Implementation of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care – recommendations

The Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium welcomed the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, and fed into the Review to highlight the specific needs of migrant and refugee children in the care system.

The Review did not comment extensively on the experiences of migrant children receiving support from children’s social care but these young people will undoubtedly be affected by a wide range of the Review’s recommendations. There are some of the Review’s recommendations, such as changes to advocacy, the creation of a National Children’s Social Care Outcome Framework, and localisation of National Referral Mechanism decision-making, which present significant opportunities to improve the care provided to migrant children – whether living with their families, in wider kinship care, in the care system, or as care leavers.
There are other recommendations which, without further detail or if implemented without mitigation, could put migrant children at risk. These include changes to Section 17 of the Children Act 1989, the regional commissioning of placements for children in care and, potentially, a lack of ambition to improve the lives of former unaccompanied children through improved support for care
leavers.

The RMCC has put together a range of briefings looks at how to maximise the potential, and mitigate the risks, of the Review’s recommendations for this group. The briefings highlight key issues, ask important questions about implementation, and provide some ways in which the policy recommendations of the Review could be mitigated or modified to eliminate risk and have the most positive impact possible on the lives of children subject to immigration control.

The briefings make many proposals however some of the most crucial include:

  • Support for children to resolve their immigration status is embedded into the new National Children’s Social Care so that secure immigration status is a properly recognised outcome of children’s social work. As a result of this practice guides, training, and continuing professional development around immigration issues in social work is properly embedded to improve the knowledge, skills and confidence of the workforce.
  • Any reform of Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 to enable the Review’s proposed Family Help model maintains the rights of families receiving support under section 17 to relieve destitution as a result of having no recourse to public funds.
  • Reforms to the care system and leaving care support are truly ambitious for unaccompanied asylum seeking children and other children subject to immigration control. Reform should see the provision of their care fully integrated into the wider care system and arrest moves towards a two-tier care system which sees unaccompanied and other migrant children treated differently from other children in care.

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The RMCC has also responded to the following government consultations:

Consultation on the strategy for social care: Stable Homes, Built on Love

Consultation on the Children’s Social Care National Framework