Charity calls for personal adviser role to be regulated and require accredited qualifications after finding ‘significant training gap’, in what it described as the first national picture of the care leaver workforce.
Most councils do not provide care leaver practitioners with accredited training, meaning many lack the knowledge, skills or confidence to support young people effectively, research has found.
In what it described as the first national picture of the personal adviser (PA) workforce, the charity Become found a “significant and inconsistent training gap” across England’s local authorities that belied the breadth and significance of the role.
Its study, published yesterday, follows the recent review into care leaver deaths’ conclusion that the PA workforce was “not fit for purpose” for young people with the highest needs.
On the back of its report, which also included findings on PA caseloads, vacancy rates and turnover, Become called for the role to become regulated and subject to professional standards by Social Work England, and to require an accredited level 4 qualification.
About the personal adviser role
Councils must appoint a personal adviser for all care leavers they are required to support up to the age of 21, or up to 25 if requested by the young person.
Under care leaver regulations, PAs’ functions include providing care leavers with advice and support, participating, where applicable, in the assessment and preparation of their pathway plan – which sets out how the young person will be supported – participating in plan reviews, co-ordinating the provision of services and keeping informed about the young person’s progress.
Where a young person is provided with accommodation by the local authority, PAs must visit them after seven days, before the pathway plan review that must take place after 28 days and at least every two months, subsequently.
Statutory guidance states that PAs should have knowledge of, among other things, human growth and development and the legal framework affecting care leavers, and should normally be working towards a qualification, though none is required for the role.
What Become’s findings were based on
Become’s study was based on:
- Freedom of information (FoI) requests to England’s 153 local authorities – for which it received responses from 140 – in relation to PA numbers, caseloads, vacancies, turnover and training.
- Interviews with 46 care experienced young people, drawn from forums in two areas and one of the charity’s campaign groups, exploring their experiences with PAs.
- Focus groups with 19 PAs and 21 leaving care managers to discuss the personal adviser function, including what support practitioners need to do the role as effectively as possible.
The charity also submitted an FoI request to the Department for Education, which it said revealed that the DfE did not collect, require or hold data about the leaving care workforce or the overall funding settlement for leaving care services.
How many PAs are there and what are their caseloads?
The 140 councils to respond to Become’s request reported having 2,664 PAs between them, equivalent to 2,481 full-time practitioners, as of 31 March 2025.
Between them authorities reported having 220 full-time equivalent PA vacancies – a vacancy rate of 8% – and said 360 advisers left their posts during 2024-25, meaning there was a turnover rate of 13%.
Councils were also asked to report the median average caseload for their PAs. Across the 140 councils, the median of the averages reported was 20 cases, but a fifth of councils had an average of 25 or more.
While Become stressed that this was just a snapshot, it reported that leaving care professionals it spoke to had reported that caseloads had “spiralled” in their areas in recent years, alongside growing complexity of need on the part of young people.
Others said their caseloads fluctuated on a regular basis, due to high staff turnover, sickness or changes to the number of young people supported by their team.
Lack of training and qualification requirements
While the DfE’s statutory guidance on transitions for care leavers states that PAs should “normally possess or be working towards a professional qualification”, there are no training or qualifications requirements for the role.
Become found that 59% did not provide PAs with any accredited training or qualifications, while 67% did not require the same of practitioners they recruited. Almost half (45%) neither required nor provided accredited training or qualifications for PAs.
Where councils did require or provide accredited training or qualifications, there was considerable variation in the standard and type of qualification offered or required. The most common standard was a level 3 qualification, equivalent to an A level.
Become also noted there were relatively few externally provided qualifications tailored to the PA role. The most common one funded by councils was the charity’s own level 4 PA training course, which was used by 20 councils.
Though councils reported providing practitioners with training on various topics, PAs and leaving care managers told the charity that they “lacked role specific training on the challenges and experiences of young people leaving care”.
