Research into the Support Provided to Pregnant Young Women and Young Parents In and Leaving Local Au

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Research into the Support Provided to Pregnant
Young Women and Young Parents In and Leaving
Local Authority Care

• Elaine Chase, Antonia Simon and Bennijo Tyler
• 27/28 Woburn Square
• London WCIH OAA
• e.chase_at_ioe.ac.uk

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AIMS

• Increase the provision of support for young
  parents in foster care and those leaving care at
  the age of 18.
• Help young people in care improve parenting
  skills through the support of foster carers.
• Support the involvement of young fathers in
  parenting.
• Disseminate project findings and good practice to
  all involved in the fostering service and to
  young people.
• Increase the capacity of organizations and carers
  involved in the fostering service to support
  young parents through providing training, advice
  and information.

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Methodology Survey element

• Questionnaire survey to
• Fostering and adoption managers
• Teenage pregnancy coordinators
• Social services managers (Looked after and
  leaving care)
• Fostering services managers
• Independent fostering agencies

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Data

• Very few returns (13 local authorities 5
  Independent Fostering agencies)
• Findings are speculative
• Compared data with earlier 2003 survey
• Implications for future surveys of this type

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Key Findings

• 7-8 LAs could provide data on young women under
  16 and 16 in their care who were pregnant or
  parents
• Few local authorities (5) provided data on young
  fathers leaving care who were parents
• Similar findings to a survey conducted in 2003.
• More routine data collection required on young
  pregnant women and young parents in and leaving
  care

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Placement factors

• 2/3 of respondents said mother and baby
  placements best supported young parents
• Appropriate training and support for foster
  carers
• Difficulties identified in terms of dual role of
  support and assessment
• Support in a family environment
• 4/10 local authorities included young fathers in
  provision.

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• We find that most of our young people remain
  in care until 18 years but that young mums seem
  to move into the community earlier than their
  peers, at a time when they need more support not
  less. More foster placements would reduce this.

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• Carers with dual registration will have
  opportunities to care for individual young people
  giving them (the foster carers) some respite from
  the emotional demands of caring for young people
  who are parents as well. This is particularly
  true if they are involved in assessing the
  parenting capacity of the young parent.

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Training and support

• Training mostly on child protection and providing
  parenting support and less on access to financial
  entitlements and benefits.
• Limited training available to other professionals
  other than social workers.
• Wide range of further training and support needs
  for those working with young parents from the
  care system
• The need for support groups for carers and other
  providers was identified as a key need

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Sex and relationships education

• Similar to earlier studies, provision of SRE to
  young people in care appears to be patchy
• There is evidence of some good practice and
  innovative projects that seek to engage looked
  after young people
• Foster carers are perceived as having a key role
  to play in communicating about sex and
  relationships
• Extending the training of foster carers,
  alongside increasing the accessibility of sexual
  health information and advice services for young
  people in care were identified as important
  priorities.

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Support to young mothers

• Quality of local partnership working was
  identified as being very varied communication
  was key.
• Difficulties in ensuring adequate financial
  provision for young mothers once they reached 18
  years.
• Improving nutritional advice, information and
  support to young pregnant women was identified as
  a key priority.
• Support provision for young fathers was felt to
  be less well coordinated than for young pregnant
  women or young mothers and service provision was
  limited.

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• Where there is clarity about the individual
  roles and responsibilities then services can and
  do work well together. If these are confused,
  this is when misunderstandings and difficulties
  can arise with potentially dire consequences for
  the young woman and her child.

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• Informal networks can work well in a small
  authority- which may compensate in some cases for
  the lack of processes, procedures or mechanisms
  to ensure that services are consistently
  available and work well together. A systematic
  approach, shared between all agencies is badly
  needed!!!

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Child Protection Issues

• Very few local authorities routinely collect data
  on the numbers of children on the child
  protection register or have been taken into care
• Many respondents described how services could
  provide a greater level of support to young
  mothers in their care.
• Currently there is no special mention of looked
  after young people on child protection policies.
• Extending mother and baby foster placements to
  young parents 18 was suggested as a means of
  providing additional support to young parents
  that require it

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• On occasions, assumptions are made by the
  local authority about the potential and actual
  parenting capacity of looked after children and
  care leavers which are discriminatory in that
  they are informed more by the myths and
  stereotypes about this group of young people or
  their individual histories, rather than in
  evidence based good practice. Local authorities
  can often find it difficult to accept the role of
  the leaving care worker in child protection or
  care proceedings in supporting the parent and
  this does not mean there has to be a conflict of
  interest. There needs to be a shift in culture,
  policy and training to address these issues and
  for the local authorities to be clear about their
  corporate grand parenting responsibilities.

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Housing

• Young mothers aged 16 are more likely than those
  under 16 to be placed in unsuitable bed and
  breakfast or emergency (homelessness)
  accommodation.
• Need to increase number of suitable mother and
  baby placements in some authorities and generally
  prioritise the housing needs of young parents
  from the care system.
• Young fathers were said to have the same priority
  to accommodation as young mothers in only two
  authorities.

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Education, training and employment

• Local authorities surveyed prioritised access to
  education, training or employment (ETE).
• Barriers to young parents accessing ETE ranged
  from inadequate child care provision, to earlier
  non-engagement with education and a lack of self
  confidence.
• Some local authorities have highly comprehensive
  packages to enable young parents to (re) enter
  ETE.