note that even some of the comments on what I think that are listed in Wikipedia note that I am saying that we live in a moral universe, and there is a base line for morality and that comes from somewhere, God I would say.  Yes that is what I am saying, morality without a giver is craziness, it is not morality; as Charles Finny would have put it: “Opposed to this is willing self-gratification; a practical treating of self as if the gratification of our own desires, appetites, etc., were of supreme importance. Now in this ultimate choice of the good of universal being, or of self-gratification as an ultimate end, moral character must reside. Primarily, surely, it can reside nowhere else. It is this ultimate choice that gives direction and character to all the subordinate actions of the will; that gives direction to the volitions, the actions, and the omissions of all our voluntary lives. This ultimate choice is the root or fountain from which all volition and all moral action spring.”

 I guess even Richard would agree with some of that, as the basic premise is that morality only comes from our own selfishness to survive or not be killed that is why we don’t have mayhem on the streets.  Although I wonder if we perhaps do, I live in an area where we have postcode crime, knife and gun crime, so the morality is you don’t live in my postcode area, you are there so you need killing. That seems a great morality!

Going back to that statement I made earlier, ‘bully for you’, seems to take no note of the Hitler’s, Pol Pots, and Stalin’s of this world, which again makes me think if morality is only up to our moving to a value system that selfishly benefits us only, and we can get around it, then why not? If it is to my benefit to circumvent the law? If there is not ultimate sanction or moral law giver?

It has always interested me that the Bible talks about giving ‘light’ to every person who comes into the world. What is that light? Personally I have always seen that light as being that conscience that dwells in each and every person.  We can obey it or disobey it, it is, if you like, a little bit of God in us, if we obey it we feel good, if we disobey it we feel bad, but it does not force us either way, we have the freewill, we have choice.  Again to quote Finny on conscience, he talks about moral insanity:

“Moral insanity, on the other hand, is will-madness. The man retains his intellectual powers unimpaired, but he sets his heart fully to evil. He refuses to yield to the demands of his conscience. He practically discards the obligations of moral responsibility. He has the powers of free moral agency, but persistently abuses them. He has a reason which affirms obligation, but he refuses obedience to its affirmations”.

So where do I think morality comes from? I think it comes from the law giver - God, he has created, and designed a moral universe, a universe that ultimately works towards the best good for all, the created order, us, and God too.  We can pretend it is not there, we can work against it, we can listen to our conscience, we can ignore it, but none of those things make it not there.

Adrian Hawkes

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