CYP(3) PCC 18

Children and Young People Committee

Inquiry into Arrangements for the Placement of Children into Care      

Response from Disabled Children Matters

The Disabled Children Matters Wales campaign is led by ten voluntary organisations working with disabled children and young people across Wales : Learning Disability Wales, Mencap Cymru, Children In Wales, Contact a Family Wales, Action for Children, Barnardos Cymru, Family Fund Wales, Cerebra, NDCS Cyrmu and Scope Cymru.  The campaign has over 1000 individual supporters across Wales - disabled young people, their families and friends, as well as professionals in health, education, social services and other fields.

There is very little specific data from Wales on disabled children and placement into care and only a small amount of information from elsewhere, so this basic briefing paper aims only to highlight some recent findings from UK research and make some tentative recommendations for policy and practice in Wales. It should also be added that some of the research is based on relatively small scale studies.

Key findings from research:

Reasons for placement

• The specific reason for placement of disabled children into care is not always transparent (3)

• Disabled children in residential placements have a mixture of complex problems which mainstream services struggle to meet, not least through failures in coordinating planning (5)

• Disabled children in 52 week residential school placements might not be included in LAC figures as the placement maybe seen as primarily "educational" although research indicates that for many there are considerable "social" reasons for placement  e.g. parents unable to cope, lack of suitable foster placement, lack of services available

locally (4)

• Evidence suggests that disabled children are often placed away from home because their

needs can not be met in their home community and families have reached breaking

point (4)

Legal status

• The legal status of disabled children in residential settings is not always clear (3)

Foster care and adoption

• Disabled foster-children with learning but not other impairments are less likely to be

adopted than non disabled children. (1)

• Looked after disabled children are less likely to return home and those who do, return

home later than non-disabled foster-children, therefore remaining in foster-care for

longer (1)

• Disabled children who are adopted, or who return home, do so after a greater delay

than non-disabled children. (1)

• Disabled children who are adopted, are adopted later than non disabled children and tend

to be adopted by their foster-carers (1)

• Disabled children are more likely to achieve permanence with their index foster-carer

than non-disabled children.  (1)

• There were poor arrangements made for disabled children leaving care  (1)

• More disabled young people aged over eighteen were found to be still with their foster-

carers under a wide range of arrangements (1)

Residential schools

• Parents are often critical of the services and support they received prior to their child’s entry into residential education and reported high rates of exclusion from local services (6)

• Residential schools are generally perceived as providing a good quality of service, though there is considerable concern about the geographical distance from the family home and this has a significant impact on the frequency of visits  (6)

• Parents express high levels of concern about the future care and support needs of their children (6)

• Further research is required to understand the relationship between the availability and quality of local services and the need for 52-week residential schools (6)

Key Issues:

• Efforts should be made to explore disabled children’s views both prior to and during placement  (3)

• It can be difficult for parents to maintain regular contact with and visit disabled children in residential settings (3)

• For disabled foster-children for whom the plan is to return home, support services need to be provided quickly to avoid the decay of family bonds and a prolonged period in care (1)

• Foster-carer adoption seems to be the most likely route for disabled children to achieve adoption so local authorities need address the need of foster carers in regards to potential loss of financial and other support (1)

• In relation to long term foster carers, one way to increase permanence in foster-placements is to consider other measures such as residence orders, those carers of disabled children who had residence orders emphasized the ‘normality’ they brought to day-to-day family life and children’s increased sense of security (1)

Recommendations:

• Wales Data  - there is an urgent need for specific data and statistics on disabled children

from Wales before, during and after placement into care

• Disabled children live away from home in a variety of different settings – health,

education, social services etc. and their legal status may vary in each.  It is vital that all agencies work together to consider the welfare of disabled children regardless of their placement setting

• Access to advocacy for disabled children in all settings away from home needs to be

improved

• The new duty to properly support disabled children and their families when children are

placed away from home under the Children and Young Person’s Act 2008 must be

implemented fully in Wales

• Social services must ensure that they have efficient monitoring procedures which are able to identify all disabled looked after children including numbers of disabled children who are placed a long way from home, the length of time disabled children wait for adoption or return home.

References:

(1) Disabled Children’s Experience of Permanency in the Looked After System   Claire Baker                          British Journal of Social Work 37  2007

(2) Disabled children in residential placements    Anne Pinney      2005

(3) Disabled Children in Residential Settings Kirsten Stalker

Chapter 8 of Residential Child Care: Prospects and Challenges ed. Andrew Kendrick     2007

(4) Children on the edge of care - Human rights and the Children Act   Jenny Morris          2005

(5) The Characteristics of Children with a Disability Looked After away from Home and their Future Service Needs Roy McConkey, Theresa Nixon, Elizabeth Donaghy and Donna Mulhern

British Journal of Social Work 34    2004

(6) Parents Whose Children with Learning Disabilities and Challenging Behaviour Attend 52-week Residential Schools: Their Perceptions of Services Received and Expectations of the Future            

        Peter McGill Alan Tennyson Vivien Cooper           British Journal of Social Work 36    2006

(7) It doesn’t happen to disabled children: child protection and disabled children

National Working Group on Child Protection and Disability NSPCC: London  2003