Social Workers' Perceptions of Stakeholder Contributions to Regional Variation in the Numbers of ‘Care Orders at Home’ Being Recorded

This study builds on and extends the limited literature pertaining to the increasingly common care arrangement for children in England—the ‘Care Order at home’ [COAH]. Employing online focus groups and individual interviews, the study explores with 16 practising social workers their experience of COAH in both Northwest England and Greater London. Findings support existing research to highlight the social workers' experience that COAH are more prominent in Northwest England than in Greater London. However, the study also considers how three distinct mechanisms—‘judicial oversight and institutional trust’; ‘litigation culture and organisational risk’; and ‘guardianship authority, expertise, and relational distance’—are contributing to this phenomenon. Implications are that local authorities should be more proactive in challenging the court's plan for a COAH, that family court judges should recognise how the dynamics of the courtroom might impact on the local authority's propensity to argue in favour of a plan for the child, and that a care planning model which prioritises the view of the practitioner who has a less established relationship with, and knowledge of, the child, risks continued instances of children being harmed. The study highlights opportunities for shared professional learning between regional family courts.