National Implementation Adviser for Care Leavers: first year...

Charlotte Ramsden, Chair of the ADCS Health, Care and Additional Needs Policy Committee, said:

“We welcome this report and would like to thank Mark Riddell for keeping this group of vulnerable young people in view. Local authorities are ambitious about improving the lives of care leavers and take our corporate parenting responsibilities very seriously. We want to stay in touch with our care leavers and support them as they get older. This report helpfully highlights good and innovative practice taking place in local authorities across the country. It is right that we celebrate this whilst recognising that great work is happening in many areas beyond those captured in this report. That said, we cannot be complacent. We must continue to improve our local offers to care leavers and ask ourselves, would this be good enough for my child?

“The Children and Social Work Act (2017) placed a range of new duties on local authorities in relation to care leavers which we welcome, such as the extension of PA support to care leavers up to the age of 25. Whilst local authorities have received some grant funding to help us meet these duties it is woefully inadequate, as is the funding we receive from the Home Office for UASC care leavers. Children are coming into care older with increasingly complex needs and are much more likely to need support up to 25, which local authorities have a moral duty to respond to. Support for care leavers is working well in many areas but without sufficient funding, this new duty risks weakening the offer to all care leavers as local authorities stretch budgets to cover a much greater cohort.”

ENDS

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