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Responding to the needs of young people leaving state care: Law, practice and policy in England and Northern Ireland
Pergamon
Children and Youth Services Review. Vol. 17. Nos. S/6. pp. 697-709. 1995 Copyright 0 1995 &via Science Ltd F’rintedin the USA. All rights reserved 0 1%7409/95 $9.50 + aa
0190-7409(95)00@47-x
Responding to the Needs of Young People Leaving State Care: Law, Practice and Policy in England and Northern Ireland John Pinkerton The Queen’s University of Belfast Mike Stein University of Leeds
In the United Kingdom each year around sixteen thousand young people between the ages of sixteen and eighteen leave state care. In leaving care these young people face the challenge of how to make the transition from the role of young person in care to that of adult out of care. This is a difficult transition, not just for young people leaving care, but increasingly for all young people. The challenge posed to state child welfare services when young people leave care is to equip them adequately to cope with the pressures around this difftcult transition. This paper reviews existing research to explore what this challenge looks like in practice in England and Northern Ireland and considers whether recent legislative reform in the two jurisdictions will help develop policy and practice in this important area of child care. In the United Kingdom each year over six thousand young people leave state care at eighteen years old. It is estimated that a further ten thousand leave care aged sixteen or seventeen years old (National Children’s Bureau, 1992). In leaving care these young people face the challenge of how to make the transition from the role of young person in care to that of adult out of care-a variation on the theme of transition from restricted to full social citizenship which every young person must make. This transition to adult citizenship involves successfully shifting from a childhood status characterised by dependency on family, school, friends and neighbourhood to an adult status based on choices such as building intimate relationships, becoming a parent and setting up a new family, becoming a Requests for reprints should be addressed to Mike Stein. Department of Continuing Adult Education, University of Leeds. Leeds, L‘S29JT UK. 697
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householder, finding employment and choosing a locality in which to live, work and develop leisure pursuits. These choices, from which adult rights and responsibilities flow, are heavily influenced by the impact of socio-economic status, ethnicity, gender and disability. As British society has become more complex in terms of industrial and technological change, more consumerist in its ideals and less certain in class, gender, geographical and ethnic identities, enormous pressures have built up which young people have to cope with (Jones & Wallace, 1992; Stein, 1993). Thus youth is a difficult transition, not just for care leavers, but increasingly for all young people. The challenge posed to child welfare services when young people leave care is to equip them adequately to cope with the pressures of youth transition today. What this challenge looks like in practice in England and Northern Ireland and whether recent legislative reform will help to meet the challenge are the issues to be addressed here. One State, Three Jurisdictions Undoubtedly one of the gains for child care in the United Kingdom (UK) during the 1980s was the growing recognition ofjust how difficult the transition to adulthood and citizenship generally was for care leavers. This is now recognised in all parts of the UK, though in different ways. Grasping the historical, social, economic and political realities behind the existence of three jurisdictions within a single state is important to an understanding of child care within the UK (Aldgate & Hill, 1995). To point this up the research to be reviewed here is based in the largest and the smallest of the three jurisdictions, England and Wales and Northern Ireland. As is only too well known, Northern Ireland’s inclusion within the UK is highly contested. Over 3,000 politically related deaths in the last twenty-five years bears terrible witness to this. A death toll that includes more than 40 children under the age of 14 years (Children’s Rights Development Unit, 1994). Given the clear differences between England and Wales and Northern Ireland it is perhaps surprising just how close their child care legislation is. The explanation is historical and political (Caul & Herron, 1992; McColgan, 1995). The primary child care legislation in Northern Ireland today is the 1968 Children and Young Persons Act which is essentially the Children and Young Persons Act of 1963 for England and Wales. The draft Children (NI) Order, published in the autumn of 1993, will give Northern Ireland child care legislation which is almost an exact copy of the English and Welsh Children Act 1989 (McColgan, 1995). Clearly, it is very important
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that child care legislation and the service delivery systems it promotes reflect the needs of the children, young people and their carers within the jurisdiction to which it applies (Central Personal Social Service Advisory Committee, 1993; Social Services Inspectorate, 1994). Accordingly the question needs to be answered as to whether or not the experience of child care in the two jurisdictions have developed in distinctive ways requiring different legislation, policy and practice.
The Children Act (E & W) and the Children (NT) Order Within the UK the awakening of leaving care in the professional and political consciousness from the mid 1970s was the consequence of developments involving young people in care themselves, practitioners and managers in statutory and voluntary agencies, researchers, campaigners and pressure groups and politicians. Within England and Wales the impact of these developments culminated in new responsibilities towards care leavers being clearly contained within the Children Act 1989. The importance of the political developments in England and Wales were first clear in the recommendations of the Social Services Committee Report on Children in Care (Short Report, 1984). These included recommendations on “Continuing Care” which subsequently formed the basis of the relevant sections of the Children Act 1989. These sections of the Act relate to preparation for leaving care, aftercare advice and personal support, financial assistance and accommodation. As with any sections of the Act it is important to see connections with other sections and with the overall thrust of the law. Two very significant general legal changes were the inclusion and integration of children with special needs (mental illness, or a physical or mental disability) and the recognition that Britain is a multi-cultural society and that cultural background and values are important (Stein, 1991). The general sections of the Act on the welfare principal and on representation and complaints are also essential underpinnings to the leaving care and aftercare sections. In Section 1 the Act sets out a we&-e checklist to help courts ensure that “the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration”. The checklist directs attention to children’s own wishes and feelings, their physical, emotional and educational needs, the likely effect on them of any change in circumstances, their age, sex and general background, any harm they have suffered or are at risk of suffering and the capacity of children’s carers to meet their needs.
