Response from Social Care Network (SCN) to the study entitled 'Care leavers’ transition into the labour market in England'.
News ID: 692
Social Care Network ('SCN'), providers of the widely used CHARMS™ system, works with more than 300 registered independent children's services providers across Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, The Republic of Ireland and Scotland. More than 250 independent fostering agencies use CHARMS™, securely, online to manage all aspects of recruitment, assessment, training and approval of foster carers, and thereafter to enable all stakeholders to keep records, securely, on the progress of the children and young people they support.
Many of the largest children's residential providers also use CHARMS™, and with the new regulations with regard to supported accommodation an increasing number of organisations who provide semi-independence housing are also joining the CHARMS™ family.
We at SCN see therefore, as we support our user community, how young people leaving care can struggle to access employment.
Given that CHARMS™ is also used by a number of supported employment agencies across the UK, we are also ideally placed to see the opportunities for children's services and supported employment providers to work together make the path from the transition into adulthood slightly easier. Or as the authors of the study say, in their executive summary:
'The purpose of our study was therefore to explore risk and protective factors for care leavers as they enter early adulthood and begin their employment journeys. Studies of young people suggest that deprivation, low qualifications and disability are strongly associated with being NEET, alongside parenthood, offending and mental health issues. Care leavers have a greater likelihood of appearing in all these groups, partly explaining their high propensity to be NEET. However, specific factors associated with care may also be salient, including type and stability of placements and the forms of support offered by the state.'
'Relatively little is known about the factors that impact pathways into employment for care leavers. Existing knowledge tends to come from small-scale qualitative studies and those focused on education outcomes. These have suggested that care leavers often face precarious employment conditions in marginal or insecure jobs, magnifying the realities of the prevailing youth labour market. Many of them can find themselves under considerable pressure to take work with limited prospects to meet essential costs in the absence of family safety nets. It is also, however, important to recognise that many care leavers do make positive adult transitions – for example, around 13% currently access higher education by the age of 19.'
SCN is engaging with Laura Davis, the Chief Executive of the British Association for Supported Employment ('BASE'
https://www.base-uk.org/home), to look at ways of bringing together children's services providers with supported employment agencies to address the employment barriers faced by young people leaving care.
09/05/2023