Ministers Must Tackle "Moral Failures" In Care Leavers System, Says Committee
Chair of the Education Committee Helen Hayes MP (Alamy)
4 min read
A new education committee report has urged the government to tackle the “broken” children’s care system.
Committee chair, Labour MP Helen Hayes, said ministers must address the “moral failure” of children falling into homelessness and unemployment after leaving care.
The report, published on Thursday, made a series of recommendations, including exempting care leavers from Department for Work and Pensions plans to reduce Universal Credit for people aged 22 and under.
The committee also urged ministers to establish what it describes as a ‘National Care Offer’ guaranteeing a certain standard of financial and housing support for care leavers offered by councils.
A care leaver is someone aged between 16-25 who has been in the care of a local authority.
Hayes, the MP for Dulwich and West Norwood, said: “It is unacceptable that thousands of young people leaving care are being left to face homelessness, unemployment or barriers to education – it is a moral failure.
“The system that should be supporting our most vulnerable children is far too often abandoning them at a critical moment in their lives. Urgent action is needed to fix this broken system and give all our young people the futures they deserve.”
The committee received evidence from people who have passed through the care system, as well as charities.
Katherine Sacks-Jones, CEO of charitable organisation Become, said: “We warmly welcome this report and the committee’s commitment to driving meaningful change. Most importantly, young people’s voices have been put at the heart of these recommendations, right where they belong.
“Keeping children close to the people and places that matter to them is essential to good care, as is ending the care cliff and the drop-in support when young people turn 18, sometimes younger. These are two key issues we’ve campaigned on, so we’re pleased to see the focus and recommendations here to support that.
“We look forward to the government acting upon these proposals and making the changes care-experienced young people have long called for.”
The cross-party committee found that care leavers aged 19-21 are three times more likely than their peers to end up not in education, training or employment, with a third of care leavers becoming homeless within two years of leaving care.
The report called on the Department for Education to create a national strategy for recruiting foster carers, warning that the sector faces a staff shortfall of 6,500.
It also called for action to tackle shortages in the wider social care sector, including better pay and bursaries for studying and training.
The department must also “ensure it is engaging with care-experienced young people in all areas of its work”, the report said.
The committee found that 45 per cent of looked-after children were placed outside of their local authority, with 22 per cent placed over 20 miles from their home, something that “had distressing impacts on the children involved”.
It urged the DfE to produce a ‘national sufficiency strategy’ that would require all local authorities to develop and publish plans for reducing the number of out-of-area placements.
The committee also called for kinship carers to be given the same financial support as foster carers, pointing to evidence showing that this form of arrangement is most stable and beneficial for children. Kinship carers are relatives and close friends of children who step in to care for them when they cannot live with their parents.
On Thursday, the DfE announced that it would invest £53m in council-run children's homes to protect children from unsafe and illegal homes.
Minister for Children and Families Janet Daby said: “The children’s social care system has faced years of drift and neglect, leading to a vicious cycle of late intervention and children falling through the cracks.
“One of the worst symptoms of this is when some of the most vulnerable young people in society are shunted from pillar to post — traumatised by shameful illegal homes, while some private companies rack up ludicrous profits."