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The Act deals specifically with leaving care. Starting with preparation, Section 24 places a duty on local authorities to “advise, assist and befriend” young people in their care with a view to promoting their welfare after they leave care. Any young people, who were looked after by the local authority beyond the age of 16, have the right on leaving care to be “advised, assisted and befriended” until they are 21 by the local authority in whose care they were. Local authorities are also given the power to advise and befriend other young people who were cared for away from home after age 16. Where a young person leaves some other form of accommodation (e.g. under the auspices of a voluntary agency) those responsible for the accommodation have a duty to inform the local authority. Similarly a local authority has a duty to inform another local authority when a young person they have been advising and befriending moves elsewhere. As regards material support local authorities have the power to provide assistance in cash or in kind to any young person who qualifies for advice. Local authorities also have the power to provide financial assistance connected with the young person’s education, employment or training and such grants may continue beyond age 2 I to allow for completion of education or training according to: It is the duty of the local authority to accomdate any child in need who has reached the age of 16 and whose welfare is otherwise likely lo be seriously prejudiced. Young people aged 16 or over may be accommodated if they agree, even in the face of parental objections. Social services departments are empowered to request the help of other public agencies, including education, housing and health authorities to enable them to comply with their duties to provide accommodation and other appropriate services. They in turn are obliged to assist in so far as is compatible with their own statutory duties. An important lever for young people in pursuit of the range of support and services to which they now have a right is that every local authority has to establish procedures for considering any representation or complaint from young people, with regard to their preparation for leaving care or after-care services. Similar developments did not occur in Northern Ireland (Pinkerton, 1993). In 1976 a Ministerial Committee was set up to undertake a fimdamental review of child care legislation and services. It published its final report in 1979, known as the Black Report (Department of Health & Social Security, 1979), which became the touchstone of public policy in this area and was expected to provide the basis for new legislation. The Black Report
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emphasised prevention and the meeting of children and young people’s needs through resourcing families and other formal and informal child care institutions and networks. It saw only a limited, though necessary, place for child protection and juvenile justice systems. The Report’s only reference to after-care was to call for more places in residential hostels for adolescents. These would “provide an intermediate form of care between the children’s home or training school and the independence of living in the community where a young person, because of an unsatisfactory home, is unable to return to live with parents” (DHSS, 1979, para 4.38, ~22). In the event, legislation did not follow the Black Report. One reason for this was the Kincora scandal, which broke in 1980, over the sexual abuse by staff of young men in a Belfast welfare hostel. The affair had political overtones which made child care an issue too hot to handle and was not resolved until 1986 (Pinkerton & Kelly, 1986). In addition the shift in child care throughout the UK towards a narrow child protection (Frost & Stein, 1989) plus the government’s commitment to reduction in public spending, left the Black Report’s promotion of preventative resourcing of families out of step with the general direction of statutory child care. It was also apparent by the mid 1980s that a major reform of child care legislation was developing in England and Wales and so a wait and see option became increasingly attractive to the Direct Rule administration. The proposed Children (NI) Order, whilst laid out slightly differently, is almost word for word the same legislation found in the Children Act, only under different sections. Where there are differences from the Children Act in the form of words used in the draft Children Order this is generally to reflect the differences in administrative structures between Northern Ireland and England and Wales (Warner, 1993). As part of the UK Government’s reform programme for Northern Ireland in the early 1970s welfare functions were transferred from the discredited local government to four Health and Social Service Boards directly responsible to the DHSS. Leaving Care in England and Northern Ireland Throughout the 1980s although there was no large scale research into leaving care, a body of very useful small scale qualitative research was building up after the seminal work by Stein & Carey (1986). From this work it was clear that care leavers were not a homogeneous group and that it was important to abandon the crude stereotype of 18 year olds without families being discharged from large residential institutions in which they had spent
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all their lives. Rather care leavers were children and young people from different backgrounds, (e.g. according to ethnic group, rural/urban) who had come into care for different reasons, at different ages and for different lengths of time. They experienced a range of placements and different types of support. They left care for varied reasons and at different ages. However a number of key messages emerged about the general experience of care leavers whilst they were in care, as they moved out of care and when they had left care. First, care leavers experience a lot of movement and disruption whilst in care. One study found that over half of the young people had experienced between seven and twelve placements by the time they were sixteen years of age and the average for the sample was six per young person (Stein, 1990). The Department of Health in summarising findings from a number of child care research studies completed during the 1980s concluded: The instability of “in care” placements is hammered home to the reader of these research studies by the depressing similarity of their findings. (Department of Health, 1991) Many young people leaving substitute care will have had experience of both children’s homes and foster care-often on more than one occasion-as well as having been in assessment centres or returned to their family home for short periods. The reasons for placement movements and instability are less well researched but may include the use of preliminary assessment placements as well as planned moves leading to more positive outcomes. Stein and Carey (1986) found that for the young person a change of placement such as a fostering breakdown or a trial period at home not working out, usually meant an abrupt end of care relationships and a sense of failure, followed by a changing social world; that is, an adjustment to new substitute parents or care staff as well as a strange neighbourhood, different friends and a new school. These changes could be compunded by turnover of residential care or fieldwork staff. The extent of this type of change is, then, a very distinguishing feature of being looked after compared with the experiences of non-care young people, and is very different from geographical or itinerant mobility where there is a constant family group. A second message is that those young people who have been in care a long time, as well as black and mixed parentage care leavers, may be confronting important issues of identity at the time of leaving care. This includes the lack of knowledge by long-term care leavers about their past, their family, the reasons for coming into care, why they were moved in care and why they were separated from their brothers and sisters. Some of the
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most disturbing selves:
comments
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come from the voices of young people them-
It was bad not knowing my past. I didn’t know until five years ago-l didn’t know my parents’ names, I knew their surname but not their Christian names or anything like that. I didn’t have a past that I could remember. (Stein & Carey, 1986, p. 3 1) My social worker used to tell me that I’d got a brother and sister but they never used to say where they were because I didn’t think they wanted us to get in touch at that time. (Stein & Carey, 1986, p. 35) A study by First Key (1987) has highlighted the cultural identity problems faced by black and mixed parentage young people brought up in a predominantly white care system. One young woman, quoted in their study, expresses her confusion: Am I black or am I white? I used to ask that question every day and every night. It’s plain to see that you are black but being in care in a white community, it’s hard to decide. (First Key, 1987, p. 7) Other findings from the First Key study included the uncovering of racism and isolation in predominantly white neighbourhoods and the colour blindness of care: It wasn’t the case of treating all children equally but wanting the black child to be white. (First Key, 1987, p. 6) Thirdly, research based upon interviews with young people has drawn attention to both negative and positive evaluations of care. The former includes the stigma of being in care, the weakening of family links, the dependency created by care and the poor practical preparation for leaving. In Living Out of Cure most of the young people said that they had learned some practical skills whilst in care (shopping, washing, ironing), but far less felt adequately prepared to use money - budgeting, shopping and paying bills (Stein, 1990). Positive evaluations of care most often referred to getting away from problems at home or gaining some benefit from the care experience or perhaps both these things linked together: I was beaten up by my dad so I was able to get away from him and given a chance to find myself, to develop my own life in care. I enjoyed my children’s home as I was helped to find my own values and self. (Stein, 1990, p. 3)