Impact on young people
Become said the lack of consistent training for PAs was “particularly concerning” given the breadth of the role, which encompassed helping young people with services including housing and homelessness, benefits, education, employment, physical and mental health, immigration and the criminal justice system.
The DfE-commissioned review into care leavers’ deaths found “huge variation” in the quality of PAs’ practice, with many seeming to “avoid the emotional side of the transition”, focusing instead on providing information or access to funding, and carrying out practical tasks.
Similarly, Become said some care leavers had told it that their PAs’ lack of knowledge or understanding had made it harder for them to open up about what they were experiencing, leading to unmet need.
“No PA can be expected to be an expert in every area,” the charity added. “But they do need a strong foundation of knowledge, the confidence to identify when a young person needs specialist help, and the relationships and networks to connect them with the right service.”
The value of specialist PAs
Just under half (47%) of councils employed one or more specialist PAs, who had particular expertise in areas such as housing and homelessness prevention, education, employment and training, or supporting care leavers who were former unaccompanied children, those in custody or those who were parents.
Some of these had been funded as part of the DfE’s Staying Close pilot scheme, which is designed to help care leavers find and maintain stable accommodation and to support them to access key services.
It found that these roles were highly valued by both PAs and young people.
Care leaver reforms
The report comes with the DfE making significant changes to support for care leavers, as part of its wider children’s social care reform agenda. These include:
- Rolling out a version of the Staying Close scheme, by placing a duty on councils to consider whether care leavers aged up to 25 should receive advice, information or representation to find and keep suitable accommodation and to access specific services, and where their welfare requires it, to offer that to them.
- Placing a duty on public organisations, such as NHS bodies, government departments and educational institutions, to promote opportunities for looked-after children and care leavers to enhance their wellbeing and employment prospects
- Requiring councils to publish their arrangements for supporting care leavers in their transition to adulthood and independent living.
- Funding a national rollout of schemes to support children in care and care leavers build and maintain relationships with important people in their lives.
- Introducing a measure in relation to enduring relationships against which local authorities will be judged, and to make the issue a focus of Ofsted’s inspections of councils and social care providers.
Recommendations for bolstering personal adviser role
While welcoming the reforms, Become said they would “only achieve their full potential if they’re matched by investment in the workforce
responsible for delivering much of that support”. Its report made 12 recommendations for the DfE, including:
- Producing a national strategy “to equip the leaving care workforce with the skills, knowledge, confidence, and resources to provide all young people leaving care with the support they need”.
- Providing councils with increased and ringfenced investment to expand and develop the PA workforce.
- Subjecting PAs to professional standards, regulated by Social Work England, and requiring all advisers to have, or to be working towards, a level 4 PA-specific qualification within 12 months of starting their role.
- Capping PA caseloads at 20 and producing guidance stating that advisers should have reduced caseloads if they are supporting young people with additional support needs or who are living away from their home authority.
- Introducing a national pay scale and spine for PAs and the wider leaving care workforce, with clearer progression opportunities through senior PA roles.
- Updating statutory guidance to require that PAs’ roles include developing and maintaining positive trusting relationships with young people and supporting young people to identify, strengthen and maintain their network of important relationships, among other things.
Become also called on councils to fund senior and specialist PA roles, to create progression opportunities and develop particular areas of expertise, with the latter potentially done on a regional basis.
Directors’ body urge investment in care leaver workforce
In response to the report, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) said it also supported DfE investment in the care leaver workforce.
“ADCS has previously called for more focus on, and investment in, the wider workforce for children’s services, including the PA role, via a higher-level apprenticeship route, for example,” said Dheeraj Chibber, policy network chair for health, care & commissioning.
“The knowledge and skills of this workforce was flagged as an area for attention in the recent review of early deaths of care leaver and ADCS would welcome discussions with the government about what follows.
“By both recognising and investing in this workforce as well as extra support for care leavers themselves, both experiences and outcomes can be improved going forward.”
Source, Community Care
