Care planning for children in proceedings: Frontline Briefing (2022)

Introduction 

Social workers responsible for children and their families in care proceedings are required to make recommendations to the court regarding where the child should live, who will care for them, and how they will see and stay in touch with significant family members. Inevitably, these decisions are complex and have far-reaching consequences for children and their families now and in the longer term and are likely to provoke strong feelings for all. The process involves consideration of: 

Within the context of care proceedings, there is a danger that the attention of social workers, advocates and the court is focused on risk and safety, with adults in the child’s life ruled ‘positive or negative’ according to their capacity to offer safe, full-time care of the child. Consequently, there can be limited time to think through the impact of care planning decisions and how the child’s permanence will be supported. As a result, plans presented to court can often be criticised for making standardised recommendations that are not specific to the child, their individual circumstances and relationships (Featherstone et al., 2018). 

Despite this complexity in practice, research has highlighted arrangements for care planning are a neglected area of study (Thomas, 2011). There has been little research undertaken to explore the process of how social workers and others involved in decision-making effectively interrogate information, think through the potential impact of decisions and achieve proposals to ensure that children’s permanence needs are supported. 

This guide supports social workers and managers in making care plans for children prior to final hearings in care proceedings. It highlights the key legislation and case law, care planning regulations and research that should inform these decisions. It also offers tools to help guide practitioners through the issues they need to consider to enable them to demonstrate to the child, family and the court why they have reached the decisions they have and the evidential basis for this. 

Making decisions for children: The context

In exploring potential care plans for legal proceedings, social workers and their managers will draw on four key sources of information and guidance to inform completion of final evidence and care planning for court. These include: 

• family specific context
• legal context
• care planning context
• permanence research context.

This diagram identifies the key information that each of these areas brings to the care planning process:

Family specific context 

Social workers supporting children and their families in the context of proceedings will be undertaking assessments of parents, extended family members, individual children and their brothers and sisters. 

Key areas of assessment will include:

Social workers and their managers will draw on this information to apply the legislation, care
planning and permanence context to explore and test potential options and what they will mean
for the child and their family.

Legal context

The key legislation that social workers and their managers will need to consider in exploring recommendations for the long-term care of the child is the Children Act 1989. 

Overarching principles

The Children Act 1989 provides the overarching principles which should underpin all decisions that social workers make for children and young people. They include that the welfare of the child is paramount; that the involvement of the parents in the child’s life will further their welfare; that any delay is likely to prejudice the child; and the presumption of a ‘no order principle’ where the court is minded not to make an order unless it considers it would be better for the child than no order (section 1, Children Act 1989). 

Articles 6 and 8 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child recognise that every child has a right to life and that the state must ensure to the maximum extent possible, the survival and development of the child. The Convention also respects the right of the child to preserve their identity, including their nationality, name and family relations. The European Convention on Human Rights also recognises the ‘right to respect for family life’. 

Threshold criteria

In making long-term care plans for children, social workers will need to consider if the threshold criteria continue to be met and if the children have suffered or are likely to suffer significant harm if they were to be returned to the care of their parents or another member of their family.

Section 31 (2) of the Children Act 1989 states that the court can only issue a care or supervision order if it is satisfied that: 

Welfare checklist

When making recommendations to the court regarding which order will be appropriate, social workers must regard the welfare checklist and demonstrate how they have considered each element in coming to the recommendation. This includes: 

• The ascertainable wishes and feelings of the child (considered in light of their age and understanding).
• Their physical, emotional and / or educational needs.
• The likely effect on them of any change in their circumstances.
• Their age, sex, background and any other characteristic that the court considers relevant.
• Any harm which they have suffered or are at risk of suffering.
• How capable each of their parents or any other relevant person is of meeting their needs.
• The range of powers available to the court under the Children Act 1989 in the proceedings in question.

Care orders and permanence provision

In making decisions about where the child should live and how they will be cared for, social workers will also need to identify which order will be sought, which legislation supports this decision, and devise a care plan based on this proposal. 

The Children and Social Work Act 2017 Section 8 extended the definition of the permanence provisions in the Children Act 1989 so that it includes the child living with their parent, family member or friend of the family; adoption; and other types of long-term care including foster care. 

Under the Act courts are now required to consider the impact on the child concerned of any harm they have or are likely to have suffered; their current and future needs; and the way in which the long-term plan for the child’s upbringing would meet those current and future needs. 