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The briefest but most telling endorsement from a young person in the same study was, “some treat you like their own (Stein, 1990)“. The ending of a young person’s legal status in care does not necessarily involve a young person moving immediately from their final placement in care-for example they may remain with their long term foster carer. However, in nearly all cases there is an expectation that young people leaving residential care at between I6 and 18 years of age will have to move on to some other kind of accommodation or living arrangement. It is perhaps not surprising that these young people’s feelings about leaving care are very mixed. Excited, frightened and sad. I couldn’t wait to get away but I didn’t want to go. To be independent, I wanted to leave. But not to be on my own. I didn’t want to leave. (Coyle & Conway, 1991, p. 12) For many young people, once they had actually left care their situation continued to be bleak with frequent moves due to loneliness, isolation, returning to past family difficulties and the breakdown in relationships (Stein & Carey, 1986). In the words of the young people: Flat’s nice but I’m lonely... It’s not nice being in a flat all day. I’s lonely. Young people contrasted the community they had experienced with living alone in the community (i.e. in the outside world).
in care
I found it hard to live by myself... being brought up in care, living with many people in a household without ever being by yourself it was very difficult to live on my own and learn to like my own company. Another young woman spoke of being depressed and said: I could have been dead and no-one would have known or bothered. Building on the insights of these qualitative studies in 1990 the Leeds University Leaving Care Research Project (LLCRP) started work. The first part of the project involved surveying a sample of 183 young people, aged
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16-19, in three English local authorities who either “moved to independence” or were legally discharged from care (Biehal, Clayden, Stein, & Wade, 1992). The second part of the study which is still underway, follows up a sample of young people experiencing leaving care schemes and a comparison sample of non-scheme care leavers. Two years later a Northern Ireland Leaving Care Research Project (NILCRP) started at Queen’s IJniversity Belfast. Heavily influenced by the Leeds work, NILCRP is a two year study describing the experiences of all 125 young people who left care throughout Northern Ireland during a six month period in 1992. As with the Leeds study the first part of this project involved a survey (Pinkerton & McCrea, 1993) and the second, still underway, follows up on those young people identified as having received either or both formal preparation for leaving care and after-care support. Using material from the English and Northern Irish surveys it is possible to sketch an empirically based profile of care leavers in the two jurisdictions, focusing on their personal characteristics, their care careers and the outcomes of these careers. Turning first to general characteristics there were slightly more males than females in the Leeds study whereas the reverse was the case in the Northern Ireland survey. Young people from minority ethnic groups and of mixed race origin made up about an eighth of the Leeds sample thereby constituting an important subgroup. Young people with special needs made up a similar proportion of the sample. The findings of the Northern Ireland survey contrast in that neither ethnic minority background nor special needs feature significantly as a characteristic of the population. The population was fairly evenly split between Protestants and Catholics with a slight overrepresentation of the latter. The Leeds study also identified young parents, generally mothers, as an important subgroup, accounting for about a quarter of the sample. This subgroup also registered in the Belfast study, with about a fifth of the care leavers either being pregnant or having been pregnant. In terms of care careers both studies found that almost two thirds of care leavers had first entered care in their teenage years. Both studies also found that over four fifths of the young people had spent more than one year in care. In the English sample just over a third spent more than three years in care and in the Northern Ireland population two fifths had been in care for over five years. Given these long periods in care it is perhaps not surprising that fewer than ten per cent of the young people in the Leeds study remained in the same placement through out their time in care and nearly one third made between four and nine moves and one tenth moved more than ten
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times. In the Belfast study just under three quarters of the young people experienced two or more moves and over a tenth moved more than five times. In the two studies, despite the promotion of foster care in both jurisdictions, residential placements provided the jumping off point for significant proportions of young people. The last care placement of over half of the English young people was in the residential sector compared to less than one third fostering placements. In Northern Ireland it was two fifths and a quarter respectively. The Leeds study highlighted the very young age at which care leavers move to independence and contrasts this to the norm of leaving home in early to mid twenties. Recent research (Banks et al., 1992) found that less than a tenth of young people in the general population were living away from home at age 17-l 8. By contrast three fifths of the English care leavers moved to independence at that age. In Northern Ireland there was a very different picture with under a fifth of care leavers moving to independence whereas almost two thirds returned home. The Leeds study also found that contact between the young people and their families had been maintained at a high level. Some four fifths were still in touch with family members and for half this contact was at least weekly. Some contact between social services and the young people usually occurred after they had left care. The Leeds study found that social workers were offering support to nearly half the young people and nearly a quarter were being supported by leaving care schemes. More than a third of the young people were receiving a weekly financial top-up from Social Services. Contact was reported for three fifths of the Northern Ireland group, but this did not include regular financial support. In both studies the aftercare support appeared limited in scope and restricted in duration. Levels of support from foster parents and residential social workers also appeared to be low. Looking at outcome indicators for the English and Northern Ireland care leavers suggests they are poorly equipped to deal with the demands of the transition they are engaged in. Accommodation for many of the young people was far from the ideal of stable independence, rather they were being returned to the uncertain welcome of family home, temporary housing or homelessness. In Northern Ireland, where almost two thirds returned home; within six months of that return less than half were still at home. Just over a fifth of the young people in the Belfast study and under a fifth in the Leeds study were judged to have been homeless at some point. The Leeds team found that young people with special needs seemed to be at special risk of
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homelessness: one third of homeless young people either had a disability or had previously been classified as educationally and behaviourally disturbed. The House of Commons Social Services Committee Report on Children in Care in 1984 described being in care as an “educational hazard” and both of these surveys bears this out. Two thirds of the English sample and just under a half of the Northern Ireland population had no qualifications at all. Clearly this had implications for job opportunities against a background of high youth unemployment. In both studies only about a tenth of the care leavers had employment, with a third of the English sample and a quarter of the Northern Ireland study population registered unemployed. The Leeds study also found an association between movement in care and poor attainment. Three quarters of those who had experienced four or more moves in care had no qualifications compared to only half of those who had made no moves. It also found that a higher proportion of young people leaving residential care had no qualification, around three quarters, than those leaving foster care where the equivalent figure was just over half.
