23 Councils to build support networks for children in care, but charity calls for national rollout

Twenty-three English councils are receiving funding from the Department for Education, to enable around 1,000 children in care to build support networks through the pioneering Lifelong Links programme.

Developed by the charity Family Rights Group in partnership with young people, the programme has been referred to as “one of the most successful innovations” in children’s services in recent years by Isabelle Trowler CBE, the government’s Chief Social Worker for Children and Families.

Children often have personal relationships broken as they move into or within the care system, and Lifelong Links offers a chance to mend and build those links, whether with brothers, sisters, relatives, schoolfriends, teachers or others.

Family Rights Group says that the investment is a recognition that Lifelong Links is a “gamechanger” but warns that too many young people in care will still not have the opportunity to benefit unless it is rolled out country wide.

Recent evaluation of Lifelong Links has shown that Hertfordshire County Council avoided more than £800,000 in costs having supported 44 young people through the programme.

Lifelong Links is delivered by trained and independent coordinators, who work with a child in care to find out who is important to them and who they would like to meet or be back in touch with. Using a combination of research tools and detective work, and with the young person’s agreement and direction, they safely bring together this network of support at a Lifelong Links family group conference to make a plan to ensure these relationships continue to grow.

The programme’s successes, according to independent evaluations, include:

• 78% of participating children reporting an improved sense of identity. Mental health and wellbeing improves over time.
• being nearly twice as likely to have stability in their living arrangements than others, with 74% remaining in their foster care or children’s home after Lifelong Links compared with 41% of a comparator group.
• reducing the possibility of a young person becoming homeless by 10%, according to the Policy Institute at King’s College London – on top of which Crisis says that 25% of homeless people are care experienced

The Care Inquiry (2013), conducted by eight voluntary organisations operating across the UK, concluded that the greatest failing of the care system and associated child welfare procedures is that they too often break, rather than build, relationships for children in or on the edge of care.

The Children’s Commissioner for England says that 37% of children in care who have siblings are separated from them, and Become found that on average they are placed more than 18 miles way from home.

The Rees Centre at the University of Oxford says that care leavers are ten times as likely to not be in education, employment or training at 21, compared to peers.

The number of children in the care system across the UK is now more than 100,000.

The local authorities receiving funding are:

• 12 new providers of Lifelong Links: Barking and Dagenham Council; Brighton & Hove City Council; Durham County Council; Gateshead Council; Hammersmith & Fulham Council; Islington Council; Salford City Council; Southwark Council; Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council; Stoke-on-Trent City Council; Warrington Borough Council; Wiltshire County Council.
• 11 existing providers who will continue: Bath & North East Somerset Council; Birmingham Children’s Trust (on behalf of Birmingham City Council); Coventry City Council; Darlington Borough Council; Devon County Council; Hertfordshire County Council; Kensington & Chelsea Royal Borough Council and Westminster City Council (bi-borough); Oxfordshire County Council; Portsmouth City Council; Wandsworth Borough Council; and Warwickshire County Council.