CHILDCARE WELFARE & SAFE GUARDING PRACTICE

Childcare Welfare and Safe Guarding Practice

Childcare Welfare and Safe Guarding Practice

Introduction

The objective of this report is to provide information on the costs of current arrangements for the education of looked after children (LAC) and the benefits of improving their educational outcomes and other life chances The report brings together evidence from published sources, research on the education of children in care and outcomes from care, findings from the British Birth Cohort Studies and theoretical and empirical work on the wider benefits of learning The low attainment of LAC is well documented. Two parallel lines of research are identified: one emphasizes the disadvantaged status of LAC pre-care, the other highlights deficiencies in the care and education systems The estimates in Chapter 3 take account of both points of view by providing upper and lower bound estimates of potential savings in public expenditure There is a lack of evidence on what works in raising educational standards for LAC because they are not seen as a discrete group within the education system and outcome data have only been collected for two years Government targets for increasing the proportion of children with qualifications and higher-level GCSE passes are unlikely to be met without radical changes in the care and education systems. The gap between LAC and average attainment remains extremely large. Education costs fall into a number of different categories. It has only been possible to estimate some of these as no national data are available. Reasons for the low attainment of LAC have been clearly identified by researchers and inspectors. They include failures in corporate parenting, low expectations, placement instability, care environments unhelpful to education, exclusion or diversion from mainstream schooling, discrimination, and neglect of basic skills Higher levels of education are strongly associated with many positive outcomes, such as good health, lifelong learning, regular employment, less involvement in crime, better parenting, active ageing and civic engagement.

Study Design

Two methods of calculating these costs were adopted. The first method was to estimate effects of LAC status on particular outcomes for which information is available and to model the implications of negative outcomes in these areas where reliable cost information is readily available. In the first method, we use the British birth cohort studies to estimate the relations between LAC status and particular adult outcomes, such as crime and health. These availability constraints have meant that the survey of outcomes considered is limited to crime, health and worklessness. Our second approach is to focus more directly on educational failure and to model the link from educational failure to negative outcomes. To do this we draw on the more detailed work commissioned by the DfESThe second method is to use available work on the costs of being 'NEET' (not in education, employment or training) (SPRU, 2002 Pp. 123) and match in the effects of LAC on being NEET. This uses more robust and wide-ranging cost data but under-estimates the LAC effect which is greater than that of being ...