Court decisions will damage councils
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Two recent court rulings on duty of care for young people could undermine working relationships between social services and housing departments, says London Councils.
In the first case in May, the House of Lords granted an appeal on behalf of a 17-year-old Somali refugee against Southwark council, which had decided the teenager did not qualify for care under section 20 of the Children’s Act 1989.
This followed a case last year, where the Lords said Hammersmith & Fulham council’s social services department should have provided care for a 16-year-old girl instead of housing her in a string of temporary accommodation.
A survey by London councils after the recent ruling – which had 25 responses – has concluded this could mean an extra £400k to £2.4million of costs to each London borough every year.
It found social services in smaller boroughs could be dealing with an extra 20 to 30 young people on top of their current cases, and more than 100 for larger boroughs.
One council thought nearly 500 young people would be affected. Sixteen to 17 year olds who present themselves as homeless, the report says, are entitled to income support and housing benefit. If they are taken into care, the council must meet their living and accommodation costs.
The findings, released at the umbrella-groups Leaders’ Committee this month, also said: ‘The agreements and protocols between children’s services and housing departments are currently working well across London; homeless young people benefit from a joint approach and expertise from both areas.
‘There is a risk that in the light of this judgement, hard pushed housing departments wishing to make budget reductions will no longer take responsibility for either the assessment or provision duties for this group of young people.
’There are various structural arrangements to support these protocols. For example, many boroughs have social workers based in specialist teams within housing departments, where the team makes a joint assessment of need, and on this basis provides housing and additional support as required. This will be undermined by the new arrangements.’
The report also suggests this will put added pressure on overstretched social service departments which ‘will have significant implications on a number of performance indicators’.
London Council’s is considering calling for the Local Government Association to take the issue up with the Department for Children Schools and Families.
Readers' comments (10)
Joe Halewood | Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:13 GMT
Or in very simple terms, social service departments have been acting unlawfully to young people and trying to pass the buck (and costs) onto homeless departments. Now they have been found out in law they moan about it!
And it conveniently forgets that the costs that have been passed previously to council housing departments will be saved.
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karen | Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:44 GMT
I'm not sure which I find more depressing - the fact there are so many 16/17 year olds who need caring for or the fact that the best we can do it find temporary accomodation. Are our families/communities this broken?
I was 17 when I was forced to go it alone and rent a private room. It was soul destroying. As a mother I cant imagine the emotion of watching my child leave and I hope I never have to.
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Maggz | Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:14 GMT
The family structure is so broken down within our society that it is no wonder we see so many homeless young people. Society has gone from one extreme to the other in accepting various family structures behaviours. At what point did it become acceptable for biological parents to take side with their new partner against their own child and evict them from their family home? At what point did it become acceptable for any parent to throw a young person out of their home when they disagree so that the local authority has to deal with them rather than being responsible for their child and reaching a compromise? Perhaps if we prosecuted parents who shirk their responsiblity (which should be a feasible option given that in England & Wales a person is not an adult until they reach 18) when they refuse to care for their under 18 child we might have fewer homeless young people? Of course there will be some young people who cannot remain in the family home for reasons of safety, in those cases the Children & Young People's dept is the correct service to deal with their needs.
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Joe Halewood | Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:59 GMT
"‘The agreements and protocols between children’s services and housing departments are currently working well across London; homeless young people benefit from a joint approach and expertise from both area"
They may be working well but they are working well for whom? The SSDs who save massively by - unlawfully as it is now seen - simply believing this is a housing problem and not a child in need issue.
If the current joint expertise (between 2 depts from the same council) is workign well and correctly, then why is it going to cost more under these new arrangements. It can ONLY be that SSDs do try to see 16 and 17 year-olds (and some up to 21 under the Children Act) are not their responsibility but housings. The same SSDs know they will have to spend resources supporting and caring for young people properly with assessments and meting their needs rather than simply saying "...its a housing issue not a ssd one."
In reality these extra cost they claim will be incurred are the same cost they have been getting away with for years and because they cant get awy with it any longer - thanks to those bloody interfering judges !
