Evaluation of Staying Put: 18+ Family placement programme
Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF).
Undertaken in collaboration with the National Care Advisory Service (NCAS), Catch 22 (formally Rainer).
The Centre for Child and Family Research will be working with the National Care Advisory Service (NCAS) to assess the extent to which the Staying Put pilots are helping care leavers achieve better outcomes.
Background
The Staying Put pilot, which began in 11 local authorities in July 2008, is targeted at young people who have established relationships with foster carers and offers this group the opportunity to remain with their carers until they reach 21. The key objectives of the pilot are to:
- Enable young people to build on and nurture their attachments to their carers, so that they can move to independence at their own pace and be supported to make the transition to adulthood in a more gradual way just like other young people who can rely on their own families for this support;
- Provide the stability and support necessary for young people to achieve in education, training and employment; and
- Give weight to young people’s views about the timing of moves to greater independence from their final care placement.
The evaluation aims to assess the extent to which Staying Put meets the objectives and to ascertain the costs and benefits of the pilot compared to standard leaving care provision and that offered under Right2BCared 4. In each of the 11 Staying Put pilot sites the approaches that areas have adopted to implement the initiative will be mapped and focus groups conducted with the Staying Put lead to explore the challenges and issues they have encountered in the early stages of the pilot. Management information system (MIS) data on two cohorts of young people will also be collected to facilitate analysis of similarities and differences in outcomes for young people who have Stayed Put compared to those who chose not to remain with their foster carers beyond 18 and those who did not have the option to do so (pre-pilot cohort).
The successful peer research methodology employed for the Right2BCared4 evaluation will also be adopted for this evaluation. In six pilot sites former care leavers, trained as peer researchers, will interview young people to explore the views and experiences of those who Stayed Put, those who opted to move to independence and those whose foster carers felt unable to maintain placements for them once they reached 18. The perspectives of their personal advisors and foster carers will also be sought. A bottom up costing methodology will be employed to examine the costs of the pilot compared to standard provision and Right2BCared4 and set these against outcomes. The costs of rolling out the programme will also be explored.
The study is due for completion in September 2011.
Emily Munro
Professor Harriet Ward
Debi Maskell Graham
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