Does the term ‘permanence’ help or hinder outcomes for children?

In a speech first delivered at a Family Justice Council debate on 3rd December 2025, our Chief Executive Cathy Ashley asks if the child welfare system delivers permanence for children, and whether the notion itself can break the relational security we all need.

Does the child welfare system deliver permanence for children?

“We all need people to turn to in our lives, emotionally and practically. Who love us for who we are. I’m going to ask today whether the system delivers permanence for children and whether the notion itself can break the relational security that we all need.

I’m going to pose four tests based on the reality of care experienced children and young people’s lives – through the prism of permanence.

TEST 1 – Are we successfully providing a permanent family home for children in the care system, where they feel a sense of belonging?

• Nearly a quarter (23%) of children and young people who have been in the care system for two years or more, have moved between at least three different foster care or children’s homes.

TEST 2 – Are we building or breaking relationships for children in the care system?

• Over 18,000 children in care (– a 41% rise on a decade ago) – are living more than 20 miles from home. Far away from the places and people they know (Department for Education data and Become Good Practice Report).
• Two in every 5 children in the care system who have siblings are separated from them (Children’s Commissioner for England, 2023).
• The 2013 Care Inquiry found that the care system breaks rather than builds relationships for children and young people.

TEST 3 – Are we creating certainty and stability for children in care as they grow older?

• Our care system doesn’t just have one cliff edge – but a series of them. Not only do we put 16 and 17 year olds in positions where they are expected to manage for themselves – but from a young age we tell them that this is the fate that will befall them.

One young care leaver told the charity Become it was ‘Like being on death row, counting down the days until their 18th birthday when their placements are abruptly stopped.’

In a society in which there is increasing expectation that parents will provide a home, financial and emotional support for young people well into their 30s we instead expect care experienced young people to sink or swim on their own.

Ashley John Baptiste’s book Looked After: A Childhood in Care, poignantly describes aged 17 that he had to cook his own dinners and was told he couldn’t eat the same meals as his foster family, because “he had to prepare for independence”.

TEST 4 – Are the outcomes for children in care showing that our system is providing them with permanence

• Around a quarter of the adult prison population are care-experienced (Care Leavers Association).
• 25% of homeless people are care-experienced (Crisis and Become) and the situation is getting worse.
• If the state is a poor parent – then it is an even worse grandparent. Care experienced young parents are often punished and judged for their past childhood instead of supported for their future. They are disproportionately likely to have their children removed. (54% of mothers who repeatedly appear before the family court were themselves in care as children.)

So is it that the system is doing permanence badly or is it that permanence itself is problematic?

Well my answer – is both.

The system talks about ‘permanence’, but for most children in the care system this is an illusion.

And that focus on permanence itself has consequences.

We now have 12,000 more children in care than a decade ago.

We sell this fantasy that we can provide permanence to children who are in the care system but that’s not the reality for many. And nor is it going to be in a system that’s overwhelmed. We have a shortage of foster carers, we have children living in children’s homes – often at huge expense – that are often far from meeting their needs, and a rising number of children deprived of their liberty.

Spending on early intervention services for families has been cut by nearly half (44%) over a decade, while spending on children in care has increased by nearly 50% in the same period.

Most families – even at pre-proceedings – aren’t offered a family group conference despite clear evidence they effectively keep children safe in their family network.

And then when a child is in the care system if permanence is understood as a fixed decision or plan, it reinforces the idea that families cannot change – closing down the possibility of returning home, even when it is safe and appropriate. Once a child is in care, the very support that families need to demonstrate change becomes harder to access, compounding this rigidity. Since 2011 the proportion of children in care returning home has fallen from 39% to 27% (2023).

This framing of permanence itself can lead to the breaking of children’s relationships

Family Rights Group developed the Lifelong Links approach with the aim that children and young people in care have a lasting positive support network around them. Since 2017, over 4,000 children and young people have benefited from Lifelong Links.

Repeatedly, Lifelong Links has connected children to family or friends who they were stopped from seeing – people who really mattered to them – not stopped for safeguarding reasons but because the permanence plan was that they should have time to settle into their new foster or children’s home. And those relationships were never re-examined – even when the foster care home broke down or the child was moved again and again. It was just viewed as not important enough to matter.

The focus on permanence as the goal is at the expense of the importance of relational security and identity

Even where a child has legal permanence, in an adoption or special guardianship arrangement. Many want to have a much better understanding of who they are, where they came from.

Evaluations of Lifelong Links show:

• it leads to children having a stronger sense of identity,
• Improved wellbeing: and mental health; and
• interestingly, improved stability: 74% of children remained in their foster care or children’s home after participating, compared with 41% of a comparator group.

In other words relational security fosters permanence and stability – not visa versa.

Yet, the importance of relational security is being overlooked because the system equates permanence with legal outcomes, or where a child lives.

Prioritise relationships

So, instead of prioritising permanence, we should prioritise the relationships that carry a child into adulthood.

That means earlier support for families to avert crisis. It means investing in supporting more children to return home from care safely. It means exploring and supporting kinship care and for children in care we must help maintain strong connections with siblings, parents, grandparents and the community.

These relationships provide the emotional and cultural continuity that children themselves describe as the foundation of safety and belonging.”

Photo credit: Family Justice Council

May 2026