Conclusion So what conclusions are to be drawn about leaving care in England and Northern Ireland as an experience of transition to adulthood, and about the appropriateness of the new legislation to developing the required policy and practice? From the two surveys it would appear that, whilst there are some differences in the care leavers and their experiences, more important are the similarities and the fact that in both jurisdictions, moving from being a young person in care to an adult out of care is a difficult transition. It is, however, also possible to learn some lessons from the research as to how to help young people in managing the transition. Providing stability for children and young people whilst in care is an essential foundation for positive outcomes. Services need to reflect a recognition The impact of disability
and positive response to cultural diversity.
upon young people must be given fuller attention.
Social Services must accept their key role in preparing and supporting young people in their transition
to adulthood.
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Preparation must be given importance and be planned for all young people in substitute care. There is a need for comprehensive planning of the range of support services available to young people once they leave care. Workers need to develop an empowering practice “that allows personal space, exploration and the development of identity and at the same time assists increased responsibility, including setting or negotiating limits; a practice that allows young people to go back as well as forward; a practice which empowers and negotiates with young people”. (Stein, 1993) There need to be procedures for staff to ensure the effective operationalising of provision in keeping with an explicit service model-a range of these are possible (Stein, 1991) but they must be built, not on some illusory notion of total independence, but on promotion effective interdependence Accessible guides should be available for young people and other significant people in their lives to ensure they take the opportunities for support being provided for them. A training strategy needs to be in place that ensures staff at all levels have the knowledge, values and skills to promote and deliver an empowering preparation for leaving and after-care service. A commitment to constant monitoring and evaluation is required as the means to avoiding complacency and defeatism and for managing the inevitable changes within needs and services. The development of such a policy and practice is possible in the legislative space provided by the Children Act and the Children Order. Given that providing opportunities sanctioned by law is all that any piece of legislation can do, and not withstanding the valid cause for criticism about the lack of attention to local concerns and sensibilities in framing the Children Order, care leavers in both England and Northern Ireland would seem to have much to gain from their new legislation.
References
Aldgate, J., & Hill, M. (1995). Child welfare reform in the United Kingdom. Children and Youth Services,
17, 575-597.
Banks. M., Bates. I., Breakwell, G., Brynner, J., Emler, N., Jamieson, L., & Roberts, K. (1992) Careers and identities. Milton Keynes: Open University Press
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Biehal. N., Clayden, J., Stein, M., & Wade, J. (1992). Prepuredfor living. London: National Children’s Bureau. Caul, B., & Herron, S. (1992). A Service for people-origins and development of the personal social services of Northern Ireland Belfast. Belfast: December Publications. Central Personal Social Service Advisory Committee. (1993). Response to the Draft Children (NI) Order. Belfast: Department of Health & Social Security. Children’s Rights Development Unit. (1994). UK agenda for children. London: Author. Department of Health. (199 1). Patterns and outcomes in child placement. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Department of Health and Social Services (Northern Ireland). (1979). Report of the Children and Young Persons Review Group. Belfast: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. First Key. (1987). A study of black young people leaving care. Leeds: Author. Frost, N., & Stein, M. (1989). The politics of child wedfare. Hertfordshire, UK: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Jones, & Wallace. (1992). Youth, family and citizenship. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. McColgan, M. (1995). The Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995. Children and Youth Services, 17, 637-649. National Children’s Bureau. ( 1992). Childfacts-young people leaving care. London: Author. Pinkerton, J., & Kelly, G. (1986). Kincora Affair-the aftermath. Youth and Policy, 17, 17-25. Pinkerton, J. (1993). The social policy context of the children (NI) order-grounding the legislation. Belfast: Child Care Northern Ireland Pinkerton, J., & McCrea, R. (1993). Northern Ireland leaving care research project-second interim report. Belfast: Queen’s University. Short Report, Social Services Committee. (HC 360) (I 984). Children in care. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Social Services Inspectorate (NI). (1994). Promoting social welfare. Belfast: Department of Health and Social Security. Stein, M. (1990). Living out of core. Ilford. UK: Bamardos. Stein, M. (199 1). Leaving care and the 1989 Children Act-The agenda. Leeds, UK: First Key Stein, M. (1993). Leaving care-From research into practice. Leeds: First Key. Stein, M., & Carey, K. (1986). Leaving cure. Oxford. UK: Basil Blackwell. Warner, N. (1993). United Kingdom III: Information on social services in Northern Ireland. In B. Munday (Ed.), European social services (pp. 39-42). Canterbury, UK: University of Canterbury.
