The Power of Independent Visiting – Through the Lens of Lived Experience

As of March 2023, there were over 83,840 Children in Care in England. Last week the Children’s Commissioner released a brief blog highlighting the importance of Independent Visitors for children in care. As it stands, local authorities have varying ways of approaching Independent Visiting, raising awareness amongst young people, and allocating matches. Despite the Children’s Act 1989 setting out Independent Visiting as a statutory offering for children looked after research from the National Independent Visitor Network revealed that only 3.3% of children in care have access to an Independent Visitor.

Isolation, Loss, and Attachment

Many care experienced young people have disclosed ways they feel relationships for those with care experience can be very different from those of children and young people in supportive family networks. It is important to understand the significant differences in relationships and relationship forming for our care experienced children and young people.

• Attachment – Children’s early experiences with caregivers can shape the way they build and form relationships in later life. Disruption to or loss of a bond can have a profound effect on children’s ability to form and maintain relationships and their perceptions of them. All care experienced children will have experienced the loss of at least one important bond and anywhere up to all of them.

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• Prolonged Cycle of Grief – It is very rare for a child or young person to lose everyone they feel connected to in one go or have to deal with mass feelings of loss. Some young people in care maintain strong or partial relationships with their families and parents. Many of these children and young people are likely to experience varying and for some inconsistent relationships with members of family they remain in contact with. However, around one in six (up to 14,000) have no contact with any family at all. For these young people, there is a prolonged cycle of grief, a loss of all loved ones without the closure or understanding that can happen when someone passes away.

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• “Corporate” parents – parents in the traditional sense are supposed to be everything that the idea of ‘corporate’ is not. Care experienced children find themselves with an odd form of support bound by risk aversion, policies, procedures, training manuals, an innate awareness of budgets, and many assessments. Many of us make mistakes in our teenage years, but for most it is not documented, recorded and repeated in every document associated with you until you turn twenty-five and passed among all the significant people in your life. Instead of answering to key care givers on a relationship built by love and trust, everything is on display, reported and spoken about at length. This often formalises the relationships they do have, removing impartiality and making it harder to form true trusting relationships taken on the merit of who they are and what they choose to show you.

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• Frequent Change – Change is almost a guarantee for care experienced children and young people, who are likely to experience one or all changes including, change of home (sometimes frequently) and therefore change of care givers, change of school and therefore change of trusted adults and friendship circles, change of area (sometimes up to over 200miles away) and therefore change of what they feel connected to, change of social worker (also sometimes frequently) and therefore change of adult in position of power and more. This can create unpredictability and forming of resistant or hesitant relationships through anticipating change.

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• Money as a Motivator – for the majority, life can be lived knowing the people around you are there purely by choice and choice alone, because they are your parents, because they love you, because they enjoy who you are, because they think you tell good jokes, because they just want to. For care experienced children and young people – (see previous edition) – every person in their close network is paid to be there. The foster carers or home they live in is paid to look after them, their social worker is paid to come to meetings (where they may be supported by a paid advocacy service) to share reports with the virtual school worker that is paid to oversee their education, for every corporate parent that is paid to come to work. This can create a perpetually difficult dynamic, leading children to feel that people choosing with no incentive to care, to be there, or to support them is limited at best, which can internalise negative feelings of inadequacy.

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What is an Independent Visitor?

An Independent Visitor is an independent adult that volunteers to spend time with a child in care. They are not paid and choose to become a consistent and positive part of a child’s life. Independent Visitors spend time with children a minimum of once a month where they can support hobbies, take young people to activities, listen, and have fun. The relationship is different in that Independent Visitors are designed to remain a consistent in young people’s lives and are trained and prepared to do so. The relationships are built on the principles of consistency, patience, and time, often becoming strong and lasting relationships regardless of if a young person moves home or has a change of social worker. Independent Visitors are not paid for their time but can claim reasonable expenses for outings or activities. Independent Visitors must remain independent, meaning their relationship with the child is child led, they do not have access to internal systems, documents, or information on the child apart from information essential to safeguarding and information disclosed or shared by the child through the relationship. Children and young people are empowered to advocate for the type of person they feel they would benefit from being matched with and there are opportunities for both the child or young person and volunteer to meet and decide if the match is right for them.

The Lens of Lived Experience

The sharing of lived experience enables us to get closer to the experiences of the children and young people we support and enhance an understanding of the journeys, barriers, and obstacles that many people still face and identify good or areas to improve practice in their journeys.

