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Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000

The Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 and the associated Regulations & Guidance were designed to improve the life chances of young people leaving care and provided important new entitlements. The Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 took a new, more prescriptive approach to the local authority’s responsibilities for care leavers. It gives local authorities a duty to provide services in many cases where before they had only discretion. Also, the types of services and the upper age limits for which they are responsible have been extended. However, the principle underpinning this approach is not new. It is the general Children Act principle, that local authorities with responsibility for the welfare and protection of young people who are separated from their families should provide them with the kind of support that parents provide their children at home.

Purpose and Aims of the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000.
  • To delay young people’s discharge from care until they are prepared and ready to leave.
  • To improve the assessment, preparation and planning for leaving care.
  • To provide better personal support for young people after leaving care.
  • To improve the financial arrangements for care leavers.
New local authority duties under the Children (Leaving Care) Act:
  • Assess and meet needs
  • Pathway Plans
  • Personal Advisers
  • Assistance to achieve goals agreed in pathway plans
  • Support and accommodation
  • Financial support
  • Keep in touch
Who is responsible for providing services under the Children (Leaving Care) Act?

The local authority that is looking after an eligible child or who last looked after the relevant or former relevant child is the one responsible for providing him or her with services under the Children (Leaving Care) Act. For young people who were accommodated by an entity other than a local authority or were privately fostered, the responsible local authority is the one where the young care leaver is living.
It is important to keep in mind that the local authority’s responsibility is a corporate one. Social Services has the lead, but it shares the responsibility with the other departments of the local authority and with its partner agencies, such as health and voluntary organisations. This is based on the Children Act’s underlying principles of co-operation and partnership, as well as on section 27. Without the co-operation of all relevant agencies, the local authority’s duties toward care leavers can not be fulfilled.

Young people’s entitlements under the Children (Leaving Care) Act are determined by the category they fall into under the Act and Regulations. Three new categories of young people have been created, and it is to these young people that the responsible local authority owes important new duties. The categories are called: ‘eligible’, ‘relevant’ and ‘former relevant’ children. In addition, the general category of young people who leave care after they reach the age of 16, called ‘persons qualifying for advice and assistance’, has been retained in amended section 24. The local authority has limited powers, existing duties and new duties toward some of these young people. Finally, there will be some children and young people who leave care who will not meet the eligibility criteria for any of these categories, and will therefore not be eligible for services under the Children (Leaving Care) Act. However, they might be eligible for services from the local authority under section 17 of the Children Act (provision of services for children in need) based on an assessment of their needs.

It should also be kept in mind, of course, that children and young people have entitlements to services under other legislation and programmes, such as the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act or the Connexions Service (available to all children between the ages of 13 and 19 and until 25 if they are disabled). Children and young people may need assistance in obtaining such services.

Categories of Care Leaver

Eligibility for each category is based on:

  • The young person’s age
  • Length of time looked after, and
  • Current care status.

 

Eligible children

  • Age: 16 or 17 years old
  • Time looked after: a total period of at least 13 weeks after reaching the age of 14, and
  • Current care status: currently looked after. [Sched. 2, para.19B(2); C(LC)A Reg. 3].

Notes: The period of 13 weeks does not have to be continuous. It could be made up of shorter periods so long as they are not a planned series of short-term placements and so long as a part of the total period took place while the young person was 16 or 17 years old. Eligibility is not affected by other special status; for example, young people remanded into local authority care for a period of 13 weeks or more are considered ‘eligible’ and unaccompanied asylum-seeking young people who are looked after for at least 13 weeks are considered ‘eligible’.

*Important Exceptions to this

The following group of children is not ‘eligible’:

  • Children looked after in a planned series of short-term placements (but they might be a ‘person qualifying for advice and assistance’, see below). ‘Short term’ refers to placements that are each no longer than four weeks and at the end of each one the child returns to his or her parents or someone with parental responsibility [C(LC)A Reg. 3(3)]. This will particularly apply to young disabled people who have regular, planned periods of short-term respite care.

Relevant children

  • Age: 16 or 17 years old
  • Time looked after: a total period of 13 weeks after reaching the age of 14, including at least one day while they were 16 or 17 (that is, they were previously ‘eligible’ children), and
  • Current care status: no longer looked after. [sec. 23A(2)]

Notes: Two categories of relevant children, lone parents and disabled children, are treated as ‘relevant’ for all purposes except that they will continue to be eligible for Income Support and Job Seeker’s Allowance (see below).