Children and Youth Services Review. Vol. 17. Nos. S/6. pp. 697-709. 1995 Copyright 0 1995 &via Science Ltd F’rintedin the USA. All rights reserved 0 1%7409/95 $9.50 + aa
0190-7409(95)00@47-x
Responding to the Needs of Young People Leaving State Care: Law, Practice and Policy in England and Northern Ireland John Pinkerton The Queen’s University of Belfast Mike Stein University of Leeds
In the United Kingdom each year around sixteen thousand young people between the ages of sixteen and eighteen leave state care. In leaving care these young people face the challenge of how to make the transition from the role of young person in care to that of adult out of care. This is a difficult transition, not just for young people leaving care, but increasingly for all young people. The challenge posed to state child welfare services when young people leave care is to equip them adequately to cope with the pressures around this difftcult transition. This paper reviews existing research to explore what this challenge looks like in practice in England and Northern Ireland and considers whether recent legislative reform in the two jurisdictions will help develop policy and practice in this important area of child care. In the United Kingdom each year over six thousand young people leave state care at eighteen years old. It is estimated that a further ten thousand leave care aged sixteen or seventeen years old (National Children’s Bureau, 1992). In leaving care these young people face the challenge of how to make the transition from the role of young person in care to that of adult out of care-a variation on the theme of transition from restricted to full social citizenship which every young person must make. This transition to adult citizenship involves successfully shifting from a childhood status characterised by dependency on family, school, friends and neighbourhood to an adult status based on choices such as building intimate relationships, becoming a parent and setting up a new family, becoming a Requests for reprints should be addressed to Mike Stein. Department of Continuing Adult Education, University of Leeds. Leeds, L‘S29JT UK. 697
698
Pinkerton and Stein
householder, finding employment and choosing a locality in which to live, work and develop leisure pursuits. These choices, from which adult rights and responsibilities flow, are heavily influenced by the impact of socio-economic status, ethnicity, gender and disability. As British society has become more complex in terms of industrial and technological change, more consumerist in its ideals and less certain in class, gender, geographical and ethnic identities, enormous pressures have built up which young people have to cope with (Jones & Wallace, 1992; Stein, 1993). Thus youth is a difficult transition, not just for care leavers, but increasingly for all young people. The challenge posed to child welfare services when young people leave care is to equip them adequately to cope with the pressures of youth transition today. What this challenge looks like in practice in England and Northern Ireland and whether recent legislative reform will help to meet the challenge are the issues to be addressed here. One State, Three Jurisdictions Undoubtedly one of the gains for child care in the United Kingdom (UK) during the 1980s was the growing recognition ofjust how difficult the transition to adulthood and citizenship generally was for care leavers. This is now recognised in all parts of the UK, though in different ways. Grasping the historical, social, economic and political realities behind the existence of three jurisdictions within a single state is important to an understanding of child care within the UK (Aldgate & Hill, 1995). To point this up the research to be reviewed here is based in the largest and the smallest of the three jurisdictions, England and Wales and Northern Ireland. As is only too well known, Northern Ireland’s inclusion within the UK is highly contested. Over 3,000 politically related deaths in the last twenty-five years bears terrible witness to this. A death toll that includes more than 40 children under the age of 14 years (Children’s Rights Development Unit, 1994). Given the clear differences between England and Wales and Northern Ireland it is perhaps surprising just how close their child care legislation is. The explanation is historical and political (Caul & Herron, 1992; McColgan, 1995). The primary child care legislation in Northern Ireland today is the 1968 Children and Young Persons Act which is essentially the Children and Young Persons Act of 1963 for England and Wales. The draft Children (NI) Order, published in the autumn of 1993, will give Northern Ireland child care legislation which is almost an exact copy of the English and Welsh Children Act 1989 (McColgan, 1995). Clearly, it is very important
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that child care legislation and the service delivery systems it promotes reflect the needs of the children, young people and their carers within the jurisdiction to which it applies (Central Personal Social Service Advisory Committee, 1993; Social Services Inspectorate, 1994). Accordingly the question needs to be answered as to whether or not the experience of child care in the two jurisdictions have developed in distinctive ways requiring different legislation, policy and practice.
The Children Act (E & W) and the Children (NT) Order Within the UK the awakening of leaving care in the professional and political consciousness from the mid 1970s was the consequence of developments involving young people in care themselves, practitioners and managers in statutory and voluntary agencies, researchers, campaigners and pressure groups and politicians. Within England and Wales the impact of these developments culminated in new responsibilities towards care leavers being clearly contained within the Children Act 1989. The importance of the political developments in England and Wales were first clear in the recommendations of the Social Services Committee Report on Children in Care (Short Report, 1984). These included recommendations on “Continuing Care” which subsequently formed the basis of the relevant sections of the Children Act 1989. These sections of the Act relate to preparation for leaving care, aftercare advice and personal support, financial assistance and accommodation. As with any sections of the Act it is important to see connections with other sections and with the overall thrust of the law. Two very significant general legal changes were the inclusion and integration of children with special needs (mental illness, or a physical or mental disability) and the recognition that Britain is a multi-cultural society and that cultural background and values are important (Stein, 1991). The general sections of the Act on the welfare principal and on representation and complaints are also essential underpinnings to the leaving care and aftercare sections. In Section 1 the Act sets out a we&-e checklist to help courts ensure that “the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration”. The checklist directs attention to children’s own wishes and feelings, their physical, emotional and educational needs, the likely effect on them of any change in circumstances, their age, sex and general background, any harm they have suffered or are at risk of suffering and the capacity of children’s carers to meet their needs.