Think back to your childhood, of being surrounded by people you knew, felt comfortable with, and felt safe around. Think of the things you were used to, the road you lived on, your neighbours, the colour on the walls inside your house. Imagine for a second that this place is not safe and because of that, everyone you felt connected to is no longer around you, they do not speak to you, and they do not try to see you. Imagine for a second that even though this is not your fault a paper from the first persons view of you follows you around everywhere you go shaping people’s opinion of you and the way they handle you. Every time you try to settle down and connect, you end up having to move, so many times, you stop unpacking the majority of the black bags you move in. Fast forward, you’ve turned eighteen and have just moved to a property of your own after sixteen moves in three years, meaning not enough time in one place to build a strong lasting connection. The property has no heating, and you are all alone in February, it is cold, you have just had an emergency operation on your lower back and are discharged by yourself to return home alone to recover because you felt ashamed to admit you did not have someone to call. Suddenly you realise just how alone you are, in a small studio flat, they call it ‘independent’ but in this moment, it just feels like alone. After a few hours there is a knock on the door. A Sainsburys delivery driver that you are convinced has the wrong address. They tell you it is for the name of your Independent Visitor who lives miles and miles away outside of London. All of a sudden, it is no longer just you and the walls of the small studio flat whilst you recover, even if not physically present, someone is there, watching out for you, making sure you are okay and that you have what you need for the first week of your recovery.

The power of Independent Visiting is transformative. A child that lacked all stability, can have someone that refuses to be put off. That is trained to see attempts at closing off and challenge them whilst remaining independent. Someone to take a child to their first concert, to offer them a lift home from where they were at when they tried to cancel plans, to truly be able to open up to and be accepted for who they are, and to be thought of in the moments when they feel unthought of, uncared for or alone. To be cared for entirely by choice.

Barriers to Accessing Independent Visiting, How to Break Them and Benefits

Despite its truly transformative power, Independent Visiting varies across the UK, with LA’s having mixed methods of delivery, ranging from externally commissioned services with VCS providers to in-house delivery, some with small or reducing capacity. Some of the key barriers to children and young people accessing Independent Visiting are:

• Knowledge and Understanding – Independent Visiting is not widely enough advertised, published, or spoken about both for children and young people in care and in the wider community to encourage new volunteers. As a statutory offering, every child and young person should know about their right to have an Independent Visitor and be informed about the offer in a way that works for them. Materials are important; share good news stories, use videos, social media, and traditional advertisement avenues to inform and attract. A young person may say no today, that should never remove their right to access the offering in future, by continuing to offer, you may find the right place and right time for an open conversation about a potential match.

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• Professional Perception – Professionals have shared perceptions that children and young people are ‘too complex’, not in the right place, or just would not be open to Independent Visiting. It is important to remember that for it to truly be independent it should not be steered by professional perception of potential choices, but child led. Every child deserves the opportunity to build a trusted relationship with a supportive adult – it could even be the thing to stabilise them, provide mentorship and guidance or points of reflection on their journey.

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• Right Message, Wrong Messenger – Children and young people have shared experiences of initially saying no to Independent Visiting because they were offered it by the same services they had ‘felt let down by’ in a way that did not truly communicate the independence and focus on child-led matching. Make sure a range of people in a young person’s life are giving them the option - a trusted teacher, engagement workers they get along with, foster carers or homes they’ve managed to open up to.

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• Funding of Service – Many local authorities are currently under extensive funding shortages; it can make it hard to robustly financial plan with prevention in mind. However, as a statutory service, with positive impact on outcomes and in line with the ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’ recommendations for children to have a minimum of ‘two supportive relationships’, it is a positive area where additional funding can enhance invest to save. Independent Visiting can support young people emotionally, encourage them into education or training and create a safe space for disclosure of support needs.

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• Age Limit – Independent Visiting has not been updated in line with the 2017 legislation change that acknowledged the support needs of care experienced children and young people up to the age of twenty-five. This does not mean that local authorities cannot take the proactive measures that some have started to, to enable the relationships to continue into independence, or even be offered once independence begins. This can be a great way to ensure young people have additional support when navigating independence and a stable consistent relationship that goes beyond their move from foster carers or homes.

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Independent Visiting is in no way a fix all magic wand, matches can take work or a few tries to get right, but as a statutory service with potential transformative impact in the lives of children and young people, it is important we challenge ourselves to move beyond the 3.3% levels of access and ensure every child is offered the opportunity to explore a match if they choose.

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To find out more about Independent Visiting, or if you would like to explore being an Independent Visitor for a child in care please visit Home - National Independent Visitor Network (ivnetwork.org.uk). The National Independent Visitor Network

The Children’s Commissioners Blog can be found here: The importance of Independent Visitors for children in care?? | Children's Commissioner for England (childrenscommissioner.gov.uk) Office of The Children's Commissioner

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(This article is intended to bring together lived and learned experiences, reflections and perspectives of social work and best practice. It is not intended to represent the views or opinions of any organisation I or those referenced are affiliated with.)