National Care Leaver Asks

National Care Leavers week provides a vital opportunity to acknowledge the success and achievements of care leavers, whilst also raising awareness of the ongoing challenges our young people face as they transition from care. 

As Corporate Parents, it is councils’ job to ensure those in care and care leavers have the best possible start in life and to prepare and support them as they take the first steps into independence. 

Whilst councils demonstrate a wealth of good practice every day when supporting care leavers, and are working to improve their support, there is also a need to consider changes that can be implemented on a wider, national level, that councils alone cannot deliver. 

Our ‘National Care Leaver Asks’ set out the programme of change we urge the government to consider, to guarantee a more consistent offer for care leavers across the country and continue promoting the best possible outcomes for our children leaving care.

Councils continue to face rising costs in children’s social care, which has a direct impact on their ability to provide the services children and young people need. This is despite councils protecting children’s social care spending at the expense of most other services, increasing budgets by 13.6 per cent (£1.5 billion) in 2023/24 alone.

While there is significant good practice in the system, councils can only do so much in the face of dwindling resources, growing demand and spiralling costs. 

To truly improve outcomes for children and families, it is imperative that the Government provides greater funding certainty for councils through multi-year settlements and urgent investment in children’s social care. This should be accompanied by work to accelerate action to fix the broken care market, rebalance the system back towards providing early help, and recruit, retain and support a high-quality workforce.  

Leaving care and living independently for the first time can be daunting. As young people step out on their own, they face new responsibilities, including managing their own finances. Care leavers are more financially vulnerable than their peers, with a survey by the National Leaving Care Benchmarking Forum in 2022 finding that 83 per cent of care experienced young people were struggling to afford essentials.

A nationally funded council tax exemption for those leaving care up to the age of 25 is one of the most direct and effective ways to prevent care leavers from falling into financial hardship when they are starting out.

While many councils already have exemptions or reductions in place, a national exemption would ensure there is a consistent offer across the country and lessen the ‘postcode lottery’ for care leavers, including for care leavers who live outside of their ‘home’ council. 

Whilst councils are doing all they can to provide care leavers with high-quality, affordable accommodation that meets their needs, including prioritising them for social housing, local areas across the country are facing acute challenges in the supply, quality and affordability of housing. 

Access to suitable and affordable housing in the social and private rental sector (PRS) is a challenge across the country. We are facing a significant shortage of social housing; the best way to address this is by giving councils the powers and resources to build affordable homes their communities need. This includes reform of Right to Buy to support one for one replacement of existing social housing to avoid continued net loss of stock, and a long-term sustainable funding framework for social housing to ensure that councils have the ability to invest in and regenerate their housing stock, and to fulfil local and national ambitions of ensuring that everyone has access to a safe, secure and high-quality home.

Care leavers face additional challenges to access housing, including the need for large upfront deposits, rent payments or guarantors, and are particularly vulnerable to becoming homeless. A survey by the National Leaving Care Benchmarking Forum in December 2022 found that 31 percent of care leavers they surveyed were at risk of homelessness due to financial hardship, whilst an estimated 26 per cent of the homeless population have care experience. 

The government must deliver long-awaited reforms of the private rental sector to improve security, fairness and quality and ensure councils are properly resourced to deliver social housing, as part of their work to guarantee that all care leavers have access to safe and affordable housing.

Fully covering the cost of “Staying Put” placements would support care leavers to remain with their foster family until 21, rather than 18, and to ensure that foster carers feel supported (including financially) to offer this. Current funding is only allocated on an annual basis and does not cover the cost of placements, and as payments to foster carers decrease when a child turns 18, this puts placements at risk. The Fostering Network found that in almost a quarter of cases where a young person could not stay put, it was because foster carers could not afford it. 

 

We welcomed the commitment to bring forward legislation to make Staying Close a national entitlement, and for both Staying Put and Staying Close to support young people up to age 23, alongside the funding for Staying Close from 2023-25. 

The Staying Close model supports young people leaving residential care, where councils provide a bespoke package of support and move-on accommodation. Evaluations have demonstrated positive outcomes, including reducing the likelihood of eviction, improving wellbeing and increasing engagement in education, employment or training (EET).

As Staying Close funding comes to an end in March 2025, the government should look to expand this to be fully funded as a national entitlement, to ensure that all care leavers have access to the same support across the country. 

We continue to call on the Home Office to fully cover the costs of placements and support for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) and former-UASC care leavers, who now make up 26 per cent of all care leavers aged 19-21. The Home Office pays councils between £41,610 and £52,195 per year to support UAS children, but this drops to £14,040 per year when the young person turns 18. Many councils have raised that this does not cover the cost of supporting former-UASC care leavers, and we continue to urge the government for funding to cover the costs of the support young people need.

Analysis from the Children’s Society found that although some care leavers may be entitled to free prescriptions due to receiving benefits, in practice it can be difficult for them to know they are eligible and apply. 

To improve the consistency of support for care leavers across the country, a national exemption for prescriptions, NHS dental treatment, and optician costs (the provision of sight tests and optical vouchers), for all care leavers up to the age of 25 could help to alleviate financial pressures and help to ensure no care leaver goes without access to services they need to stay healthy due to financial hardship.

As the government has recognised, other organisations can, and should, play a greater role in delivering and improving support for care leavers. The impact of this approach is demonstrated in Scotland, with corporate parenting responsibilities expanded to 24 organisations by law in 2014. Extending the responsibility has established a broader culture of support for care leavers across the country, with each organisation responsible for, and evaluated on, their corporate parenting plan. For example, Sport Scotland have expressed a commitment to give priority access to jobs for care leavers and made care experience a key factor when determining funding for sports coaching qualifications. It is a positive and hopeful step forward to expand and improve the support available for our young people leaving care. 

As councils alone do not possess all the levers to affect change, expanding corporate parenting responsibilities to other organisations would ensure a wider commitment to improving outcomes and could help in tackling broader challenges for care leavers, for example, the 41 per cent of 19-21 year old care leavers that are not in education, employment or training (NEET) and improving access to healthcare.

The Step Ahead campaign showcases best practice for councils delivering support to care leavers.