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In social care we know that women who have a child taken into care often face this predicament more than once, sometimes three or four times. We also know that on many occasions, these women were in care themselves as children. Approximately one in four birth mothers in family court proceedings will reappear with a subsequent child, and recent research suggests 58% of these mothers will have experienced sexual abuse.
But we also know that nearly half of women in this predicament can, at a later stage, care for a child appropriately. Improvements in their mental health and growing maturity can enable them to become successful carers. So could the whole painful process of having a child removed have been avoided?
As our family courts have contracted through the age of austerity and the number of care proceedings has increased by 27% over the last four years, the system is failing to cope.
The arithmetic is scary too. The average cost of a looked-after child in my borough is £57,000 per year. If the average length of care is 3.6 years, this means that the cost of each child in care is more than £200,000. Where children are long-term fostered or adopted, the costs are more than triple that figure.
Across the country, grant-funded schemes are trying to break this cycle; so-called Pause programmes support women who may become recurrent mothers, or care leavers who become pregnant and may be in danger of losing their child. Some schemes encourage women to take long lasting contraception. I have mixed feelings about the use of long lasting contraception with women in these circumstances.
In Calderdale, we’re running a Positive Choices programme to support families. Unqualified family support workers, supervised by a social worker, are assigned to vulnerable women who are pregnant and at risk of having a child removed. They are shown techniques to support their parenting and other approaches to deal with mental health issues and drug abuse. Support is also given where there is or has been domestic violence in the household. After one year, we have helped nine women. Two cases have failed, with the children now in care, but seven have apparently been successful; the children are safe and not in need of removal to protect them.
Recently I had the opportunity to talk to some of the women involved in the programme to ask them what had worked for them.
The first (and possibly most remarkable) thing was that the young women were with their children at the meeting – and although they were engaged in a focused conversation with me, they gave their children almost continuous attention and eye contact. These mothers all came from challenging backgrounds: mental health problems, domestic violence and drug and alcohol abuse dominated their histories, but they were all prepared to describe their previous lifestyles – and they had clearly faced up to and understood their demons.
They all described being taught to look at the impact of their behaviour – their previous negative behaviour and their now positive behaviour – and the impact they had on their child’s development. They had ameliorated their behaviour and developed empathy with their child, understanding how their actions affected emotional wellbeing. For some, there was no way to mimic their own parents’ positive parenting traits as such influences had been absent from their childhoods.
I was humbled by their descriptions of the family support input from the programme: two pre-arranged visits each week plus one unannounced visit to their home, sometimes at the most unexpected times. The women seemed to accept this intrusion into their lives on the grounds that their children come first. Putting up with a little inconvenience to confirm the quality of their parenting seemed like a small price to pay.
A fair, firm and caring relationship between the woman and their key worker was also important. I heard of staff who were prepared to drop everything and call in when challenges arose, sometimes during evenings, weekends, annual leave and even during maternity leave. Visits, texts and calls were always possible and were massively appreciated.
The Positive Choices programme probably costs the public about £12,000 per case per year, so is proving to reduce costs when it is successful. And if we can manage to keep breaking the cycle of mothers having children taken into care, the human benefits will be immeasurable.
By Stuart Smith
22 May 2018
Stuart Smith is adults and children’s services director in Calderdale and board member with Cafcass
