How Scottish kids are being put into care for simply being born poor

In an exclusive interview, Fraser McKinlay, chief executive of The Promise Scotland, the independent body which holds the Scottish Government accountable for its pledge to improve the care system, said there was “no doubt” poverty could be the “prime mover” in sending children into care. 

When asked if children were taken into care simply because their families can’t afford to look them, McKinlay replied: “Instinctively, my answer is ‘yes’.” 

His comments come as the charity One Parent Families Scotland (OPFS) releases a report into the role poverty plays in care. OPFS gave the report – Poverty-Proofing For Families in or on the Edges of Care – to The Herald ahead of publication.

The report – which OPFS describes as “stark” – reveals how children being sent into care drives poor families further into destitution. Deeper poverty means children stay in care longer as families can’t support their return. Scotland’s poorest children are the most likely to enter care.

Satwat Rehman, OPFS chief executive, told The Herald on Sunday that it wasn’t the case that all children sent into care were removed because of violent, abusive, neglectful or addicted parents. She described one case where a mother was too poor to leave her abusive partner and her child was removed because of his violent behaviour towards her. If the woman had been helped to move, or had sufficient finances, the child wouldn’t have been taken into care.

Our investigation underscores the need for the Scottish Government to fulfil what’s known as “The Promise”. In 2020, after an independent care review, former first minister Nicola Sturgeon promised that all children in care would grow up “loved, safe and respected”. The goal is to completely overhaul Scotland’s care system by 2030.

Care often leads to damaging outcomes. Many adults who experienced care go on to offend, commit suicide, get involved in sex work, become homeless, or die young.

Promise
McKinlay says his role is to both “hold [the government’s] feet to the fire” and help ministers fulfil their pledge to fix the care system.

He is there to ensure “those responsible for the care system are doing the things that need to happen to keep ‘The Promise’.” Change isn’t easy. “The system has existed for generations,” he says. Public finances hamper change. Additionally, public sector organisations “struggle with giving up power and changing how things work”.

Key to fulfilling “The Promise” is “ensuring families are able to stay together where it’s safe – so, fewer children in care. And for those children who have to be looked after, ensuring the experience is much more positive than it is for too many kids at the moment”.

The timescale to keep “The Promise” isn’t on track. What is known as “Plan 21-24”, which sets out key changes required before next year, “probably isn’t going to be kept in its entirety”, partly due to the pandemic. McKinlay adds: “There’s an awful lot more to do.”

“We’re spending £1 billion a year in Scotland on a care system that often doesn’t work for people and then something like another £875 million on picking up the pieces of that care system – the cost of negative outcomes. The biggest cost of all is borne by those who go through that experience.”

Class
POVERTY, he stresses, “is a significant contributing factor to ending up in care … There’s an awful lot of kids in the care system not through the fault of their families”. Children entering care “absolutely isn’t about all these people being bad parents … The vast majority of children and families in and around care are experiencing poverty. This isn’t a classless problem”.

When asked if poverty is ever “the prime mover sending children into care”, McKinlay replies: “Yes, I think there’s no doubt.” He stressed most low-income families have no interaction with the care system.

Bias affects which children enter care. When asked if middle-class families and poor families – experiencing similar problems deemed adverse to their children, like addiction – might be treated differently, McKinlay said: “Probably. Yes, instinctively, absolutely.”

He noted that middle-class families “engage with all public services differently to households experiencing poverty … It’s not a level playing field”.

On mental health, he said the support middle-class families can access “is really different to the support families living in deep poverty will get access to”.
When asked if children were ever sent into care because their families were just too poor to feed or clothe them adequately – and there was crucially no evidence of abuse – McKinlay said: “Instinctively, my answer is ‘yes’.”

Income
MCKINLAY said this makes “a strong argument for minimum income guarantees” – policies such as universal basic income – so “there’s better chances of [parents] being able to keep families together”.

However, he’s aware some people will have the attitude that “they’ll just spend it on booze and fags”. One in four Scottish children officially live in poverty – that’s 250,000 kids. Of those, 69% are in working households.

“Poverty is expensive for everybody: state and taxpayer. Care is expensive,” McKinlay adds. The yearly cost of a child in care is “between £100-200,000”. Comparatively, improving benefits for poor parents costs little.

“It’s bonkers,” McKinlay says. “Preventative spending” means the state pays less. But politically there’s “enormous nervousness about that”.

Benefits
WHEN a child enters care, benefits relating to children and housing are cut. This happens even if there has been no abuse or addiction, and poverty is the “prime mover” sending children into care. Benefit removal increases family poverty, making it harder for children to return home, even if they’re safe.