The legislation sets out a range of orders which could be applied for under each of these contexts including:

Supporting decisions: The place of case law 

In exploring options for the long-term care of the child and presenting these recommendations to the court, social workers should also apply a judgment passed known as Re- B-S (2013, EWCA Civ 1146). This judgment is significant both in applying the threshold for children placed for adoption, but also how evidence of options for the child are analysed and presented to the court for all children and their families. Sir James Munby, highlighted the inadequacy of options for a child put before the court.

Where there is a care plan for adoption without parental consent, the judgment stipulated that a high degree of justification needed to be made, that it should be a last resort, where ‘nothing else will do’. It stated that the interests of a child would require a relationship with his or her parents to be maintained, unless no other course of action was possible. Social workers’ analysis must show that the needs of the child for permanence and stability within an adoptive family outweigh all the positive elements of ongoing connection with the child’s parents or wider birth family, and that no support could be adequately provided that would enable them to do so. 

The judgment outlined the importance of having a ‘global, holistic evaluation’ of each permanence option for the child that considers all the negatives and positives of each, including a proper analysis for and against adoption. Overall, the judgment raised expectations of social worker evidence and how they demonstrate that they have given enough thought and evidence for the care plan for adoption. 

In exploring potential care plans and making recommendations to the court, social workers should demonstrate that the local authority has complied with its duty to leave ‘no stone unturned’ in attempting to maintain the child within the birth family. Social workers should include a careful and thoughtful analysis of each placement option and explain why a particular type of placement is or is not appropriate. When considering the child returning home or placing them within their wider family, social workers need to consider what support can be provided by the local authority and why any risks are or are not manageable with this support in place. 

Care planning context 

Many children in care proceedings are likely to be subject to an interim care order and be a ‘looked after child’. There are care planning regulations that apply to all children who are looked after by the local authority. This is outlined in The Children Act 1989 Guidance and Regulations Volume 2 Care Planning and Placement Review (DfE, 2021). 

For children who are placed in care during care proceedings, the regulations state that they should have a permanence plan in place by the time of their second children in care review (which should take place within three months of the first review), which is likely to be prior to compiling final evidence and the final hearing for court. 

The starting point for social workers is the high expectations the regulations place on providing looked after children the opportunity to the best experiences in life. It states: 

Looked after children deserve the best experiences in life, from excellent parenting which promotes good health and educational attainment, to a wide range of opportunities to develop their talents and skills in order to have an enjoyable childhood and successful adult life. Stable placements, good health and support during transition are all essential elements, but children will only achieve their potential through the ambition and high expectation of all those involved in their lives. (para 1.1, DfE, 2021). 

The regulations also stress the importance of planning for a child’s permanence and the key principles which underpin this:

Permanence is the long-term plan for the child’s upbringing and provides an underpinning framework for all social work with children and their families from family support through to adoption. The objective of planning for permanence is therefore to ensure that children have a secure, stable and loving family to support them through childhood and beyond and to give them a sense of security, continuity, commitment, identity and belonging (para 2.3, DfE, 2021). 

Young People’s Participation: children and young people should be involved in decisions about their lives. Social workers should support them to share their wishes and feelings. The regulations stipulate that decision-making should be written in a way that is understood by the child and helps them understand why the decision has been made. 

Parent’s role: Parents should be given adequate information and help to consider what the alternatives for their child’s care might be, in order that they might be helped to make an informed choice. Permanence plans should also consider the continuity of important relationships and attachments 

Identity: Consideration should be given to the child’s identity, their sense of confidence and self-worth. This includes recognising the impact of any changes to home, carer, school or social worker. 

The key areas that should be set out within the care plan include:

• information about the long-term plan for the child including timescales
• arrangements to meet the child’s needs
• arrangements for contact/family time with parents, brothers and sisters and other family members
• details of the placement plan and why the placement was chosen
• the name of the Independent Reviewing Officer
• the wishes and feelings of relevant people about arrangements for the child
• the wishes and feelings of these people about any proposed changes to the care plan
• the local authority needs to provide a contingency plan, in the event that the proposed
  care plan is not fulfilled.

Permanence context

Making decisions for children and young people also relies on social workers and their managers integrating understanding of the theory of ‘permanence,’ the research that demonstrates what helps achieve this and best practice to support it. This requires social workers and managers to shift their focus from risk of significant harm and safety, to considering the child’s psychological permanence and how their relationships, identity and sense of belonging will be secured. 

