Law supporting children in care is strong, but sometimes broken or ignored in practice.
The Children Act passed in 1989 was a landmark, laying out the rights of children in care, saying that their views should be heard, and that they had a right to be placed near their home and with their siblings. But as a recent report from the Centre for Social Justice found, 'twenty years on, care leavers, practitioners and academics alike have told us that the 1989 Children Act is not being fully carried out on the ground'.
The Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 was another piece of welome legistion, trying to make sure that children leaving care had better access to education, health and social care. In 2008 it was calculated that one third of homeless people had been in care. Young people leaving care today are more likely to receive support and preparation for becoming independent, but there is still a long way to go.
The Children Act 2004 tried to improve the educational outcomes of children in care, improve multi-disciplinary working and inspections of facilities for children in care. However, virtually the whole Act allowed local authorities to wield extra powers in favour of cared-for children, rather than requiring them to do so. The result is that poorer-performing authorities are able simply to ignore much of this legislation.
Then in November 2008 the Children and Young Persons Act was passed, although much of it won't be enforced until 2010. In many ways it is very good news; it gave charities like The Who Cares? Trust and campaigners virtually all they had hoped for. But even the best law-making is unlikely to fix problems like the lack of finances and overworked, pressurised staff overnight.
Too often it takes the work of child advocates and lawyers to make sure that children's rights are properly enacted on the ground. We talk to children's rights lawyer Mitchell Woolf and to a network of London Law Centres who are among a range of organisations giving children in care free, impartial advice when they most need it.