“There does come a point where it just can’t be affordable to look after your kids,” McKinlay says. “It makes no sense. The system we’ve designed is absolutely wrong. It’s cruel and unnecessary. It can be changed. We should be angry, outraged, sad and determined to do something about 
this.”
He says the Scottish Government’s “promise’ is “the best chance” to change the system. The truth about care and poverty should “galvanise people to say, ‘that’s not right on any level – human, financial or moral. We cannot be content living in a world where this happens … People with the levers of power need to get on and do something about it”.

McKinlay believes positive steps are being taken by the Scottish Government to fulfil “The Promise”. Money has been “invested”. He also praised the Scottish Child Payment – an additional benefit unavailable in the rest of Britain.

The government’s pledge to reform care “is genuinely not all mouth and no trousers. It isn’t performative”. However, when it comes to the care system, “the way the government works is massively frustrating”. Matters like housing, addiction and poverty are “siloed”. Families need “support” in the round. The goal should be “getting to families before crisis point”.

McKinlay believes the Scottish Government can change the care system by 2030, however: “They still need to do a lot more over the next six years to ‘keep “The Promise’.”
He notes that within the care system there are “vested interests – people and organisations with budgets that they subconsciously want to protect”.
So, what benchmark will prove “The Promise” has been kept? 

“Fewer children in care,” he says. Currently, there are 12,000 children in care. Another benchmark is “no early deaths in care”. In 2021, there were 17 deaths, related to drugs and suicide. “We’re not learning the lessons from those tragedies,” he adds.

Parents
MCKINLEY’S team helped the charity One Parent Families Scotland compile its report into the removal of benefits from parents when children enter care.

OPFS chief executive Satwat Rehman confirmed that not all children who go into care are removed from families due to violence, abuse, addiction or neglect. When asked if children were removed simply due to poverty, if parents are unable to properly feed and clothe them, she says: “In some cases.” She stresses that most families in poverty have no involvement with the care system.

The state could perceive the inability to financially provide for children as “neglect”.

She says: “But it’s actually from not having enough. If you can’t afford to run your washing machine, and your kids’ clothes are dirty – how’s that going to be perceived? If you’re spending what little money you have ensuring your children have enough to eat, and you’re going without, that doesn’t just impact your physical health, but your emotional health.”

She adds: “Not having enough of the essentials in your home isn’t necessarily an indicator of neglect. It can be an indicator of families simply not being able to afford things.”

Domestic violence also plays a role in children entering care. Rehman speaks of one case which particularly “affected [her] for a long time afterwards”. It involved “a mother whose baby was removed as she was in an abusive relationship”. The woman wanted to escape her partner but no help was available. If support had been in place,

Rehman says, “we could have avoided the whole situation”.
The woman was trapped in a “Catch-22” which led to the loss of her child. A simple discretionary payment, to help her leave her abusive partner, would have kept mother and baby together. “We could have prevented this happening,” Rehman adds.

Testimony
ANOTHER mother spoken to by OPFS researchers compiling the charity’s hard-hitting report into care, poverty and benefits said she received no help despite her partner’s violence.

Her child was removed. A third mother said “earlier intervention” was needed, adding: “Things shouldn’t need to be burnt to the ground before support is in place.”

One simply said: “I needed support to keep my children safe.”
OPFS looked at several cases where lone parents had benefits removed after children entered care. One had a weekly income of £325 before the child was removed – that dropped to £77 afterwards. 

Removal of benefits thrusts poor parents deeper into destitution and can cause homelessness, making it “impossible” for children to return safely. Severe loss of income means that parents, allowed to visit children in care, find it difficult to travel to see them or bring gifts and treats.

One mother whose child was removed told OPFS: “I felt overwhelming pressure to buy things for my baby to show I was a good mother – I couldn’t. I remember buying her a toy from the pound shop. They took it off her as they didn’t think it was good – that hurt a lot. I couldn’t afford her birthday as my ex had taken what little money I had saved. I phoned and spoke to a duty social worker who gave me £30 to get her something and a cake. I was so grateful.”

Another said: “I was allowed contact every two weeks but had no money to get there to take things along such as a snack.” Sometimes children are returned to parents who have been left destitute, risking another spell in care. When children are returned, it often takes time for benefits to restart, leaving families more impoverished. One mother said she couldn’t financially manage her child’s return.