Fo too long young people have been seen as less important for social services than other 'client groups.' These judgments need to change SSDs prejudicial thinking rather than scaremongering over costs to support their long-held age discrimination.
The article goes on:-
"‘There is a risk that in the light of this judgement, hard pushed housing departments wishing to make budget reductions will no longer take responsibility for either the assessment or provision duties for this group of young people"
Recent court cases have shown that social services should take the lead on assessments as they have the higher priority. So this verbatim extract shows definitively that SSDs are unwilling to change to conformn to the law and wish to remain in the little discriminatory bubble of "we've always done it this way."
Stop bleating and get on with what you are supposed to do according to the law!
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karen | Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:17 GMT
I should add I meant my child leaving before they reach 18. I'd prefer they stay home til after that but I think I'd be called overprotective!!!
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Peter | Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:34 GMT
This is very distressing that the future generation of this nation are facing such
problems which incidentally will affect us all.
My own experience with SSD has always been dire. They always looking for ways to pass the buck and I am pleased with what the courts have established. It seems that Housing departments are now responsible for taking care of all society's social-ills!
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Andre James Verazzo | Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:53 GMT
Reality is truly becoming a rare commodity in the world of the organisation London Councils. Having worked at several local authorities in London I'm sure I will share this experience (not view) with many reading the article.
We all know, whether we are housing/homelessness or social services professionals, that the statement 'children’s services and housing departments are currently working well across London; homeless young people benefit from a joint approach and expertise from both areas' could only be from a person or people not working at the front line of service provision for this client group. It simply isn't, and has not been, the case.
Having managed a joint assessment process I have seen there are instances whereby social services and housing work together at least on the initial assessment of these young people. However, the two main pieces of legislation (Children Act for Social Services and the Homelessness legislation for Housing) are at odds in what they demand of practitioners. Attempts at joint working can only possibly be successful with the understanding and buy-in of senior managers in the respective departments. In reality, in practice, this simply does not happen.
It just might be that a statutory nudge in the direction of Social Services will be very helpful and a wake up call. And, instead of London Councils' wishful thinking that the departments are working well together, it will be enforced practice that will in the end get the desired outcome.
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Jim Paton | Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:55 GMT
"..homeless young people benefit from a joint approach and expertise from both areas. "
And that would be expertise in what, exactly? "Gatekeeping?"
It's pathetic that the response to a ruling which finds that a LOCAL AUTHORITY (and by implication many other local authorities) is failing in its statutory duties to young people should result in this outbreak of internal squabbling and politicking. A local authority is a single, undivided, entity. Its internal arrangement into departments carrying out its various statutory functions is an administrative matter of little relevance to those outside, and certainly not to the courts.
The reasons why these and many other young people are being so badly failed are no doubt multiple and varied, and money must be one of them. However, I find it hard to believe these fiefdoms, operating as if they were power centres in their own right (which they are not), each developing and clinging to distinct cultures and competing over turf and budgets, don't have some thing to do with it, too.
Many councils like to bandy around the word "corporate". If that unattractive and alienating term -a "boo" word if ever there was one- means anything at all beyond logos and fees for PR and design consultants, it surely means some heads being banged together.
Yes, it's hard to do what you've got to do with the money you've got. Lots of us, including many council workers at the bottom of the hierarchy, experience those problems every day. Time to stop moaning and get on with it. If you really do need more money to do it properly, you will have widespread support. If you carry on the narrow, compartmentalised whining exemplified above, you won't.
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Niki Goss | Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:35 GMT
well said Jim Paton!
it has allbeen about gatekeeping from the need to give ongoing suport to these very vulnerable people over and above just ther provision of housing and to avoid giving ongoing support until 21 or if still needing it to 24.
as duty solicitor, i see many cases of failed tenancies where such gatekeeping has taken place and ongoing support hasbeen needed.
