A new report from the Education Committee is urging the government to address the “moral failures” within the children’s care system, highlighting the unacceptable rates of homelessness and unemployment among young people leaving care.
Helen Hayes, the Labour MP and Committee Chair, emphasized the severity of the situation, stating, “It is unacceptable that thousands of young people leaving care are being left to face homelessness, unemployment or barriers to education – it is a moral failure. The system that should be supporting our most vulnerable children is far too often abandoning them at a critical moment in their lives. Urgent action is needed to fix this broken system and give all our young people the futures they deserve.”
The report, published on Thursday, puts forward several key recommendations aimed at improving outcomes for care leavers, defined as individuals aged 16-25 who have been in local authority care:
Exemption from Universal Credit Reductions: The committee recommends exempting care leavers from Department for Work and Pensions plans to reduce Universal Credit for those aged 22 and under.
National Care Offer: Ministers should establish a ‘National Care Offer’ to guarantee a consistent standard of financial and housing support from councils for all care leavers.
Addressing Staff Shortages: The report calls on the Department for Education (DfE) to develop a national strategy for recruiting foster carers, citing a shortfall of 6,500, and to tackle wider social care shortages through better pay and bursaries.
Engaging Care-Experienced Young People: The DfE must ensure it actively involves care-experienced young people in all aspects of its work.
Reducing Out-of-Area Placements: To combat the “distressing impacts” of children being placed far from home (45% of looked-after children were placed outside their local authority, with 22% over 20 miles away), the DfE should create a ‘national sufficiency strategy’. This would require local authorities to publish plans for reducing these placements.
Equal Support for Kinship Carers: The committee advocates for kinship carers (relatives or close friends who care for children when parents cannot) to receive the same financial support as foster carers, given evidence that these arrangements are often the most stable and beneficial.
The committee’s findings reveal a stark reality: care leavers aged 19-21 are three times more likely than their peers to be not in education, training, or employment, and a third of care leavers become homeless within two years of leaving care. The report gathered evidence from care-experienced individuals and charities, ensuring their voices were central to the recommendations.
Katherine Sacks-Jones, CEO of the charitable organisation Become, welcomed the report, stating, “We warmly welcome this report and the committee’s commitment to driving meaningful change. Most importantly, young people’s voices have been put at the heart of these recommendations, right where they belong.” She further highlighted the importance of “ending the care cliff and the drop-in support when young people turn 18, sometimes younger,” as key issues Become has campaigned on.
In a related development, the DfE announced on Thursday an investment of £53 million in council-run children’s homes to protect children from unsafe and illegal facilities. Minister for Children and Families Janet Daby commented, “The children’s social care system has faced years of drift and neglect, leading to a vicious cycle of late intervention and children falling through the cracks. One of the worst symptoms of this is when some of the most vulnerable young people in society are shunted from pillar to post — traumatised by shameful illegal homes, while some private companies rack up ludicrous profits.”