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The Act deals specifically with leaving care. Starting with preparation, Section 24 places a duty on local authorities to “advise, assist and befriend” young people in their care with a view to promoting their welfare after they leave care. Any young people, who were looked after by the local authority beyond the age of 16, have the right on leaving care to be “advised, assisted and befriended” until they are 21 by the local authority in whose care they were. Local authorities are also given the power to advise and befriend other young people who were cared for away from home after age 16. Where a young person leaves some other form of accommodation (e.g. under the auspices of a voluntary agency) those responsible for the accommodation have a duty to inform the local authority. Similarly a local authority has a duty to inform another local authority when a young person they have been advising and befriending moves elsewhere. As regards material support local authorities have the power to provide assistance in cash or in kind to any young person who qualifies for advice. Local authorities also have the power to provide financial assistance connected with the young person’s education, employment or training and such grants may continue beyond age 2 I to allow for completion of education or training according to: It is the duty of the local authority to accomdate any child in need who has reached the age of 16 and whose welfare is otherwise likely lo be seriously prejudiced. Young people aged 16 or over may be accommodated if they agree, even in the face of parental objections. Social services departments are empowered to request the help of other public agencies, including education, housing and health authorities to enable them to comply with their duties to provide accommodation and other appropriate services. They in turn are obliged to assist in so far as is compatible with their own statutory duties. An important lever for young people in pursuit of the range of support and services to which they now have a right is that every local authority has to establish procedures for considering any representation or complaint from young people, with regard to their preparation for leaving care or after-care services. Similar developments did not occur in Northern Ireland (Pinkerton, 1993). In 1976 a Ministerial Committee was set up to undertake a fimdamental review of child care legislation and services. It published its final report in 1979, known as the Black Report (Department of Health & Social Security, 1979), which became the touchstone of public policy in this area and was expected to provide the basis for new legislation. The Black Report
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emphasised prevention and the meeting of children and young people’s needs through resourcing families and other formal and informal child care institutions and networks. It saw only a limited, though necessary, place for child protection and juvenile justice systems. The Report’s only reference to after-care was to call for more places in residential hostels for adolescents. These would “provide an intermediate form of care between the children’s home or training school and the independence of living in the community where a young person, because of an unsatisfactory home, is unable to return to live with parents” (DHSS, 1979, para 4.38, ~22). In the event, legislation did not follow the Black Report. One reason for this was the Kincora scandal, which broke in 1980, over the sexual abuse by staff of young men in a Belfast welfare hostel. The affair had political overtones which made child care an issue too hot to handle and was not resolved until 1986 (Pinkerton & Kelly, 1986). In addition the shift in child care throughout the UK towards a narrow child protection (Frost & Stein, 1989) plus the government’s commitment to reduction in public spending, left the Black Report’s promotion of preventative resourcing of families out of step with the general direction of statutory child care. It was also apparent by the mid 1980s that a major reform of child care legislation was developing in England and Wales and so a wait and see option became increasingly attractive to the Direct Rule administration. The proposed Children (NI) Order, whilst laid out slightly differently, is almost word for word the same legislation found in the Children Act, only under different sections. Where there are differences from the Children Act in the form of words used in the draft Children Order this is generally to reflect the differences in administrative structures between Northern Ireland and England and Wales (Warner, 1993). As part of the UK Government’s reform programme for Northern Ireland in the early 1970s welfare functions were transferred from the discredited local government to four Health and Social Service Boards directly responsible to the DHSS. Leaving Care in England and Northern Ireland Throughout the 1980s although there was no large scale research into leaving care, a body of very useful small scale qualitative research was building up after the seminal work by Stein & Carey (1986). From this work it was clear that care leavers were not a homogeneous group and that it was important to abandon the crude stereotype of 18 year olds without families being discharged from large residential institutions in which they had spent
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all their lives. Rather care leavers were children and young people from different backgrounds, (e.g. according to ethnic group, rural/urban) who had come into care for different reasons, at different ages and for different lengths of time. They experienced a range of placements and different types of support. They left care for varied reasons and at different ages. However a number of key messages emerged about the general experience of care leavers whilst they were in care, as they moved out of care and when they had left care. First, care leavers experience a lot of movement and disruption whilst in care. One study found that over half of the young people had experienced between seven and twelve placements by the time they were sixteen years of age and the average for the sample was six per young person (Stein, 1990). The Department of Health in summarising findings from a number of child care research studies completed during the 1980s concluded: The instability of “in care” placements is hammered home to the reader of these research studies by the depressing similarity of their findings. (Department of Health, 1991) Many young people leaving substitute care will have had experience of both children’s homes and foster care-often on more than one occasion-as well as having been in assessment centres or returned to their family home for short periods. The reasons for placement movements and instability are less well researched but may include the use of preliminary assessment placements as well as planned moves leading to more positive outcomes. Stein and Carey (1986) found that for the young person a change of placement such as a fostering breakdown or a trial period at home not working out, usually meant an abrupt end of care relationships and a sense of failure, followed by a changing social world; that is, an adjustment to new substitute parents or care staff as well as a strange neighbourhood, different friends and a new school. These changes could be compunded by turnover of residential care or fieldwork staff. The extent of this type of change is, then, a very distinguishing feature of being looked after compared with the experiences of non-care young people, and is very different from geographical or itinerant mobility where there is a constant family group. A second message is that those young people who have been in care a long time, as well as black and mixed parentage care leavers, may be confronting important issues of identity at the time of leaving care. This includes the lack of knowledge by long-term care leavers about their past, their family, the reasons for coming into care, why they were moved in care and why they were separated from their brothers and sisters. Some of the
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most disturbing selves:
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come from the voices of young people them-
It was bad not knowing my past. I didn’t know until five years ago-l didn’t know my parents’ names, I knew their surname but not their Christian names or anything like that. I didn’t have a past that I could remember. (Stein & Carey, 1986, p. 3 1) My social worker used to tell me that I’d got a brother and sister but they never used to say where they were because I didn’t think they wanted us to get in touch at that time. (Stein & Carey, 1986, p. 35) A study by First Key (1987) has highlighted the cultural identity problems faced by black and mixed parentage young people brought up in a predominantly white care system. One young woman, quoted in their study, expresses her confusion: Am I black or am I white? I used to ask that question every day and every night. It’s plain to see that you are black but being in care in a white community, it’s hard to decide. (First Key, 1987, p. 7) Other findings from the First Key study included the uncovering of racism and isolation in predominantly white neighbourhoods and the colour blindness of care: It wasn’t the case of treating all children equally but wanting the black child to be white. (First Key, 1987, p. 6) Thirdly, research based upon interviews with young people has drawn attention to both negative and positive evaluations of care. The former includes the stigma of being in care, the weakening of family links, the dependency created by care and the poor practical preparation for leaving. In Living Out of Cure most of the young people said that they had learned some practical skills whilst in care (shopping, washing, ironing), but far less felt adequately prepared to use money - budgeting, shopping and paying bills (Stein, 1990). Positive evaluations of care most often referred to getting away from problems at home or gaining some benefit from the care experience or perhaps both these things linked together: I was beaten up by my dad so I was able to get away from him and given a chance to find myself, to develop my own life in care. I enjoyed my children’s home as I was helped to find my own values and self. (Stein, 1990, p. 3)
