Hansard

I will provide some context about my role. I am the strategic policy implementation manager at the new centre for excellence for looked-after children in Scotland, or CELCIS. For the past year, I have also been the programme manager for the looked-after children strategic implementation group, or LACSIG. I bring an understanding of that group’s work, including its consideration of work on the educational attainment of looked-after children.I want to consider five key themes that are pivotal in the inquiry: focusing support where it is more required; care planning for young people; the designated manager’s role in respect of looked-after children; support for families; and throughcare and aftercare. I will talk briefly about each of those themes, if that is okay.On focusing support where it is most required, we acknowledge that there has been progress on educational outcomes for looked-after children. There have been initiatives such as the we can and must do better initiative and roles for designated managers, which have resulted in a significant improvement in the understanding of education staff of their responsibilities and looked-after children’s needs. There has been progress, particularly on school attendance and the educational achievement of looked-after children in foster care and residential care, but we need to focus our attention on children who are looked after at home, as that area is very resistant to change. That seems to be where the real challenge is.The new mechanism for reporting on the educational attainment of looked-after children is much more robust and analytical than the old one, and that has allowed us to focus on where support is required for children who are looked after at home and on the move from primary school to secondary school, which is where the real divergence in attainment between looked-after and non-looked-after children happens. I urge the committee to say that the role of designated managers in schools, for example, needs to be considered and that we need to focus our attention on that.Attendance is the key to attainment. The research tells us that where there is good attendance, there is good attainment. Children who are looked after at home have the lowest attendance of all looked-after children. We urge the committee to consider the role of quality improvement officers in local authorities, who should perhaps have a more rigorous role in looking at the attendance of looked-after children.I will make one more point about attendance. From working with stakeholders, I know that they are really concerned that there is no way of monitoring the significant number of looked-after young people who appear to be in part-time education. It might look as though their attendance has been full, but that might relate to a timetable of one or two days. A more rigorous attempt to quantify attendance is needed. If some young people cannot cope with a full curriculum, we must consider alternative ways of building in a full curriculum for them around other activities that can build their self-esteem and resilience.There has been huge improvement with respect to children’s plans. We know that all looked-after children now have a plan, but where we fall down with our getting it right for every child approach is in the fact that much better co-ordination of services in those plans is still needed. Does the social work plan reflect the importance of educational outcomes? Do teachers know what the care plan looks like? Communication about parts of plans should be better.The other key thing that the research tells us is that the assessments need to be much more focused on outcomes. That is also reflected in comments by the Social Work Inspection Agency and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education. We are very good at assessing what the problems are, but we are not good at saying what we will do about them. What are the roles of everybody with corporate parenting responsibilities in that regard? That should be rigorously monitored.On children’s plans, we know that stability in a care placement is important for educational outcomes. I am sure that the committee will want to come back to that issue, on which my colleague from the Fostering Network Scotland will give it more evidence. We know that, if young people have a number of placements, that really disrupts their educational attainment. We need to consider how to co-ordinate all the services so that there is stability in care placements and in relation to health. That will improve educational outcomes.A child’s plan has significant implications for pre-qualifying and post-qualifying training for staff. We know that some of the reviews, such as the Donaldson review, have said that teachers need many more opportunities to work with their colleagues in pre-qualifying roles so that they understand what multidisciplinary work looks like when they are training and can put that understanding into practice.We see the designated manager role as pivotal in improving the educational outcomes of looked-after children, but we think that designated managers need to take on a greater role and that their roles and responsibilities need to be clearer. Teachers need to know not only who the looked-after children are in their school, but how they should lead on innovative practice with those children.There is still some confusion, particularly in secondary schools, about who needs to know what about children and young people. Although we recognise the need to uphold confidentiality requirements, it is clear that teachers cannot work effectively with looked-after children unless they know who those children are and what the issues are.The research tells us that that becomes even more pivotal in secondary school, when a number of different teachers are involved. Children tend to feel less secure in that environment. The role of a designated manager is to ensure that teaching staff take a consistent approach and are informed about looked-after children with regard to behaviour triggers and the challenges that those children face.We emphasise that support for family and carers is pivotal to improving educational outcomes for children who are looked after at home. We know that for a significant number of looked-after children, the ecology of their backgrounds involves parental substance misuse and mental health difficulties, poverty and neglect. It is important that teachers understand how trauma and neglect might impact on the ability of children and young people to manage their education and to manage themselves in an educational setting.We need to consider what works in engaging with parents and carers. We know that early work on literacy and language is important, but many of the parents are not aware of their own literacy levels. It can be a great challenge for them, if there are huge issues around poverty and domestic violence, to work on a one-to-one basis with their children on language and literacy early on. More research is needed on what constitutes effective intervention with families.My colleagues in the looked-after children division in the Scottish Government are producing a rigorous and detailed plan for throughcare and aftercare support. Many looked-after children will finish their education at 16, but we need to support them through that period to adulthood.The research is beginning to tell us that many young people and looked-after children who do not do well at school often use further education as a way back in, but there is a huge drop-out rate. The plan that my colleagues have put together demonstrates that we need to do much more work with residential units, foster carers and the further education sector on how we support adults who were previously looked-after children and who come back into the education system at FE level.There are some issues around FE funding at present, but FE is one of the keys to ensuring that even if young people do not do well at school, we can support them later in life to come back to education.