All of Us, We are One: Policy in Practice celebrates National Care Leavers’ Week

This week is National Care Leavers’ Week, celebrating care leavers and shining a spotlight on improvements needed in the care system. The theme for this year’s National Care Leavers’ Week focuses on the strength of the care-experienced community and the value of making connections: “All of Us, We are One”.

Just under 14,000 young people across England and Wales leave care every year, and every one of them deserves to have a supportive experience of leaving care and becoming independent. Sadly, this is not always the case.

At Policy in Practice, we support care leavers by raising awareness of their different financial entitlements through our award winning Better Off Calculator, and our safeguarding platform, MAST, the Multi Agency Safeguarding Tracker. We want to make more corporate parents and the care-experienced community aware of the support we can offer this National Care Leavers Week and beyond.

This blog focuses on who care leavers are, the financial support they can claim, and how using data proactively could be the key to delivering support care leavers deserve.

Last financial year in England the number of children in care rose to 83,840. That’s one child in every 140 who is looked after. Across the UK there are an estimated 107,317 children in care. Putting this figure into context, there are 90,000 seats in Wembley Stadium.

Around 60% of these children have experienced or are at risk of experiencing abuse and neglect, so it is incredibly important that their time in care should be happy and safe. Other reasons why children might go into care include a family breakdown or crisis that puts the child at risk of harm or a child’s parents being unable to care for them anymore.

Only half of young people in England and Wales moved out of their parent’s home by age 24 in 2021. Care leavers do not have this luxury. They have to leave at 18.

More than a third of care leavers feel they left care too early. Being forced to leave home at 18 years old is the ‘cliff edge of care’. Some care leavers leave care even earlier than 18.

Care leavers often say they were not properly prepared to live independently by their ‘corporate parents’ (local authorities), which is why they are at greater risk of experiencing homelessness, poverty, and getting in trouble with the law.

For example, care-experienced young people should be introduced to their Personal Advisor at age 16. This professional should then support young people to start preparing to leave care by completing a ‘pathway plan’, a document that makes sure you are set up to receive certain entitlements so young people can feel confident living independently.

However, from surveying care leavers, Ofsted found that over a quarter of care leavers did not meet their PA until they were 18 or older, and a fifth of care leavers said they met their PA too late.

In addition, because of the increased risk that care leavers have experienced adverse childhood experiences, living independently can be more difficult for them. This is why advocacy support can be hugely important for care leavers to access, as it can allow them to get help in voicing their views, wishes, and feelings.

Unfortunately, a third (32%) of care leavers said they did not know who to contact in an emergency, and a quarter (24%) said they had to find out on their own, according to Ofsted.

Being made to leave care at 18, combined with the lack of support provided to them before and after, are some of the many reasons why the number of 18 to 20 year old care leavers in England facing homelessness has risen by 54%, from 2,790 in 2018-19 to 4,300 in 2023-24.

This wildly disproportionate increase is 15 times greater than the rise in homelessness among all young people in England, according to the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government (MHCLG).

One of the new changes the new UK Government is introducing is to exempt care leavers with priority access to social housing and exemption from local connection requirements.

A local connection means care leavers have lived in the area for six of the last 12 months or three of the previous five years, have a permanent job in the area, and have a close family member who has lived in the area for five years or more.

The problem with this is that local connection requirements can force care leavers to return to former local authority areas where they may not feel or be safe.

In addition, care leavers are moved around a lot by their corporate parents. Last financial year, 6% of children in care in England had three different placements.

Finding an area that care leavers feel at home in with a network of support built up, to then have to leave because of local connection requirements, can be detrimental.

Changing the local connection requirements is the right thing to do, as announced by Sir Keir Starmer at the 2024 Labour Party conference. But that’s only one part of the solution. Care leavers are entitled to financial support and unique benefit rules, which is where Policy in Practice comes in.

Care leavers who leave care at 16 or 17 are not able to claim the following benefits:

• Income-Based Jobseeker’s Allowance
• Housing Benefit (HB England, Wales, and Scotland/HB Northern Ireland)
• Universal Credit (although there are exceptions)

This blocker to claiming several benefits may appear very unfair because we know care leavers having to be independent early but the rules exist because, at this age, corporate parents are still expected to provide financially for care leavers.

Care leavers are entitled to several entitlements such as the leaving care grant to set up their homes and the 16-19 bursary if they’re in education, amongst others.

Care leavers are more likely to be subject to benefit sanctions than other claimants. This may be due to the lack of financial education they receive from local authorities, as well as the lack of family financial support.

Thankfully, several recent policy changes will put care leavers on a better financial footing. Below are just some of the ways we have accommodated care leaver’s needs in our Better Off Calculator, with more features to come.

1. The Local Housing Allowance Shared Accommodation Rate

Until June 2021 care leavers had their rent support capped at the shared accommodation rate within the Local Housing Allowance. This cap meant that the rent for single people under the age of 35 in private rented accommodation was capped at the amount of a single bedroom to themselves while sharing a living room, kitchen or bathroom with other tenants.

From 2020, care leavers who rent property from private landlords are eligible to claim the shared accommodation rate of Local Housing Allowance that those over 35 receive. So even if care leavers live in shared accommodation, they are awarded the one bedroom Local Housing Allowance rate.

2. Benefits for 16-17 year old care leavers

Usually you can only get Universal Credit if you are over 18 years old. However, if you have left care and are 16 or 17 years old, you can make a Universal Credit claim under several circumstances, such as becoming a parent, having a disability or a health condition, or caring for someone who gets a disability or health related benefit.

The Better Off Calculator can accurately calculate these circumstances.

For example, if you select that you are 16-17 years old and have responsibility for a child, our calculator will ask whether you’re a care leaver to calculate your correct entitlements. This way, you and/or your Personal Advisor can be confident in knowing what you should be receiving when applying for benefits.

The cost of inaction is steep: serious case reviews notoriously cite the lack of information sharing as a criticism of the safeguarding system. A lack of information sharing has affected many care leavers, from before or at the point at which they were taken into care, to when they interact with adult social care.

Department for Education data shows that 51% of care leavers aged 22 years old requested and received support from their local authority at some point during the year. We know that many care leavers do not feel that they have the right amount of support for them. The lack of support for care leavers can also result in them being involved in serious case reviews for their own children.

Imam, an 8 month old boy, was admitted to hospital this year with seizures after he rolled off a bed. Both of Imran’s parents were teenagers and his father was a care leaver.

Recommendations from the resulting safeguarding practice review included improved sharing between different agencies, such as reviewing the effectiveness of the current processes for sharing background information on families with universal services when the decision is to close the case to children’s social care following a Children and Families Assessment.

Why is sharing important safeguarding with other safeguarding partners so important? Because safeguarding teams cannot easily see if someone they are working with has had interactions with other services or agencies in their community.

Policy in Practice built MAST, the Multi Agency Safeguarding Tracker platform to help enable safeguarding partners to quickly and easily identify people who may require support or services at the point of early intervention.

Care leavers are much more likely to experience poor mental health than their peers, experience homelessness and experience poverty. In short, they are among the people who safeguarding partners using MAST help the most.

We want all safeguarding partners to have confidence in sharing safeguarding data so they can better coordinate multi-partner approaches and support care leavers within their communities. The next best step for services in your local area could be to invest in MAST. Find out more in our free webinar.

For more information on the work we do to support care leavers and the solutions we’ve built contact hello@policyinpractice.co.uk.