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cain | Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:04 GMT
Jim, you are on the ball as always but not entirely right on two counts;
1) Children's/social services departments are not always the same authority as the housing authority. And
2)some housing departments have specialist 16/17yr old "front line" workers very connected to the support services and resources young people need when they move into hostels and other types of supported housing - such as accessing funds in emergencies, and navigating the complex benefits mazes, training and education allowances and so forth.
Social workers are also rubbish at family mediation - frequently assessing abusive extended family accommodation as suitable, or painting a frightening picture of the consequences of a parent's child being "taken into care" and "placed into a foster home" and "losing your parental rights" - rarely mentioning the positives - a regular income for your child, pathway plan to 21, Housing Priority Need from 18 - 21 ongoing family support, etc. etc
In my central London Local authority social workers are now completely messing up benefits claims for their new 16/17 yr old clients due to a complete lack of expertise in dealing with evidence of estrangement, backdating of benefits, calculating child benefit extension periods, eligibilty criteria for Income support or JSA, the new ESA regime, setting up bank accounts, procuring client ID, obtaiing crisis loans etc etc. These social worker simply don't have the training or experience.
Course none of that would matter if my LA was accepting a section 20 duty via a "framework assessment" completed within 35 days.
The assessments are taking longer ("the client has not responded to my letter last week inviting them in for an assessment at 10am Thursday"; well, they are TEENAGERS and they may not remember the info or even read the letter and anyway they won't have the money to get to your office or credit on their mobile to ask for an appointment which isn't during their favourite sleeping hours. The young person is frequently assessed as "not a child in need" as guess what their hostel keyworker can do EVERYTHING for them. Case Closed! Business as Usual is achieved. Only a few section 17 quids have been spent and the client ends up in exactly the same hostel bed she would have been referred to by the housing department anyway.
Children's departments are scared witless about the perceived costs of this "NEW LAW" (it isn't) rather than the money that society will be saving as a properly supported teenager will not have to shoplift for food or break into buildings to sleep, might even complete their educashun and get a job and pay taxes etc. etc.
Third sector hostel and supported housing providers on the other hand should be looking forward to less rent arrears (LAC kids rent paid on time and regularly by social services, not HB depts) and better through flow - care leavers that want to rent privately at 18 or older are not subject to the age discriminatory single room rents - thus can access the Holy Grail for hostel dwellers - their own flat, rather than a private rented flatshare. I am not naive enough to think that the extra points carew leavers get for CBL bidding will survive as the increasing numbers of care leaving kids will mean heavier demand for supply and that will inevitably be managed by "managing cazre leavers into the private rented sector as happens in many a LA already especially out of London).
My LA has only recently reluctantly agreed to drop "lets carry on as normal" most probably due to the imminence of legal challenge. Curiously there has so far been little increase in section 20 duties being accepted. The legal challenges are warmly anticipated by a number of front line staff...
It's not just about the money - there's some empathy missing too among Social work managers. If these 16/17 yr olds have not been placed in care in their primary school years, it's not fair to approach social services as they must be simply be naughty teenagers deliberately seeking eviction by their loving mums. A similar petualnce from managers as can be displayed by this challenging client group!
As for housing departments - yes, gatekeeping has been the name of the main game. My LA almost never ever housed a teenager under Part 7 Housing Act - we almost invariably "prevented homelessness" (i.e. do not take an application) and referred teenagers to Supported People funded third sector agencies. Now, of course, the gate is well and truly shut - the sign may say Homeless Person Unit but it isn't for you, teenager - you have to go to a different office. Yet again creating another merry go round of offices for the hapless homeless teenager to navigate.
DCSF should be publishing statutory guidance any time now and I think where local authorities already have extensive Hostels Pathway Models for young people their may be attempts to squeeze huge numbers of teenagers into the category Baroness Hale described as suitable for only a few - those young people who are adequately supported by "friends" or have the life experience and "support" to be able to thrive without looked after services. It should actually be obvious that hostel keyworkers are not parents or social workers and cannot be epexted to take a lead role in achieving ECM outcomes for their clients.
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