Additional group of relevant children

  • Children detained or in hospital on their 16th birthday
  • Age: 16 or 17 years old
  • Time looked after: immediately before being detained or admitted to hospital were accommodated (i.e., not on a care order) by a local authority for a period of at least 13 weeks after reaching the age of 14, and
  • Current care status: no longer looked after (may or may not still be detained or in hospital) [C(LC)A Reg. 4(2)].

Notes: ‘Detained’ means detained in a remand centre, a young offender institution or a secure training centre, or any other institution pursuant to an order of a court. ‘Hospital’ means any health service hospital within the meaning of the National Health Service Act 1977, and any mental nursing home [C(LC)A Reg. 4(4)]. If they are the subject of a care order, rather than accommodated, they remain ‘eligible’ children, because they continue to be ‘looked after’ until they are 18 unless the care order is discharged.

*Children who return home

The following group of children is not ‘relevant’:

  • Looked-after children who return home successfully to a parent or person with parental responsibility for a continuous period of six months or more will not be treated as relevant children [C(LC)A Reg. 4(5)]. Whether or not the return is ‘successful’ will be decided through a review at least six months after the return home. Children who return home but are still on a care order remain eligible children until and unless the care order is discharged by a court, or they reach 18 and the care order expires. Young people who are not considered relevant because they return home successfully might qualify for services from the local authority as a ‘person qualifying for advice and assistance’ under section 24 or as a ‘child in need’ under section 17. In addition, if the placement at home were afterwards to break down before their 18th birthday, they could become ‘eligible’ children (if they were looked after again), or ‘relevant’ children, following an assessment by the local authority [C(LC)A Reg. 4(7)].

Former relevant children

  • Age: 18 to 21 years old (or older if still receiving agreed services)
  • Time looked after: were either (a) relevant children and would be if under 18 or (b) looked after at their 18th birthday and immediately before that were eligible children (i.e., after reaching the age of 14, were looked after for a period of 13 weeks, a part of which took place while they were 16 or 17, unless they returned home successfully), and
  • Current care status: no longer looked after [sec. 23C(1)].

Notes: Local authorities who are responsible for asylum-seeking young people who become former relevant children owe them the same duties as they do any other former relevant children. To enable this to happen, the Home Office National Asylum Support Service (NASS) has agreed that they will not seek to disperse former relevant asylum seekers, except in exceptional circumstances (See C(LC)A 2000 Guidance, p. 15).

Persons qualifying for advice and assistance

  • Age: 16 to 21 years old (or 24 if still receiving specified services)
  • Time looked after: for any period of time after reaching 16 but before reaching 18, they were looked after, accommodated or fostered, and
  • Current care status: no longer looked after, accommodated or fostered [sec. 24].

Notes: The ‘time looked after’ for one group of ‘persons qualifying for advice and assistance’ – those persons accommodated by a Health Authority, Special Health Authority, Primary Care Trust or local education authority, or in any care home or independent hospital or in any accommodation provided by a National Health Service trust – is a consecutive period of at least three months [sec. 24(2)(d)]. However, the period of three months could have begun before the child reached the age of 16 [sec. 24(3)]. Relevant and former relevant children meet the eligibility requirements for this category. However, because relevant and former relevant children have greater entitlements than persons qualifying for advice and assistance, this fact is not important.

What services are Care Leavers entitled to?

It has already been shown that young people’s entitlement to leaving-care services depends on which category of care leaver, if any, they fall into. This section looks at each category and identifies the services to which care leavers in that category are entitled.

Eligible children
  • All the provisions of the looked-after system, such as a care plan
  • A Personal Adviser
  • Needs Assessment
  • Pathway Plan and review
Relevant children
  • A Personal Adviser
  • Needs Assessment
  • Pathway Plan and review
  • Maintenance and accommodation
  • Assistance to reach goals, such as educational ones, based on the Needs Assessment and as agreed and set out in the Pathway Plan
  • General assistance and personal support
  • Access to the representations procedure
  • The responsible authority must keep in touch
Former relevant children
  • A Personal Adviser
  • Pathway Plan and review
  • Assistance with employment, education and training
  • General assistance
  • Vacation accommodation for higher education or residential further education, if needed
  • Access to the representations procedur
  • The responsible authority must keep in touch
Persons qualifying for advice and assistance

Same as under section 24 before the Children (Leaving Care) Act. Also, for those who were looked after by a local authority, the relevant authority:

  • Must keep in touch
  • May assist with education and training up to the age of 24
  • Must provide vacation accommodation if it is needed.