Wednesday 26th October 2011
5.00pm - 7.00pm
Boothroyd Room, Portcullis House, Westminster
Download minutes of the meeting
Key themes arising from the meeting
The process of leaving care
- Care leavers need the opportunity to gradually leave care and to try out what it is like. Parents don’t give their children one chance to leave home.
- Leaving care for people with disabilities is much harder, what can the Government do to make the transition to adults services easier?
- 24% of looked-after children are pressured into leaving care before they are ready, what can the Government do to change this?
- What emotional support is there for young people leaving care?
- What support is there for young mums leaving care?
- Benefits and entitlements.
- Benefits workers don’t talk to people in social care and they put too much bureaucracy in front of care leavers and not enough information.
- Benefit system made young person quit their jobs because of the impact their income had on their foster carers benefits.
- Young man was made to leave accommodation because his Apprenticeship stopped whilst he looked for a new placement.
Unfair differences between local authorities
- Growing evidence that LAs are making it harder for young people to access HE bursaries, different people in different places get different support.
- There are big variances in the leaving care grant between LAs – this can’t be fair.
- The success or otherwise of leaving care is based on the quality of support and relationships with your worker. There isn’t enough sharing of good practice and the reduced challenge from Ofsted makes it harder to pick up the worse authorities.
- Unfairness is rooted in a lack of respect for children’s rights. The Government should look at ensuring looked-after children can use Section 8 of the children act to take their corporate parents to court.
- We need a minister solely responsible for children in care.
Employment
- Care leavers struggle more than people who live at home to find jobs. There should be done to help care leavers find advice and work.
Pre-care experience
- There needs to be more awareness about the care system amongst children from an early age
Placement changes
- Children’s homes and residential homes are being closed because of financial decisions, not the needs of young people living there.
Response from Government
Edward asked Tim Loughton (the Minister with responsibility for the care system) about the availability of higher education bursaries for care leavers and the differences between how much each local authority gives to their looked-after children to set up a home when they leave care.
Read the response from Tim Loughton.
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