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24.01  We have referred briefly in Chapter 4 to the progressive change within Clwyd between 1974 and 1996 from substantial reliance on residential care for children to a dominating preference for foster care[332]. Table A shows how this developed in Clwyd between 1974 and 1992. Thus, in 1974, 34.1 per cent of children in care were boarded out (the technical term for fostering by local authorities and some voluntary organisations) but by 1992 the percentage had risen to 76.2. The comparable figures for all Welsh counties were 30.7 per cent in 1974 and 75 per cent in 1992. In the same period the number of children in care in Clwyd declined from 577 to 328 so that the actual number of children in foster care rose only from just under 200 to 250, whilst the increase in the whole of Wales was about 350 to just over 1,850.

24.02  Both the increased emphasis on foster care and the progressive reduction in the number of children in care in Clwyd were broadly in line with Wales as a whole and similar trends in England. They were driven partly by a loss of confidence by social services professionals in the benefits of residential care and in part also by the financial stringencies affecting local government in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. Institutional care came to be regarded as particularly unsuitable for young children who needed to experience family life and to form close personal attachments to one or two figures. The benefits of community based alternatives were stressed also for offenders, who formed a large part of the care population. Residential care was not only seen as ineffective in reducing offending but also inappropriate so that other forms of disposal were developed for offenders, including intermediate treatment and specialist fostering schemes. The pursuit of these policies meant that much of the burden of looking after the more challenging children and young persons living away from home passed to foster carers.

  24.03  We do not have figures directly comparable with Table A to show the equivalents in the last four years of Clwyd's existence but we do have them expressed as a percentage of children looked after[333]. The percentage of these children in residential care in 1991/1992 was 26 but by 1993 it had declined to eight and by 1996 to only four per cent. On the other hand, by 31 March 1995, 77.6 per cent of the children were in foster care; and in 1995 Clwyd had access to 300 foster carers.

  24.04  Responsibility for fostered children is often more diffuse than it is for most children in residential care. It is not uncommon for Social Services Departments to recruit foster carers and place children outside their own areas; and, if and when foster carers move home, foster children move with them. Furthermore, prior to the Children Act 1989 intending foster carers (or adoptive parents) could apply to and be approved by more than one placing authority. Supervision could be delegated to the authority in whose area a child lived, if that authority agreed, but the placing authority retained its statutory responsibilities and status as the authority to whose care the child had been committed.

  24.05  As part of the overall endeavour to find suitable foster carers, placing agencies formed consortia to find families further afield and children needing homes were advertised in national newsletters that were circulated to member agencies. Adoption was usually seen as offering the prospect of a more secure and stable family situation but there were many circumstances in which adoption was not a viable proposition and fostering was the preferred alternative.

  24.06  Boarding out was quite tightly regulated from early on because experience had already shown that children could be mistreated in foster care and in recognition of the inherent risks. The provisions of the Boarding Out Regulations 1955, which remained in force without substantial relevant amendment until 31 May 1989, are summarised in Appendix 6[334]. They provided a framework of basic safeguards for children boarded out, prescribing in detail the steps to be taken before a child was placed in a foster home and the nature and frequency of the subsequent supervision. In addition to the statutory reviews required in respect of all children in care, the regulations required specific periodic reviews of the welfare, health, conduct and progress of children boarded out.

Complaints of abuse in foster homes in Clwyd

  24.07  Alleged abuse of children in foster homes in Clwyd did not play any significant part in the events that led to the appointment of this Tribunal, which have been recounted in Chapter 2. However, in the course of our hearings the case of a foster carer, Roger Platres Saint, attracted nationwide publicity. Saint pleaded guilty on 7 March 1997, in the Crown Court at Mold, to nine counts[335] (out of 16 counts in three indictments) alleging indecent assaults upon a step-son, two pupils, a foster child and five adopted children between March 1975 and December 1987; and he was subsequently sentenced, on 23 May 1997 in the same Court, by the Honourable Mr Justice Laws to concurrent sentences of six and a half years' imprisonment on all nine counts (the other counts were ordered to lie on the Court file on the usual terms[336]).

  24.08  Saint had lived in Clwyd from December 1976 to September 1990, a period covering almost the full span of his offending and the aspects of his case that attracted most attention were: (a) the failure of Social Services Departments to elicit information that Saint had been convicted on 9 June 1972, in Neath Magistrates' Court of indecent assault on a boy before he was approved as a foster carer or as an adoptive parent; (b) the fact that children continued to be placed with him after his conviction in 1972 became known in February 1988; and (c) the fact that he had been permitted to continue to serve as a member of a Clwyd Adoption and Foster Care Panel until Clwyd ceased to exist on 31 March 1996. These matters were drawn to the attention of Mr Justice Laws, who refrained from commenting upon them himself as they were clearly within the scope of this Tribunal's inquiry.

  24.09  Quite apart from the Saint case and the questions that it raised, it would have been necessary for us, within our terms of reference, to inquire into any evidence of the abuse of children in care who were in foster homes within Clwyd during the relevant period, whether or not Clwyd was the placing authority. In the event we are aware of seven foster homes in Clwyd in respect of which complaints of abuse have been made by foster children against foster carers and/or against members of the latter's family. We deal with these complaints in the succeeding chapters of this part of the report, beginning with separate chapters on the grave cases of Roger Saint and Frederick Rutter and dealing with the other cases, some of which also involve serious sexual abuse, in the following chapter.

Footnotes:

332   See paras 4.01, 4.18 and 4.29. For Wales as a whole see Table C, referred to in para 40.02.

333   Report of the Examination Team on Child Care Procedures and Practice in North Wales (1996) at paras 4.95 and 4.96.

334   See paras 31 to 33.

335   The number of pleas of guilty was wrongly calculated at ten at the subsequent hearing, the error arising in relation to the first count on the third indictment.

336   Not to be proceeded with without leave of the Crown Court or the Court of Appeal Criminal Division.