Decisions about the care of vulnerable children are often driven by local capacity and resource rather than need, the children’s commissioner has warned.
Dame Rachel de Souza found that support for families under child in need plans, the earliest statutory intervention to help prevent children being taken into care, is poorly monitored and progress is hard to track.
She found that in 85% of a sample of plans, it was difficult to assess what had been done to protect the child, ‘such was the poor quality of the actions set out’.
The commissioner urged the Government to use the upcoming Children’s Wellbeing Bill to set thresholds for the level of need that qualifies families for support; develop guidance on how often children receive help, and establish an outcomes framework to ensure families get support in time.
Dame de Souza said: ‘A child’s individual needs should be at the heart of how these plans are produced – but often they are an afterthought in a fragmented system driven by whether there is capacity locally to help.
‘There must be national guidance and a universal way of measuring progress so that every family, no matter their circumstances, is helped to safely and effectively overcome the challenges they face in their lives.’