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The briefest but most telling endorsement from a young person in the same study was, “some treat you like their own (Stein, 1990)“. The ending of a young person’s legal status in care does not necessarily involve a young person moving immediately from their final placement in care-for example they may remain with their long term foster carer. However, in nearly all cases there is an expectation that young people leaving residential care at between I6 and 18 years of age will have to move on to some other kind of accommodation or living arrangement. It is perhaps not surprising that these young people’s feelings about leaving care are very mixed. Excited, frightened and sad. I couldn’t wait to get away but I didn’t want to go. To be independent, I wanted to leave. But not to be on my own. I didn’t want to leave. (Coyle & Conway, 1991, p. 12) For many young people, once they had actually left care their situation continued to be bleak with frequent moves due to loneliness, isolation, returning to past family difficulties and the breakdown in relationships (Stein & Carey, 1986). In the words of the young people: Flat’s nice but I’m lonely... It’s not nice being in a flat all day. I’s lonely. Young people contrasted the community they had experienced with living alone in the community (i.e. in the outside world).
in care
I found it hard to live by myself... being brought up in care, living with many people in a household without ever being by yourself it was very difficult to live on my own and learn to like my own company. Another young woman spoke of being depressed and said: I could have been dead and no-one would have known or bothered. Building on the insights of these qualitative studies in 1990 the Leeds University Leaving Care Research Project (LLCRP) started work. The first part of the project involved surveying a sample of 183 young people, aged
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16-19, in three English local authorities who either “moved to independence” or were legally discharged from care (Biehal, Clayden, Stein, & Wade, 1992). The second part of the study which is still underway, follows up a sample of young people experiencing leaving care schemes and a comparison sample of non-scheme care leavers. Two years later a Northern Ireland Leaving Care Research Project (NILCRP) started at Queen’s IJniversity Belfast. Heavily influenced by the Leeds work, NILCRP is a two year study describing the experiences of all 125 young people who left care throughout Northern Ireland during a six month period in 1992. As with the Leeds study the first part of this project involved a survey (Pinkerton & McCrea, 1993) and the second, still underway, follows up on those young people identified as having received either or both formal preparation for leaving care and after-care support. Using material from the English and Northern Irish surveys it is possible to sketch an empirically based profile of care leavers in the two jurisdictions, focusing on their personal characteristics, their care careers and the outcomes of these careers. Turning first to general characteristics there were slightly more males than females in the Leeds study whereas the reverse was the case in the Northern Ireland survey. Young people from minority ethnic groups and of mixed race origin made up about an eighth of the Leeds sample thereby constituting an important subgroup. Young people with special needs made up a similar proportion of the sample. The findings of the Northern Ireland survey contrast in that neither ethnic minority background nor special needs feature significantly as a characteristic of the population. The population was fairly evenly split between Protestants and Catholics with a slight overrepresentation of the latter. The Leeds study also identified young parents, generally mothers, as an important subgroup, accounting for about a quarter of the sample. This subgroup also registered in the Belfast study, with about a fifth of the care leavers either being pregnant or having been pregnant. In terms of care careers both studies found that almost two thirds of care leavers had first entered care in their teenage years. Both studies also found that over four fifths of the young people had spent more than one year in care. In the English sample just over a third spent more than three years in care and in the Northern Ireland population two fifths had been in care for over five years. Given these long periods in care it is perhaps not surprising that fewer than ten per cent of the young people in the Leeds study remained in the same placement through out their time in care and nearly one third made between four and nine moves and one tenth moved more than ten
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times. In the Belfast study just under three quarters of the young people experienced two or more moves and over a tenth moved more than five times. In the two studies, despite the promotion of foster care in both jurisdictions, residential placements provided the jumping off point for significant proportions of young people. The last care placement of over half of the English young people was in the residential sector compared to less than one third fostering placements. In Northern Ireland it was two fifths and a quarter respectively. The Leeds study highlighted the very young age at which care leavers move to independence and contrasts this to the norm of leaving home in early to mid twenties. Recent research (Banks et al., 1992) found that less than a tenth of young people in the general population were living away from home at age 17-l 8. By contrast three fifths of the English care leavers moved to independence at that age. In Northern Ireland there was a very different picture with under a fifth of care leavers moving to independence whereas almost two thirds returned home. The Leeds study also found that contact between the young people and their families had been maintained at a high level. Some four fifths were still in touch with family members and for half this contact was at least weekly. Some contact between social services and the young people usually occurred after they had left care. The Leeds study found that social workers were offering support to nearly half the young people and nearly a quarter were being supported by leaving care schemes. More than a third of the young people were receiving a weekly financial top-up from Social Services. Contact was reported for three fifths of the Northern Ireland group, but this did not include regular financial support. In both studies the aftercare support appeared limited in scope and restricted in duration. Levels of support from foster parents and residential social workers also appeared to be low. Looking at outcome indicators for the English and Northern Ireland care leavers suggests they are poorly equipped to deal with the demands of the transition they are engaged in. Accommodation for many of the young people was far from the ideal of stable independence, rather they were being returned to the uncertain welcome of family home, temporary housing or homelessness. In Northern Ireland, where almost two thirds returned home; within six months of that return less than half were still at home. Just over a fifth of the young people in the Belfast study and under a fifth in the Leeds study were judged to have been homeless at some point. The Leeds team found that young people with special needs seemed to be at special risk of
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homelessness: one third of homeless young people either had a disability or had previously been classified as educationally and behaviourally disturbed. The House of Commons Social Services Committee Report on Children in Care in 1984 described being in care as an “educational hazard” and both of these surveys bears this out. Two thirds of the English sample and just under a half of the Northern Ireland population had no qualifications at all. Clearly this had implications for job opportunities against a background of high youth unemployment. In both studies only about a tenth of the care leavers had employment, with a third of the English sample and a quarter of the Northern Ireland study population registered unemployed. The Leeds study also found an association between movement in care and poor attainment. Three quarters of those who had experienced four or more moves in care had no qualifications compared to only half of those who had made no moves. It also found that a higher proportion of young people leaving residential care had no qualification, around three quarters, than those leaving foster care where the equivalent figure was just over half.