A meaningful definition of permanence must recognise the key qualities of family relationships for children and adults across generations – including a sense of belonging and mutual connectedness and of continuity between past, present and future (Boddy, 2013 p 1). 

In order to meaningfully integrate understandings of permanence into decisions the key areas that social workers and their managers will need to consider are:

Outcomes of different routes to permanence 

There are many routes to permanence for children which might include remaining or returning home to their families, kinship care, long-term foster care or adoption.

Which route to permanence, for which child, will depend on interacting factors which are likely to determine where the child should live and what role their family can play in the child’s life now and in the longer term. These include:

In 2017, Wilkinson and Bowyer produced an evidence review that compared different placement options, the strengths and weaknesses of each option and impact on children. There is no evidence that one option is universally better than the other; the best arrangements will depend on the circumstances of an individual child and their family.

Resource - Comparing placement options to meet children and young people's current and future needs: Strategic Briefing (2017)

Role of parents

Whatever the recommendations are regarding who is best placed to care for the child, a key element of the long-term permanence plan should be the role that the parents will play. This will support children’s sense of identity and understanding their role and belonging in their biological family. In the longer term, many children will return home to their parents, who will often be key adults throughout their lives (Bullock et al., 2001). As a result, it can be helpful to consider how the long-term care plan will support parents to be the best they can be for their children. This support plan will also be key if the parent goes on to have more children. This applies equally to fathers who can often be marginalised through the court process. 

Where the decision is made that their children should not return to their care, parents have to manage painful, diverse and contradictory feelings that arise from their sense of loss (Schofield et al., 2011). The same authors identified that parents were progressively marginalised through the court process where a narrative of the parent as ‘risk’ is dominant, and that parents struggled to maintain their identity as a parent if their child was not with them. Many identify feelings of stigma and blame at having their children removed and a sense of moral judgment and public humiliation. 

Schofield et al. (2011) also highlighted that social workers had their own feelings of sadness and guilt at decisions they needed to reach, and that there was a lack of clarity from social workers of the role of parents for children in long-term foster care. The study urged social workers to convey respect and empathy for parents’ losses but also recognise parents as parents and to appreciate positive change. Social workers should aim to keep parents present in their minds and to be empathic communicators about and between parents and their children. 

Relationships with brothers and sisters

Care planning decisions will also involve complex and difficult decisions regarding relationships with brothers and sisters. Children may have a number of full, half and step-brothers and sisters, spanning different ages and needs, and parents may go on to have further children after care proceedings have concluded. 

Social workers need to assess the quality of relationships between brothers and sisters; how their family history impacts on how they feel about and behave towards one another; their needs and what it will mean for them to be cared for together; and what different permanence options are likely to mean for the relationship between brothers and sisters now and in the longer term. 

Decisions regarding brothers and sisters take place within a wider external context. This may involve a lack of alternative homes where brothers and sisters can be cared for together or geographical distance between their homes. Decisions will depend on the extent of support for sustaining previous relationships and on the possibility of building reparative relationships between brothers and sisters where necessary. 

The Assessment of brothers and sisters in public law: Frontline Briefing (2020) provides a framework for analysing assessments of relationships between brothers and sisters and what this means for care plans for children and young people. 

In making decisions regarding care plans, social workers will need to consider the impact of their recommendation on relationships between brothers and sisters. Children and young people generally want to see siblings they may be separated from, they may worry about them, or have taken on a significant role in their sibling’s life prior to proceedings that will be important to sustain. They may serve as important sources of comfort and provide important links with birth family and life story. The impact of relationships on a sense of permanence, life story and identity is addressed in the Research in Practice resource on Contact after adoption. 

Beckett (2018) identifies what a 'sibling-friendly' service might look like from the perspective of children by developing a charter of practical steps that can help brothers and sisters effectively maintain their relationships either living together or separately. For children in permanent placements this included children and young people.

• knowing why they may not be living with their brothers and sisters
• having information and photographs about them
• knowing when they will see them and that they can talk about and ask questions about them
• ensuring that they receive news about them and that their respective families have met one another (Beckett, 2018).

Children and young people who contribute to the Family Justice Young People’s Board (FJYPB) have also devised Top Tips for practitioners to consider in working with brothers and sisters. These principles provide a useful checklist for social workers to think about the extent to which they have been integrated within the proposed care plan. 

