By Joe Locker, Local Democracy Reporter
The Government says it won’t yet follow the actions of dozens of councils to adopt better protections for people with care experience until it sees the impact of changes at a local level.
Terry Galloway, who grew up in care before moving to Nottingham at the age of 25, has been spearheading a national campaign for change in the care system.
His goal is to make ‘care experience’ a protected characteristic like that of disability, sexual orientation and race.
That means it would be illegal to discriminate against those who have been in the care system under the Equality Act.
In February, the Government promised an “ambitious” Children’s Social Care Implementation Strategy, backed by £200 million.
However it stopped short of making care experience a protected characteristic, despite being a recommendation of an independent care review.
Mr Galloway has been working with dozens of local authorities to voluntarily adopt care experience as a protected characteristic, rather than wait for legislation.
Nottingham City Council, Ashfield District Council and Nottinghamshire County Council are just some to have done this already.
In June, Mr Galloway then petitioned the Government by visiting Downing Street in alongside a number of care experienced young people.
But in a statement on August 3, the Department for Education said: “We are aware that some local authorities have voluntarily passed motions to treat care-experience as a protected characteristic and we are following this development to see how it impacts on services and supports care leavers.”
The Cabinet Office also confirmed “there are currently no plans to legislate extra protections for those who have an experience in care.”
Mr Galloway told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “The Government shouldn’t be following this, they should be leading on this.
“I’m not funded at all, and they have such resource. Why aren’t they putting support into this?
“I know the Government cares, but that report had handwritten messages from around 20 care experienced people who were with me that day.
“It really does demonstrate a lack of understanding.”
In the Government’s children’s social care strategy £200m was promised, despite the independent care review stating a £2.6billion reform is needed.
Despite the significant cost initially, campaigners argue reform will save money in the long run amid increasing need for care placements and soaring costs.
The failure to address problems now could end up costing the Government an additional £1 billion over the next 10 years, according to a briefing from major charities including the NSPCC and Bernado’s.
“The financial cost of the system is spiralling out of control; it needs a reset, which will come when we get a protected characteristic because that’s the only way to get people listening to us in places they have not heard us before,” Mr Galloway says.
As part of this reform, Mr Galloway is also looking to make it easier for smaller, less institutional children’s homes to be set up within residential communities.
Currently authorities and care providers must first get planning permission for a certificate of lawfulness to convert some family properties if plans would lead to a ‘material change’, but these applications are often met with resistance.
Mr Galloway says applications typically “whip up hysteria in the community” based on misconceptions.
He therefore wrote to the Minister of State for Housing and Planning, Rachel Maclean, asking that the need to go through the planning process should be changed.
Instead of leaving the decision to local authorities with planning responsibilities, he argues the current requirement for registration with Ofsted should be sufficient on its own.
However in an email seen by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, the Planning Directorate at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) simply reiterated its current policy.
DLUHC was contacted for comment but did not respond by time of publication.
