For almost a decade, our Bright Spots programme, in partnership with The Rees Centre at the University of Oxford, has worked with children and young people in care to explore what they feel makes life good.
Through the largest survey of its kind, we’ve now heard the views of 10,000 children and young people, aged four to 18, from across 38 local authorities, giving us unprecedented insight into their subjective wellbeing.
Encouragingly, our 10,000 Voices report reveals that 83 per cent of children and young people in care feel that life is getting better.
Compared with the general population of children and young people, a higher proportion reported feeling safe where they live, like school and felt that the adults they live with took an interest in their education.
However, a larger proportion of young people in care (aged 11-18 years) rated themselves as having ‘low life satisfaction’ compared with young people in the general population.
The report also found that girls had lower wellbeing than boys, and a greater proportion of young people living in residential care or ‘somewhere else’ (mostly supported accommodation) reported lower wellbeing than those living in foster care and kinship foster care.
The report finds that most children in care felt included in the decisions that social workers made about their care, at least sometimes. However, around one in seven ‘hardly ever’ or ‘never’ felt included.
For the youngest children surveyed (aged four to seven), one in five did not know who their social worker was – twice as high as for the older children in care – and nearly half of this age group did not feel that the reasons they were in care had been fully explained.
For all children and young people in care, having good friends and trusting and supportive relationships were important.
This included trusting carers and social workers, and, for the oldest age group, having trusted adults, as well as being given opportunities to be trusted.
Based on the findings from these 10,000 voices, we’ve put together five recommendations to help social care professionals put children’s wellbeing at the heart of the care system:
- Listen to children in care’s views – all local authorities should ensure they have mechanisms for capturing how their children in care feel about their lives in the areas that are important to them.
- Children’s rights and co-production – local authorities should co-produce service improvements with children to address issues they say would make their lives better.
- Make life good – services should have mechanisms to address the areas that children and young people say are important to them. The issues that are most important are outlined in the report.
- Build trust – the care system must put trusting relationships at its heart.
- Recognise difference – professionals should be mindful of the wellbeing concerns of different groups of children in care and how identity can impact on wellbeing.
We’ve also created a new resource bank with some great examples of how local authorities have developed their services in response to the survey findings, for other professionals to draw upon.
We believe that whether measuring the impact of new policy initiatives or planning the care for individual children, the focus should always be on what children in care say makes their lives good.