Role of connected people and Life Long Links 

Children’s sense of identity and belonging will also be supported through sustaining meaningful connections with people who are important to them in their friendship and kinship network. The network might also be important support to parents at what is likely to be a distressing time.

Life-Long Links is where a trained, independent co-ordinator works with a child to find out who is important to them, who they would like to get back in touch with and who they would like to know. An evaluation (Holmes et al., 2020) demonstrated that the intervention positively impacted children in care, building their agency, life story narratives, safe relationships and sense of identity. 

Professional anxiety about the intervention unsettling children proved unfounded and there was a statistically significant difference in placement stability between those who received the intervention compared to those who did not (Holmes et al., 2020). In a more recent evaluation of the extension of the project, findings included that placement stability continued in the years following the commencement of Life-Long Links and that emotional health and wellbeing appeared to improve for children and young people (Holmes et al., 2022). 

Often when care planning in legal proceedings, the role of kinship and connected people can focus on their ability provide full-time care for the child or not. The emphasis on ruling these people ‘in’ or ‘out’ according to a ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ assessment is arguably a contributory factor in the long-term loss of these relationships for children through care. The findings from the Life-Long Links intervention should encourage social workers to consider who the child’s connected people are and what role they might play now and in the longer term, even if they are unable to provide care to the child. 

Completing cultural genograms which explore the family members and quality of relationships is important to do throughout all involvement with children and families, and can support in identifying these important links (Scott, 2021). 

The Using genograms in practice: Practice Tool (2021) provides guidance to practitioners in completing genograms with family members. 

Family time and keeping in touch

Supporting time with parents and the wider family can help children cope with loss and separation; understand their identity and make sense of their past; as well as help build relationships which will sustain through adulthood. 

During proceedings, the time children spend with their parents may have comprised an ‘assessment’ component, observing parent’s capacity to provide safe, long-term care and make and sustain changes through the duration of the proceedings. Regular, frequent time with parents may be prioritised over time with other connected people as social workers seek a balance between their assessments and interventions, alongside the child settling and building relationships with their current carers. 

Making proposals for family time after the conclusion of care proceedings provides an important opportunity to reframe the function of this away from assessment and observation to much more around helping children and key family members maintain important relationships and what support will enable them to do so. This will require individualised planning for children’s specific contexts (Featherstone, 2018). 

It may be helpful for social workers to widen their conceptualisation of what family time is. Often, it will have become routinised in social worker’s minds as ‘contact’, taking place at regular intervals through the year, sometimes within local authority-run ‘contact’ centres with supervisors present. For children who are adopted this may be understood as standardised annual ‘letter box’ contact. However, children and young people have stated that ‘contact means staying in touch with the people that you care about’. They state they would prefer contact to be referred to as ‘meeting with friends and family’ (TACT, 2019). This understanding should enable social workers to consider time that children and young people spend in more flexible ways including visits, sharing family events, sending cards and use of technology to promote relationships. The role of grandparents who have not directly harmed the child needs to be fully considered. 

Social workers may want to reframe the role of contact ‘supervisors’ to ‘family time supporters’ who can get alongside the family and ensure that their time spent together is as enjoyable as it can be and reduces feelings of anxiety for all involved. Where safe and possible, social workers may want to liaise with carers to think about what role they might play in supporting time with family and other connected people to promote the child’s understanding of people who care about them being able to work and communicate together. 

Social workers will inevitably need to understand the perspectives of children’s carers with regard to contact/family time and the extent to which it places pressure on them and their life with the child. Social workers will need to consider practicalities to support children’s time with their families including venues, how the children will meet their parent, activities and how each person involved will respond to the needs of the children. 

Assessing and supporting family and friends care: Practice tool (2020)

There is a renewed emphasis on reviewing family time for children who are adopted. The work of the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory on modernising post-adoption contact identifies the challenges of sustaining letterbox contact over time, and the limitations of this method of building and establishing connections between children and their birth families. It also recognises that the context of letterbox contact has been unchanged for the last 20 years and the need for substantial change to fit the modern world and the needs of children (Barnett-Jones and Manning, 2021). 

Overall, plans for children should be child-centred, bespoke, well-supported and reviewed over time. Sustaining relationships over time takes commitment, creativity and tenacity from social workers to ensure these relationships can be sustained. 

