Staff survey informs future of care services - by Robert Armour, Third Force News (TFN)

9 September 2024
by Robert Armour

Frontline staff's views are being actioned by leading children's charity

A new report by Action for Children highlights views of its front-line staff on children’s residential homes. 

And the charity is calling for action on key areas where faster reform is needed.

Through focus groups and staff surveys of residential care and short breaks workers the feedback identified best practices children need.

However, the charity says too often poor matching and lack of funding impact on children's experience.

The report found that good matching is vital to ensuring children have good care experiences and achieve good outcomes, but continued lack of sustainable funding for homes and carers – especially when children turn 18 years old – affects the quality and choice available.

It calls for national and local government, supported by the third sector, to accelerate commissioning process reform to provide enough time for every young person to be matched with the right home for as long as they need it.

Also the charity is calling for sustainable long-term funding to make sure the right homes are available with professional, caring, and loving staff who can build relationships with young people.

And it wants better advocacy access and consultation processes to ensure the voices of those care experienced children and young people with disabilities are heard, listened to and acted on. 

Fiona Steel, national director for Scotland at Action for Children, said: “Every child deserves a safe, loving and supportive home. The fact one in five children say they don’t feel love is heartbreaking and doesn’t give them the foundations to thrive, both in childhood and later life.

“We’ve listened to our front-line staff, and it’s clear that while Scotland is making progress on system change to offer care experienced children more safe and loving homes, we need faster reform.

“We need to see better long-term planning in where children and young people can call home so that residential homes can be well-matched to their specific needs, and ensure that children and young people with disabilities get access to specialist advocacy support, ensuring that their voice is at the heart of all decisions affecting them.

“With a strong track record providing high-quality residential care, we work in partnership with partners, local and national government right across Scotland with a reaffirmed commitment to help make this change happen.

“Despite pressure on public spending, we need to remember investment into well matched residential care for children isn’t only a service – it’s their childhood, their right and in turn nurturing the next generation of our country.”

It follows new UK-wide polling by the charity which reveals more than nine in 10 (91%) care-experienced adults in the UK felt lonely and isolated during their time as a child in care – with nearly one in five (18%) reporting having felt like this all the time.

While two thirds (66%) of the care-experienced 18–44-year-olds polled said they had a generally positive experience of their homes in care, nearly three in 10 (28%) had a negative experience, nearly one in four (23%) said they didn’t feel at home, and one in five (20%) didn’t feel loved by their carers.