Massive improvements needed for children in care

The children’s care system in England needs a dramatic overhaul with the government acting as a "pushy parent" to get the best for the children it looks after, MPs say. The state fails as a "parent" because it does not demand enough from services, said a report by the Commons' Children, Schools and Families Committee out yesterday. Happiness and welfare of the 60,000 children in care should be at the heart of the system, it said.

Of the 60,000 children in care in England, 62% are there because of abuse or neglect, others through family illness, "dysfunction", "acute stress" or "socially unacceptable behaviour". About 4% are looked after because of their own disability, and just fewer than 6% are unaccompanied asylum-seekers. MPs on the cross-party children's committee say the state fails as a parent because "the government is too timid in demanding that health services and the criminal justice and asylum systems give special consideration to looked-after children".

Statistics from the BBC about the lives of children in care or those who have left care show they do much worse than other children at school. They are seven times as likely to be expelled and twice as likely to be cautioned or convicted for an offence. In 2007, 13% of looked-after children in England who sat their GCSEs achieved at least five grades A*-C, compared with 62% of all children.

Samuel, who was taken into care at 15 and is now an adult, said he never had a supportive adult to whom he felt he could turn. "If there had been just one, or even two, steady relationships that I could have had with a social worker or a personal adviser I think that would have helped greatly," he told the broadcaster. Most looked-after children (71%) are cared for in foster placements.

Children's Minister Delyth Morgan said a new Social Work Taskforce was being set up to look at the issues. "We know that outcomes for children in care are not good enough, which is why we put in place record investment and a comprehensive programme to improve outcomes for these children."In the last decade we have made progress, with better educational attainment and more care leavers than ever before in employment or training, but we agree there is more to do."

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children