Children who cannot be cared for by their family network could be fostered by their teacher, a new report, published today, suggests.
The report, an independent review of children’s social care, says the belief that it is “inappropriate” for a teacher and other “known adults” to become their pupil’s foster carer “needs to change”.
The suggestion forms part of a recommendation that the Department for Education (DfE) should launch a “high-profile national foster carer recruitment programme” to sign up 9,000 additional foster carers.
The report said that when a child cannot be cared for inside their family network, “important adults” who are already present “may be willing to step forward”.
In addition to teachers, the report says that other known adults could be the parent of a school friend or a community group leader.
The report also details data from the DfE that suggests that if just 1 per cent of teachers “stepped forward to foster a specific child”, there would be 4,610 new homes available for children in care with someone who already cared about them and who could offer them stability in their education, friendship groups and community.
The review, chaired by Josh MacAlister, chief executive of social work charity Frontline and a former teacher, also recommended the following measures for schools:
Schools should become statutory partners
As part of a National Children’s Social Care Framework to “set the direction and purpose” for a system focused on children and families, the report wants schools to be included as a statutory safeguarding partner.
The report suggests that “in too many places” the contribution and voice of education is “missing”, while the relationship between social care and education was “consistently fraught”.
It says there is a “difficulty” in “engaging schools in keeping children safe...particularly around exclusion from school”.
Statutory safeguarding partners have a joint responsibility for multi-agency safeguarding arrangements.
There are currently three partners: the local authority, clinical commissioning groups and the police.
Partners are responsible for implementing safeguarding strategies to improve multi-agency working and safeguarding in the area.
The report explains that teachers “spend more time with children than other professionals” and so should be made a fourth partner.
One way in which this could be delivered, the report suggests, is that schools nominate one representative within an area.
The DfE has been recommended to work with social care and school leaders “to identify the best way to achieve this, ensuring that arrangements provide clarity”.
Schools should have a ‘legal duty’
The report also recommends that England should mirror the system in Scotland, which states that schools have a “legal duty” to promote the “wellbeing of care-experienced people”.
It claims that this change would “reflect the role” that schools hold in the lives of care-experienced children.
‘Family help teams’ in schools
It said “family help teams” should be established to reduce the number of handovers between services, and suggested they be based in the community, in settings such as schools and family hubs, to provide support and “cut down on referring families on to other services”.
It adds that a “temporary injection of roughly £2 billion” will be necessary over the next five years to get the teams set up to target about half a million children who require extra support.
The report also recommends that families not eligible for “family help” should have access to services and help, including from mental health support teams in schools.
Introduction of ‘secure schools’
The report claims that young offender institutions or secure training centres are “wholly unsuitable for children” and should be “phased out” over 10 years. They should be replaced by “local secure children’s homes or ‘secure schools’ run or commissioned by regional care cooperatives”.
The report also found that “more could be done to increase the supply of boarding-school places for looked-after children in the state sector” and said the DfE should “consider investing some of the free schools’ capital budget into a new wave of state boarding capacity”.
Mental and physical health
Alongside investment in services, the country should be training more professionals in “basic mental health techniques”, the report states, adding that mental health support teams should be “rolled out faster and senior mental health lead training provided to all schools in England”.
