A summary of Ofsted's "Edging away from care: how services successfully prevent young people entering care"
NSPCC briefing
December 2011
This briefing contains a summary of the key issues from Ofsted's report
Edging away from care: how services successfully prevent young people entering care (PDF).
The report looks at how services in 11 local authorities and their partner agencies successfully prevented young people entering care.
It draws on the experiences of 43 families identified as having had successful outcomes to see which interventions they felt were most effective. Case studies are used to illustrate good practice.
Findings
The report's key findings showed:
- all the families were very clear that the support had made a difference in their lives; many wished that they could have accessed these services earlier
- all 11 local authorities were committed to preventative rather than reactive services
- good outcomes included: keeping children out of care; better parent-child relationships; better, more confident parenting; better home environment; and improved health and self esteem.
Features of successful services
The most important factor in achieving success appeared to be the quality of the relationship between the key professional and the family.
Families particularly valued workers': honesty, including being open about what needed to change; persistence and reliability; non-judgemental approach; and being there when needed.
Other common themes include:
- flexibility, with successful services being responsive to the needs of the family as a whole and involving a variety of creative intervention programmes. They were also there when needed, including out of hours support
- focusing on a family's strengths as well as their weaknesses, building confidence and self esteem
- clear models and methods of intervention which enable professionals to be more confident and informed, and create better, more clearly defined outcomes for the young person and family. The clarity of the model was found to be more important than the model itself
- strong multi-agency working
- clarity and consistency around referral pathways and decision making processes
- a clear plan to address the ongoing support needs of young people and their families following the intervention.
Problems
The report highlighted some of the problems faced by agencies:
- inconsistency in the methods local authorities used to identify and measure success meant that outcomes were not always clear or effectively captured
- it was not always clear how or why the decision to keep a child out of care had been made
- there was often inconsistency in authorities' approach to calculating cost savings.
Recommendations
The report recommends that local authorities and partner agencies ensure:
- referral pathways and thresholds are clearly defined
- case records clearly record the outcomes
- the family's ongoing support needs are assessed when an intervention ends
- consistent criteria and measures for outcomes and cost effectiveness are agreed.
Reference
Ofsted (2011)
Edging away from care: how services successfully prevent young people entering care (PDF). London: Ofsted.
NSPCC resources
Looked after childrenInformation, statistics, help and advice on looked after children, one of the NSPCC's priorities.
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Families with multiple needsAn NSPCC training course for professionals working in families where there is domestic abuse, parental mental ill-health or substance misuse.
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