Who are children in care?
"We use the term ‘children in care’ to refer to those children and young people who are looked after by the local authority. A looked after child is a child who is provided with accommodation by a local authority in exercise of its social services functions or who is in its care under a care order."
Taken from 'The Children Act 1989' section 22.
There are around 60,000 children in care at any one time, around 0.5% of all children. However, during the course of a year as many as 85,000 children will spend time in care. Amongst these around 3,000 are unaccompanied asylum seeking children.
Approximately 70% of all children in care are in foster care, 10% in residential care (children’s homes, hostels and residential schools) and 9% are placed with members of their families or with their parents. The remainder are in pre-adoption or more specialist placements.
These children and young people are as diverse as any group of young people. They will include those:
- across the full range of attainments at all ages/stages, including those with learning difficulties and those who are gifted and talented
- with disabilities, sensory impairments or ill health
- who have difficulties in aspects of communication
- from different cultures and religions and from different social groups.
However, they all have in common disrupted lives and whilst some individual children in care do well, as a group they have some of the worst outcomes of any children.
In 2008, 14 per cent of looked-after children achieved five A*-C grades at GCSE, compared to 65.3 per cent for all children. Because looked-after children achieve significantly poorer educational outcomes than all children it is a major priority of Government to narrow this gap.
The Department for Education (DfE) business plan for 2011-2015 commits to narrowing the gap in educational attainment and to publishing annually information about the achievement of vulnerable children:
‘Narrowing the gap in educational attainment: the achievement of children from different backgrounds or in different circumstances in comparison to the overall average (for example, children on free school meals, children with special educational needs, children in care)
…….. broken down by age 11 & 16 by school, local authority and nationally; Age 19 by local authority and nationally; higher education by local authority’
(DfE Business Plan 2011 – 2015)
Young people in care are also more likely to begin to lead independent lives much earlier than other young people, at an age when few young people are socially and emotionally mature. This means that they may be making financial decisions much earlier than children who have not been looked after by the local authority.
That is why it is essential that personal finance education for children in care is a priority. pfeg’s work has also shown that it can be a powerful vehicle for raising standards in English and mathematics. Children find learning about money a relevant and motivating context for mathematical skills.
