SCOTLAND will look back with shame on the number of children taken into care because they were living in poverty, according to the chair of the Care Review.
The root-and-branch review, which was published last week, called for a radical overhaul of Scotland’s care system and calculated the costs of letting down children and their families at £1.6 billion.
Its findings, including over 80 changes to transform care, were accepted in Parliament by Nicola Sturgeon. The First Minister commissioned the review in October 2016 after lobbying by members of charity Who Cares? Scotland. She had pledged to uphold the promise to make life-saving changes and to announce next steps “within weeks”.
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Key to the report’s findings was the need for early intervention to support families to stay together where possible, in recognition that removing a child from their family “creates trauma for the child, the family and the community”.
It identified how children growing up in poverty are “over-represented” on the child protection register and are more likely to be removed from their families due to the additional stresses on those families. It called for holistic financial, practical and emotional support.
While some children and young people told researchers they had been removed too late – many others believed that with more support their families could have stayed together. In 2018, 14,738 children and young people were in care, which included 3818 (26%) supported at home. In 2008, 56 more were in care, 43% of whom were looked after at home.
Fiona Duncan, chair of the review (above), told the Sunday National that work had included an examination of data on the socio-economic background of children in care, mapping it against the index of multiple deprivation, as well as reviewing all the available research.
She said: “We can’t argue with the data on the fact that children living in poverty are more likely to be taken into care. I think if we look back, even in 10 years, we will feel ashamed for some of the things that we’ve done.
“Families living and struggling in poverty are already dealing with the most difficult circumstances and I think as a nation we will feel ashamed that we removed those children – that we didn’t support families to deal with both the impact and root causes of poverty. We just removed their children.”
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Duncan said a new approach to support was needed, with families able to access help for as long as required. The review recognises that some families may always need support. Services should be community-based, and have hours that work for families, involve children and young people so they can have their needs heard and considered. They must be based around trusted relationships, she added.
SallyAnn Kelly, chief executive of children’s charity Aberlour, said the need to address poverty was the central message of the report. “The overwhelming majority of young people in the care system are the children of the poor,” she said.
“My issue with that is that poor people do not care any less about their children but their circumstances are such that they are far less likely to exist in the family situation without really heavy toxic stress around a range of issues – whether that’s about paying the bills or putting food on the table.
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“They are more susceptible to issues like drug misuse or domestic abuse because of the stress and how vulnerable they can become. So we know lifting families out of that can make a big difference. For me, that is the game-changer in all of this.
“When you see how much of our money is already spent on failing interventions you think – what if we shifted that right to the front and focused on intervention? What if we put in place universal, easily accessible, de-stigmatised family support to stop these children needing more intensive support later in their lives? That must be a step worth taking.”
However, she claimed that politicians needed to commit dedicated funding to ease the transition.
Kenny Murray, public affairs co-ordinator at Who Cares? Scotland (above) – who is also care experienced – welcomed the recommendations around better family support. He was taken into care at 11 years old when his mother was struggling to cope.
“Easterhouse, where I grew up, is steeped in poverty,” he said. “We lived hand-to-mouth. There is also a real sense of community so I remember people who would run cables from top floor flats when we ran out of electricity or dig food out the freezer when we had none and we’d do the same for them.
“But my mum was a victim of domestic violence and we were witnesses to that. As a result we had to move around a lot and we lost our support network – there was no safety net. I remember going to food banks before food banks were a thing, going to the Hamish Allan [an out-of-hours homeless service in Glasgow] and getting on a bus to a social work centre to pick-up bags of food.”
Eventually they moved back to Easterhouse but his mum, who was raising five children on her own, got no support to recover from the trauma of abuse.
“The thing is that if you are living in poverty for long enough it starts to look like neglect,” he added. “We were struggling to eat well, to have clean clothes. My mum wasn’t able to work or to lift herself out of the trap. She was neglecting herself. And where was the state?”
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The situation reached crisis point and his mother called authorities believing her children would be better off in care than living with her. All five were collected in a police car and taken to separate care settings. Murray was last to be dropped off at a children’s home.
He feels that with more support for the family to stay together – with an emphasis on what the Care Review calls family assets rather than deficits – things could have been different. “Just weeks before, my mum helped me prepare for an interview for a secondary school placement, worked through sums with me,” he said. “That was not neglect.”
Three years later he returned home and life was better but still not straight-forward. He said: “In that time my mother had got support and she had recovered. But she should never have had to choose between getting help and keeping us at home.
“And she still hadn’t been lifted out of her situation and we were still living in poverty.” Things improved when Murray got a job as a waiter and started contributing to the family income but he is convinced of the need for change.
“Nicola Sturgeon must make it her personal responsibility to lift children and young people out of poverty,” he said. “I think this is a national tragedy hidden in plain sight.
“In years to come we’re going to look back and see that we’ve often taken poor children away from their parents. We’ve seen that happen before when children were shipped off to Canada for a supposedly better life. But equally today children are going into care because of poverty. It needs to change.”
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “We recognise the damaging impact poverty can have on young lives, that is why we have set in statute our ambition to eradicate child poverty in Scotland.”
In 2018-19, he added, the Scottish Government spent £1.4bn in targeted support on low income families, and expects to do the same this year. Additional financial support to low-income families will be available with the new Scottish Child Payment, which will reach 410,000 children when rolled out in full, with families with children under six receiving first payments by Christmas.
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“Implementation of the Independent Care Review conclusions will require a transformational and cultural change by everyone involved in the lives of children and young people,” he added. “We are determined to have people with care experience at the heart of driving the necessary change forward.
“We will work with local authorities, care providers and stakeholders to make the changes that the review considers necessary – and to deliver that change as quickly and as safely as possible.”
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