Children's social services and care rates in Wales: A survey of the sector

Abstract

Wales has seen a rise in both the number and rate of children looked after. The rate is now higher than any time since the 1980s. In addition, Wales has consistently had more children looked after per 10,000 of the population than the rest of the UK. This trend is a cause for concern; particularly the impact on the outcomes of children who are taken into care in terms of educational attainment, health, unemployment, homelessness, and criminal justice. Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic is expected to have worsened the situation. To understand better the factors influencing care rates, the Welsh Government commissioned the Wales Centre for Public Policy and the Centre for Children’s Social Care Research and Development (CASCADE) at Cardiff University to undertake a survey with the children’s social care (CSC) workforce.

Why are there higher rates of children looked after in Wales?

“…Whilst the variation in rates within Wales does correlate with deprivation to an extent, the considerable variation between areas suggests variation in practice. Evidence from a survey of Welsh practitioners (Forrester et al, 2022) supports this, in finding that social worker values were associated with care rates.…”

“…There are, of course, limitations to the analysis presented in the paper. Variation within Wales has not been included, because this is covered elsewhere (Elliott, 2017;Hodges and Bristow, 2019;Hodges, 2020;Forrester et al, 2022). Only aggregate data have been available, and Wales has a relatively small number of local authorities, which limits the analytical potential.…”