Why does Northern Ireland have fewer children in care?

Louise Tickle - The Guardian

Findings from a four-nation study on children in care indicate that Northern Ireland has far fewer children in foster or residential care than do England, Scotland and Wales, according to this article from the Guardian. "Given that Northern Ireland has a higher percentage of children living in deprived neighbourhoods– and poverty can exacerbate difficulties faced by struggling parents – the expectation would be that the country would have the highest rate of children in care. But the opposite is true – it has 35 children in foster or residential care for every 10,000 children, compared to 82 per 10,000 in Scotland, 62 per 10,000 in Wales and 52 per 10,000 in England." 

Paul Bywaters, Huddersfield University’s professor of social work who conducted the study noted that England could save £1.5bn if it could reduce the rate of children taken into care to the same rate as Northern Ireland. "This money, he points out, could then be spent by cash-strapped councils on family support and risk prevention, 'leading to a virtuous circle where even fewer children need to be removed from their families.'"

“We want these findings to galvanise governments and everyone involved with child protection systems to think about the issues of equality and social justice," said Bywaters. "We can’t all be getting it right if the rates [of children in care] are so different.”

Bywaters attributes the lower rates of children in care in Northern Ireland to the fact that "child protection services in the country are not delivered by local authorities but by integrated health and social care trusts, which to some extent have been protected from the massive council cuts."

“The evidence of Northern Ireland raises profound questions about how many kids should be in care,” says Bywaters. “Most of the money [cut from children’s services] has come out of early help and family support, and then you’re left with the very high-cost options of child protection plans and taking kids into care. There’s a case for saying that we’ve got into a vicious cycle. When it’s this amount of funding and this number of children, governments should be thinking in a much deeper way about the bigger picture.”