1. I have no link with, nor am I sponsored or supported by any group, business or charity to take a particular point of view. My focus is always to promote the voices & interests of children in care & care experienced people. That sometimes requires blunt questions being asked >
2. For example, if as Ofsted repeatedly suggest, the overwhelming majority of children's homes or care providers are good or better & only a tiny minority are poor, why do other statistics show a disproportionate percentage of care leavers struggling once they leave care? >
3. Why are young care experienced people so prominent in the juvenile & adult justice systems? Homeless? Unemployed? Not in higher education? Struggling financially? Under supported by ongoing positive relationships? If care provision is so good, why does it fail so many?
4. Some will blame individual pathology - we care experienced people fail more than other folk because we are so traumatised by events (usually before care I notice, so no responsibility falls on the system,) that we sadly fail in spite of wonderful care. I don't buy that at all>
5. if that was true, why do so many care experienced people do so well in their late 20's & later life? I suggest because they have to use the time from 18 onwards to sort out the mess they are left in when "care leaves them" as Lemn Sissay says>
6. Children's homes & care settings may score well against Ofsted standards because they are based on meeting statutory requirements & professionally defined "best practice" whilst kids are in placements. No recognition of the reality of the care experience known to young people>
7. To use a saying I've used many times before, if care provision is considered good or better but a large number of kids leaving care struggle on leaving care, then we are saying that 'the operation was a success but the patient died'. I'm not having that at all.
8. The idea that the quality of care offered by any provision that cares for kids 24/7, 7 days a week, 365 days a year can be judged with any degree of accuracy by two, sometimes one inspection a year is almost laughable. >
9. We can accurately regulate care provision (although not in my view, judge its quality in any dynamic living way) by completely revising how regulation is delivered to make it led by young people & more reflective of the care experience. That would call for radical change.>
10. If we are truly interested in "outcomes", they must be judged by the young people themselves, sometimes long after they've left a placement. Care's a continuum with the child needing care from all in 'the village". Sadly, the village is a long way from offering such care>
11. How to shape care to meet need, & how to regulate that care, are massive questions that need a book not a few tweets. They must be core questions of an independent Care Review that is prepared to put children at its centre. I look forward to sharing thoughts with that Review.
