Josh MacAlister MP
Member of Parliament for Whitehaven and WorkingtonAuthor of the Independent Review for Children’s Social Care
When I chaired the Government’s Independent Review of Children’s Social Care in 2022 it became clear to me that children’s social care needs a complete reset. The Government now face a huge opportunity to reform the social care system, changing the lives of tens of thousands of children and families and saving the state billions of pounds in the future costs of failure. Seizing that opportunity requires pre-emptive investment and forward-thinking policy.
The Current Social Care System
I began my career as a teacher and witnessed first-hand the impact an overwhelmed social care system is having on children in care. The experience of growing up in care is one of the greatest disadvantages someone can face. Those who’ve grown up in care are 70% more likely to die early.
Under the status quo, the system will continue in a negative loop of increasing costs and poorer outcomes. Early and intensive support for families has been hollowed out. Child protection is overwhelmed. The current system has overlooked family networks like grandparents, aunts and uncles despite them often being the best option to raise a child when parents are struggling. These factors mean we’re on course to have 100,000 children in care by the early 2030s.
Reviewing Social Care
Witnessing this first-hand motivated me to start the charity Frontline to address recruitment issues within children’s social care. My work in the sector led to the Government asking me to chair a “once in a generation review” to think again about how we support families in crisis and care for children who can’t stay with their parents.
After a 14 month process of listening to thousands of children, parents, relatives and carers, the final report set out a detailed and costed plan to transform the system. The overriding message from this review was that loving relationships hold the solution to caring for children and that we need to reset the social care system so that it can do this.
In their response to my review, the previous Government accepted this conclusion. The strategy they developed, “Stable Homes, Built on Love”, moved us in the right direction. But the reforms they committed to were too timid to deliver the radical change needed.
New Opportunities for Social Care
With the new Labour government comes the opportunity to ramp up our ambition. October’s spending review is an opportunity for the Government to tackle one of Britain’s largest but least talked about problems. Delivering the changes set out in my review will both improve life outcomes for the most vulnerable and end the cycle of rising cost pressures.
The plan would involve expanding the roll out of a new approach to intensive family help so that more areas across England get access to reform and investment. It would include legislating to provide kinship carers with support so that more children can live well with their own families, in turn preventing more children entering an overwhelmed care system. And it would include new care standards and the introduction of Regional Care Cooperatives.
Some of this change will not require large sums of money. For example, making care experience a protected characteristic in equalities legislation would be a landmark change for those who grew up in care and would profoundly change the way services and society behaves towards this remarkable but extremely disadvantaged community.
What Next for Social Care?
Taking transformational action now will cost money but it will save the taxpayer soon after. When I published the review in 2022, the annual cost of our children’s social care system was due to rise from £10 to £15bn per year. Current trends show that we are on track to see these cost increases. More importantly 30,000 more children could be living safely and thriving with their families by 2032.
I know that new Ministers are committed to this issue and want to see dramatic change in the children’s social care system, a key way of breaking down barriers to opportunity at every stage. There are thousands of care experienced people, kinship families, parents, foster carers and practitioners who are hopeful for change and stand ready to help make it happen.
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