The Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 placed a duty on local authorities to create Pathway Plans and provide Personal Advisers (Young Person’s Adviser) for young people (16+) who had previously been looked after by a local authority.
“The Act’s main purpose is to help young people who have been looked after by a local authority move from care into living independently in as stable a fashion as possible.”
“The responsible local authority is to be under a duty to assess and meet the care and support needs of eligible and relevant children and young people and to assist former relevant children, in particular in respect of their employment, education and training.”
“It is the duty of the local authority looking after a child to advise, assist and befriend him with a view to promoting his welfare when they have ceased to look after him.”
(Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 - Explanatory Notes)
“The responsible local authority shall safeguard and promote the child’s welfare and, unless they are satisfied that his welfare does not require it, support him by— (a) maintaining him; (b) providing him with or maintaining him in suitable accommodation; and(c) providing support of such other descriptions as may be prescribed.”
(https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/35/data.pdf)
It is worthwhile mentioning here the great service to care leavers provided by a leading member of the CHARMS family, Homes2Inspire, and our gratitude for their kind words below:
“We are a large provider of residential care for looked after children and semi-independent flats for care leaversa; we joined the Charms family in October 2018. We have been supported by the team at Social Care Network Solutions during every step of our implementation project. The team have been flexible to our needs; knowledgeable and solution focused whilst we have worked through how Charms can be most effectively used for our services. Charms is a system that provides us with easily accessible, secure and required information; this has reduced the amount of time that managers spend sharing information, therefore they can concentrate on delivering high quality care to children and young people. We are looking forward to a virtually 'paper-less' future where our records can be quality assured efficiently and staff can be freed from being office bound!”
BREAKING: On 23/3/2023 the Department For Education published the Guide to the Supported Accommodation Regulations including Quality Standards.
The Government consultation response set down the next steps as follow: "Ofsted will begin registering providers from 28 April 2023. The Regulations and guidance must be complied with for the purposes of registration and as soon as providers and managers are registered with Ofsted. If a complete application for registration with Ofsted has not been made before 28 October 2023, it will be an offence to carry on or manage a supported accommodation service on or after that date".
And in the recently published Guide "Regulation 24 details the records that must be kept in supported accommodation. All young people’s case records must be kept up to date and stored securely whilst they remain in the setting. Case records must be kept up-to-date and signed and dated by the author of each entry. Young people’s case records must be kept for 75 years from the date of birth of the child, or if the child dies before the age of 18, for 15 years from the date of his or her death".
CHARMS offers a complete, online solution for all supported accommodation and semi-independence providers to keep their records secure, as prescribed by Regulation 24. If you would like to find out more please call 0161 237 1872 or email info@socialcarenetwork.com.