Another spoke of relying on foodbanks before her child was removed. “They gave me nappies and milk for the baby,” she says. Others borrowed from friends. One mother living in poverty said she lost her children but “had done nothing wrong”. Another said that she was “seen as a criminal” as the father of her child had offended.

A mother who experienced domestic violence said she wasn’t “offered opportunities to go to a refuge with the children”. The offer only came “after the children were removed and I was homeless”. Another spoke of being “isolated” by her partner prior to her child’s removal. 

One woman who suffered domestic abuse said: “My mental health was deteriorating. I didn’t know when the next battering would happen.” Another tried to take her own life. A third mother who lost her children spoke of her partner drinking and gambling their money away, including funds for nappies and milk.

Another mother spoke of her benefits being stopped after her child was removed. “My house was taken off me as I wasn’t entitled to it anymore,” she said. Another was left with just “a black bag full of clothes” after losing her home. Others had to enter women’s refuges. 

Deprived
THE system, the OPFS report says, “works against” families. The more poverty children experience, the greater the risk of entering care. Children “in the most deprived areas” of Scotland are “20 times more likely to be in the care system … Deprivation was the largest contributory factor in children’s chances of being looked after”.

When it’s “safe and appropriate” children shouldn’t be in care, Rehman says. 
“We should be doing everything to keep families together.” She says children in care have asked why funds spent rehoming them weren’t used to “support their mother so they could stay with her”.

If the state didn’t remove benefits from parents with children in care, it would speed up family reunification “where safe”, Rehman points out. Maintaining benefits doesn’t have to be “forever” but maybe six months so poor families aren’t thrown into deeper poverty and can work towards reuniting with children. This would mean less taxpayer expense, as the cost of care far outweighs the cost of child-related benefits. 

“We can’t carry on failing people the way we are,” she adds.
Rehman wants the Scottish Government to prevent the removal of the Scottish Child Payment, and for the UK Government to “protect benefits”. Most welfare is controlled by Westminster. 

However, she accepts there are “hard hearts out there” who won’t support her call. “We’ve stopped thinking about what’s good collectively and focused on what’s good ‘for me’,” she adds.

For “The Promise” to be fulfilled, and for child poverty to end, an “attitudinal shift is needed for us to become a kinder society”.
She feels “income inequality” has “aligned with an individualistic approach which is ‘I’m alright, [these people] are ‘other’ to me”.

Rehman adds: “‘Othering’ feeds into all this … There will be those saying ‘to hell with them, they’ve messed up their lives’.”

Rehman says the state has “a duty” to stop poverty contributing to children experiencing care. 

“What we’re doing – what we call the care system – isn’t benefiting these children or society. Costs are just met further down the line on a human and societal level with homelessness and under-achieving”.

“Poverty isn’t inevitable,” Rehman adds. “It’s absolutely a political choice.” 
For now, she trusts that the Scottish Government will fulfil “The Promise” but adds that “the jury is still out” as “we need to be speeding things up and intensifying action”.

“We’ve the means to create a more just society, so on a human level this makes me incredibly upset. On a practical level it makes me angry and motivated to change it.”

Campaign
JOHN Dickie heads Scotland’s Child Poverty Action Group charity. It helped OPFS prepare its benefits, poverty and care report.

He says “income should never be a factor in creating situations where young people are removed from families. It’s unfair. We must remove that from the equation”.

Addressing child poverty would “reduce the numbers of children ending in care”, he says, and “increase the chances of children returning to live with families … There’s clearly something wrong that there’s any link between poverty and the risk of contact with the care system”.

Dickie applauds the Scottish Child Payment – £25 weekly – but says “it’s not yet adequate to ensure all families have the resources needed to ensure the Scottish Government’s own child poverty targets will be met”, adding: “More is needed.”

He says First Minister Humza Yousaf must “keep his campaign promise and use his first Budget to increase the Child Payment to at least £30 per week”. However, he adds, analysis shows £40 is needed to “meet interim child poverty targets”.

The UK Government, Dickie adds, must “end its poverty-generating policies” like the two-child benefit cap and bedroom tax. In order for “social security policy to better align with ambitions of keeping families together where that’s possible”, parents whose children have been removed shouldn’t lose benefits.

When asked about the Labour Party’s plan not to scrap the two-child cap, Dickie said his message to all political leaders was “there’s no place for policies that drive children into poverty”.

Dickie said the UK Government should adopt a “similar approach” to child poverty as the Scottish Government. 

Tackling child poverty is “absolutely critical”, he says, if “The Promise” is to be kept. “Children’s rights won’t be realised as long as we’ve child poverty.”