Looked after children (health and wellbeing needs in South Tyneside)

The looked after population is not a static group of children and key issues vary over time as different needs emerge. For example, issues such as child sexual exploitation (CSE), changes in court processes, adoption and permanency and changes in the broader environment have an impact on the children looked after population. The government considers improving the lives of children in care and care leavers to be a national priority.

What are the key inequalities?

• Children Looked After may have experienced a lack of support and challenge in education, more frequent school moves and absences and this impacts negatively on their educational attainment.
• Children Looked After have statistically poorer health outcomes. This is partly due to difficult early experiences of neglect, poverty, abuse, prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol and parental mental health difficulties.
• In March 2015 the Department for Education and the Department of Health jointly published new statutory guidance on Promoting the health and well-being of looked-after children. The guidance recognised that almost half of children in care have a diagnosable mental health disorder.
• Children in care have often experienced abusive, chaotic or inconsistent parenting which impacts on their ability to make secure attachments and positive relationships in later life.
• Unaccompanied Asylum seeking children and young people will have experienced significant trauma in their home countries and on their journeys to the UK.
• Children Looked After are over represented in the prison population nationally.
• Approximately two thirds of Children Looked After have an identified Special Educational Need and Disability (SEN'D) (Department of Education, 2014). The Children and Families Act 2014 introduced new measures to protect the welfare of SEN'D children which means that the local authority and health commissioners have a duty to ensure they commission and plan services for SEN'D Looked after Children potentially up to the age of 25.