Children removed
Instead of getting the support which children and their families need increasing numbers of children are being removed.
Children and their families are entitled to support to enable parents to take good care of their children, and to overcome any problems. Removing children from family homes to protect them should be a measure of last resort but in England it is happening more and more. There’s less support and more intervention.
“Preventing family separation and preserving family unity are important components of the child protection system. Given the gravity of the impact on the child of separation from his or her parents, such separation should only occur as a last resort measure…”
Committee on Rights of Child
General Comment No. 14,
On the rights of the child to have his best interests taken as primary consideration
“…children are being taken into care in unprecedented numbers, and losing their human right to live with their birth families because women are being blamed, rather than helped.”
Louise Tickle
The Guardian: Why do we separate the mother and child victims of domestic abuse? (2018)
“Risk-averse social work often favours the removal of children from their families. However, the removal of children severs a child’s family connections, not just with parents, but also with siblings and extended family members.”
Professor Anna Gupta and Hannah Blumhardt
Families, Relationships and Societies: Giving poverty a voice: families’ experiences of social work practice in a risk-averse child protection system (2016)
Rising numbers removed
Against the clear direction laid out by human rights committees increasing numbers of children in England are being removed from their mothers. The UK Government has shown support for removal. On top of this privatisation of care provision uses up available budgets, meaning councils have even less ability to support families. Best interests of children now have to compete with interests of shareholders who are allowed to shape government policy and direction.
“In recent years, the number of looked-after children has increased steadily, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the population. Between 2016 and 2020 the number of looked-after children rose 14% in England…”
Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)
Children’s Social Care Market Study (2022)
Support for removal of children
Government policies which made families poorer increased the numbers of children removed. At the same time there has also been open support for removing children. The response to the significant evidence that children who grow up in care have poorer outcomes has been to claim that the trauma and the harm is not due to removal, but to the damage caused by parents. Under this logic removing children faster is better.
We need a new direction from the Labour government. We must reject this framing and ground our approach in human rights and the insistence that being with one’s flesh and blood family matters and that removal must absolutely be a matter of last resort.
“What this [Conservative] government is doing to poor families is atrocious. The food banks, the rubbish private housing, the precarious employment position of people is awful. But that does not mean we should add to that awfulness by taking people’s children away when we don’t need to.”
Steve Goodman
Former deputy director of Hackney Children’s Services
Community Care: Children’s services shouldn’t ‘add to awfulness’ by unnecessarily removing children, social workers told (2018)
“I firmly believe more children should be taken into care more quickly.”
Michael Gove
Former Sec of State for Education
Education Secretary speech (2012)
“I concluded that there were as many arguments for taking more children into care as there were for getting more children out of care.”
Martin Narey
Government advisor, former chief exec of Barnardo’s
Comment piece in Telegraph, (2009)
“Ministers should encourage public awareness of the fact that being taken into care can be of great benefit to children.”
Education Select Committee
Children first: the child protection system in England 2012 Recommendations
“…if there is any evidence, any inkling, any iota of harm to any child, that the child is taken away immediately”
Nadhim Zahawi,
Former Sec of State for Education
House of Commons (2021)
Profit in pain
That austerity measures drives the high number of children removed is found in analysis from both investment brokers and market intelligence agencies and that of social workers and child protection experts. But where social workers and child protection experts saw reason for distress investment brokers saw opportunity.
“The care of children and their safety and welfare has become a commodity to be traded between commercial companies.”
Annual profit made by largest provider, Outcomes First (Dec 2020)
Size of sector (LaingBuisson analysis)
Social work experts say…
Findings of the Care Crisis Review:
- System in crisis, reaching breaking point
- Cuts to support for families and rising poverty
- Media and political pressure on councils to intervene in families
“…frustration, despair and anger about the detrimental impact of poverty, cuts and austerity on the lives and life chances of vulnerable families”
Markets say…
Analysis from global market intelligence agency Mintel and ‘global corporate finance house’, Clearwater International found:
- More vulnerable children reaching ‘crisis’ point.
- Cuts to support for families and rising poverty
- 'Whole-system' reset urged by 'independent' review positive market 'driver'
“…significant opportunities for investors with increasingly positive market drivers”
Clearwater International
Market overview