Conclusion So what conclusions are to be drawn about leaving care in England and Northern Ireland as an experience of transition to adulthood, and about the appropriateness of the new legislation to developing the required policy and practice? From the two surveys it would appear that, whilst there are some differences in the care leavers and their experiences, more important are the similarities and the fact that in both jurisdictions, moving from being a young person in care to an adult out of care is a difficult transition. It is, however, also possible to learn some lessons from the research as to how to help young people in managing the transition. Providing stability for children and young people whilst in care is an essential foundation for positive outcomes. Services need to reflect a recognition The impact of disability
and positive response to cultural diversity.
upon young people must be given fuller attention.
Social Services must accept their key role in preparing and supporting young people in their transition
to adulthood.
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Preparation must be given importance and be planned for all young people in substitute care. There is a need for comprehensive planning of the range of support services available to young people once they leave care. Workers need to develop an empowering practice “that allows personal space, exploration and the development of identity and at the same time assists increased responsibility, including setting or negotiating limits; a practice that allows young people to go back as well as forward; a practice which empowers and negotiates with young people”. (Stein, 1993) There need to be procedures for staff to ensure the effective operationalising of provision in keeping with an explicit service model-a range of these are possible (Stein, 1991) but they must be built, not on some illusory notion of total independence, but on promotion effective interdependence Accessible guides should be available for young people and other significant people in their lives to ensure they take the opportunities for support being provided for them. A training strategy needs to be in place that ensures staff at all levels have the knowledge, values and skills to promote and deliver an empowering preparation for leaving and after-care service. A commitment to constant monitoring and evaluation is required as the means to avoiding complacency and defeatism and for managing the inevitable changes within needs and services. The development of such a policy and practice is possible in the legislative space provided by the Children Act and the Children Order. Given that providing opportunities sanctioned by law is all that any piece of legislation can do, and not withstanding the valid cause for criticism about the lack of attention to local concerns and sensibilities in framing the Children Order, care leavers in both England and Northern Ireland would seem to have much to gain from their new legislation.
References
Aldgate, J., & Hill, M. (1995). Child welfare reform in the United Kingdom. Children and Youth Services,
17, 575-597.
Banks. M., Bates. I., Breakwell, G., Brynner, J., Emler, N., Jamieson, L., & Roberts, K. (1992) Careers and identities. Milton Keynes: Open University Press
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Biehal. N., Clayden, J., Stein, M., & Wade, J. (1992). Prepuredfor living. London: National Children’s Bureau. Caul, B., & Herron, S. (1992). A Service for people-origins and development of the personal social services of Northern Ireland Belfast. Belfast: December Publications. Central Personal Social Service Advisory Committee. (1993). Response to the Draft Children (NI) Order. Belfast: Department of Health & Social Security. Children’s Rights Development Unit. (1994). UK agenda for children. London: Author. Department of Health. (199 1). Patterns and outcomes in child placement. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Department of Health and Social Services (Northern Ireland). (1979). Report of the Children and Young Persons Review Group. Belfast: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. First Key. (1987). A study of black young people leaving care. Leeds: Author. Frost, N., & Stein, M. (1989). The politics of child wedfare. Hertfordshire, UK: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Jones, & Wallace. (1992). Youth, family and citizenship. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. McColgan, M. (1995). The Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995. Children and Youth Services, 17, 637-649. National Children’s Bureau. ( 1992). Childfacts-young people leaving care. London: Author. Pinkerton, J., & Kelly, G. (1986). Kincora Affair-the aftermath. Youth and Policy, 17, 17-25. Pinkerton, J. (1993). The social policy context of the children (NI) order-grounding the legislation. Belfast: Child Care Northern Ireland Pinkerton, J., & McCrea, R. (1993). Northern Ireland leaving care research project-second interim report. Belfast: Queen’s University. Short Report, Social Services Committee. (HC 360) (I 984). Children in care. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Social Services Inspectorate (NI). (1994). Promoting social welfare. Belfast: Department of Health and Social Security. Stein, M. (1990). Living out of core. Ilford. UK: Bamardos. Stein, M. (199 1). Leaving care and the 1989 Children Act-The agenda. Leeds, UK: First Key Stein, M. (1993). Leaving care-From research into practice. Leeds: First Key. Stein, M., & Carey, K. (1986). Leaving cure. Oxford. UK: Basil Blackwell. Warner, N. (1993). United Kingdom III: Information on social services in Northern Ireland. In B. Munday (Ed.), European social services (pp. 39-42). Canterbury, UK: University of Canterbury.