Our invisible children: It’ll take a seismic shift in how we think about children to truly see and support them

Published: 16 July 2024

Sara Jones

Nadine Smith

At Social finance we know that one of the biggest challenges facing those tasked with keeping our children safe is identifying who is at risk before crisis hits. The expected announcement of a national “truant register” in the King’s Speech, will not be enough to create a prevention approach that sees and supports all children, many of whom never feature in the data sets.

As a funder with a long-term interest in young people, we are incredibly proud to be supporting the work of Social Finance through their Early Inclusion Collective. For too long vulnerable children have been left without the vital support they need to achieve positive outcomes in their lives.

Victoria Southwell, Director, Triangle Trust

Our experience

Social Finance’s Impact Incubator has 10 years of experience pioneering methods and practices in supporting children to thrive. We believe that children need physical, mental and emotional support if they are to fulfil their full potential in life.

Though government is understandably keen to get a grip on the numbers of children missing from school and lessons, we see too many missing from sight and data even when in school. It will need a child-led joined up approach between schools, local authorities, NHS, parents and charities to understand what data is telling us, who is missing from data and what to do about it.

Government cannot do this alone and that is why we have created the Early Inclusion Collective in partnership with 15 organisations across VCSE, statutory and academic sectors. Over 5 years the Early Inclusion Collective will transform the support systems around children to be safety-focused and inclusive from the outset.

Exclusions are on the rise but data does not capture the unofficial number of young people who move schools or exit the system early. And the number of unofficial school moves is higher for girls than boys meaning they may go to a new school without anyone knowing.

The 2023 school census recorded just 0.5% of the pupil population as being young carers. This is in stark contrast to the recent Carer’s Trust report suggesting that up to 13% of all pupils had caring responsibilities. This means young carers aren’t known to teachers and it takes on average 3 years for a young carer to be connected to any support.

Our LGBTQI+ children are over-represented in the care system but nigh-on invisible in data because professionals don’t know how to ethically enquire or operate inclusively – with only 5% of local authorities having a dedicated policy on LGBTQI+ practices, children are placed in unsafe foster and care environments

This can be labelled simply as missing data, but these are missing children who can stay invisible for years even while being in school. A prevention plan is going to need to capture invisible children in data, understand it fully and share best practice on how to support children and prevent harms in health, education and wellbeing.

The Early Inclusion Collective — years 1 & 2

For the first two years, the Collective will create the evidence base for ‘system outcomes’ – how to redesign the environment around the child, so that it is more inclusive from the outset. We can only achieve this by ensuring all children are seen. So, alongside this evidence base, we are creating a Missing Data Unit, a framework that can dock alongside statutory data sets to indicate who isn’t showing up in existing data. The Early Inclusion Collective brings all this work together as an engine for evidence and for change.

Inclusive and responsive schools will only develop and spread when we can convince policymakers how to build them. That requires shared goals, knowledge and stories about great work that already exists. The Early Inclusion Collective holds all of that — it’s a hub for a hopeful future.

James Reeves, Senior Policy Lead, Football Beyond Borders

The Early Inclusion Collective — year 3 & beyond

Over the subsequent three years, the Collective will utilise the evidence base we have established as a platform for a new approach to services and support for children. We will be working alongside and within local communities, taking our evidence to action through inclusive commissioning, services, and incentives. We will be creating new platforms for innovative finance and, most importantly, ensuring systems are safe for all children. We already have strong partnerships in place, and we are keen to broaden the Collective to other contributors, with the help of government and funder partners we can do this quickly.

Too often children have to fall out of the system before they receive any support. The planned national “truant register” which local councils will be legally bound to keep updated with pupils not attending school is intended to help track those at risk, but our concern about such a register is two-fold:

It increases the burden on schools and could be used to penalise schools’ performance, further increasing stress on exhausted teachers
The reasons children aren’t at school are rarely due to educational provision, but more about safeguarding

The Early Inclusion Collective provides an opportunity to shine a light on groups of invisible children who miss out on getting the help they need in a way that links key issues that are rarely viewed through the same lens. The mix of practical solutions alongside work aimed at building solid evidence bases makes this an initiative that has the potential to change lives at the local support level as well as impacting at systems change level.

Victoria Southwell, Director, Triangle Trust

We believe it should be a government priority to ensure children and young people are seen and safe across education, health and care and we have set out what needs to be done to achieve this.

A coordinated cross-government prevention task force and funded strategy to identify and support children at risk of falling under the radar as part of a responsive and inclusive school system. Rather than sucking data into government, enabling partners such as the Early Inclusion Collective to objectively analyse data for new approaches and outcomes focused approaches.
A systems change pilot, following in the footsteps of Changing Futures, that is data-driven, person-led, trauma-informed and locally enabled to trial new approaches to addressing the safety and visibility of children. This could be funded using a social investment children’s flexible fund to radically improve outcomes for children and young people.
A digital plan and investment in infrastructure to support further trials of effective data-sharing infrastructure aligned to better outcomes for children.
Employment support that follows the principles of IPS to support under 25s with SEND to access health-led employment support and skills services while still in the education system.

Next Steps

Labour has pledged a digital ‘red book’ for all children — a commitment that has failed to get off the ground to date. Not only can Whitehall enable that to happen, but it can go further so the investment is worth it. Over time, the data can be improved and enriched to help improve trust and relationships between children, parents and authorities, in more preventative approaches.

Whitehall can play a role in supporting incentives like the Early Inclusion Collective, enabling commissioning to work towards this purpose and holding systems to account for child-led outcomes that improve our collective understanding of where children are at risk before it is too late.

Let’s find and support our invisible children.

Want to find out more?

To learn about the Early Inclusion Collective and how we can work with you to support children and young people contact Sara Jones, Director of Social Finance’s Impact Incubator at Sara.Jones@socialfinance.org.uk.

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