More and more children are being taken into care in England – over 70,000 were in care last year: the highest number since the mid-1980s. Although the reasons for taking any individual child into care are complicated and unique for that child, possible explanations for the upward trend include growing family stress and disfunction, social worker caution after high profile child protection cases, and better identification by local authorities of abuse and neglect.
Barnardo’s works with some of these children through our family support, fostering, adoption and leaving care services. Most children in care are fostered, with 52,000 (74%) living with foster carers in 2016. For some, foster care can offer stability and security where they cannot return home or live with relatives, yet allows children to maintain contact with their birth families. Other children, with disrupted care experiences, may move in and out of multiple care placements and the family home. Nearly 32,000 children and teenagers ceased to be “looked after” across England in 2015-16, and of these 14% had lived in 5 or more placements during that period of care.
Barnardo’s analysed the referral enquiries that it receives from local authorities during 2016. We examined the characteristics of these children and young people needing a foster care placement (11,540 in total), although the amount of detail provided in many referrals was so limited that we could use only half of the referrals (5,748) for our detailed analysis.