Direct work to support explanations and understanding 

The process of how and why decisions are made for children’s long-term care can make a significant contribution to their understanding of their life story. Making sense of the past and current family relationships enables children to begin to trust in new reparative carers or parents and enables a positive and healthy self-identity. Understanding life story is also linked to placement stability with children and young people who received an explanation experienced fewer placement moves (Staines and Selwyn, 2020). Within care proceedings it is likely that children and young people will need different explanations at different stages and explanations regarding their care plan and outcome of the court, along with working with the child’s emotional responses and supporting them with any likely transitions key. 

Corrigan (1990) identifies that direct work with children should help them answer: 

• Who am I?
• Where do I belong?
• Who and what have I lost?
• Why am I here?
• Where am I going?

The narrative model devised by Coman et al.(2016) when children are first placed in foster care can be built on through the care-planning process and decisions of the court. This identifies the stages of this approach as follows: 

If social workers have provided initial explanations and undertaken direct work on an ongoing basis, supporting children to understand their proposed care plan, the role of the court and eventual outcome reached should comprise the ‘Building on the Narrative’ stage. 

In undertaking this work it may also be helpful for social workers and children to develop a ‘child friendly care plan’ together which children can keep and refer to on an ongoing basis. This might include: 

• a photograph of the child, their likes, interests and where they live now
• an explanation of why they live with alternative carers
• where their mum, dad, brothers and sisters are
• connected people who are important to them
• details of when they see their family and the things they enjoy doing together
• key professionals and their role, including the role of the Guardian ad Litem and judge
• what the plans are for where the child will live in the short term, e.g. you will still be here on your next birthday/school holiday
• plans for the child’s long-term care when decisions are reached
• space for the child to write their own views, thoughts and feelings.

Ensuring children's life stories are at the centre of direct work: Podcast (2022) 

Child-centered recording 

The record of how decisions were reached will also have an important function if children decide to access their files as adults, helping them understand who was involved and how the decision was reached regarding their long-term care. It should provide an opportunity for care-experienced adults to witness the commitment and motivation to make a decision in their best interests and that everyone involved had their needs, wishes, feelings and key relationships at the forefront of their minds. 

Good practice in recording and access to records: Strategic Briefing (2022)

The briefing identifies top principles developed by the British Association of Social Workers to underpin child-centered recording such as

• Include the child throughout the recording.
• Write records as if writing to the child or family member.
• Make records purposeful and analytical.
• Chart the child’s journey.
• Make sure records reflect the whole of the child’s story and why decisions were made.

Professional discussions regarding proposed care plans for children will be significant to record with these principles in mind. A tool for capturing these discussions and what was considered in reaching decisions is included in the next section.

How to support care planning decisions

Given the significance and complexity of decisions for children in legal proceedings, the impact of these decisions on the child, and the inevitable feelings evoked for the child, family, social worker and wider network, it is important that time and space are made for these issues to be fully explored. This should also promote defensible, evidence-based decisions to be made to the court. 

For some social workers and managers these discussions might take place within individual supervision or integrated into review legal planning meetings. However, a structured, formalised space bringing key people together to explore care planning decisions for children may be helpful. 

The provision of a distinct ‘care planning’ space might help refocus away from evidence-gathering and risk assessment of key adults at a point in time, to fully consider the child’s needs across their life including their key relationships, identity and life story, what these needs are and how they will be met now and in the longer term.

The aim of care planning discussions or meetings would be to:

What should be considered during care planning discussions?

What questions might be helpful to consider?

In order to guide social workers and the network through these issues and discussions, it may be helpful to consider the questions below. Working through them as if talking or writing directly to the child may support practitioners to remain child focused and connected to the impact of these decisions.

It may be helpful to consider this meeting in two stages: the first to plan key assessments of parents and other significant adults, the risks and resilience factors and issues of threshold criteria; the second stage might include careful consideration of the child’s long-term identity and relationship needs and what role significant people might be able to play in the long-term life of their child. 

Conclusion

Making recommendations to the court regarding where a child should live and how they should be cared for is a complex process. Social workers need to integrate knowledge about the family; apply this to key legislation and policy regulations; and embed this into research that identifies what supports children’s sense of belonging, stability and identity best. Social workers need time and space within the context of proceedings to fully explore a range of options and the likely impact of these on children and young people’s key relationships and day-to-day lived experience. 

Overall, social workers should ensure that they: