By Gabriel Princewill–
Personal advisers supporting care leavers should be formally regulated and required to hold accredited qualifications, a children’s charity has warned, after finding a “significant and inconsistent training gap” across local authorities in England.
Become, which describes its research as the first national picture of the personal adviser (PA) workforce, found that most councils do not provide accredited training to practitioners responsible for supporting young people as they transition from care into adulthood.
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The charity said the findings were particularly concerning because personal advisers have a wide-ranging and increasingly complex role, supporting care leavers with issues including housing and homelessness, benefits, education, employment, physical and mental health, immigration and the criminal justice system.
Its report comes shortly after a government-commissioned review into the deaths of care leavers concluded that the personal adviser workforce was “not fit for purpose” for young people with the highest levels of need. Become said the latest findings demonstrated the need for urgent investment in the workforce if wider reforms to care leaver support are to succeed.
The charity is calling for personal advisers to become subject to professional standards and regulation by Social Work England, alongside a requirement for advisers to hold, or work towards, an accredited level 4 qualification within 12 months of taking up the role.
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Under current arrangements, councils must appoint a personal adviser for care leavers they are required to support until the age of 21, or until 25 if the young person asks for continued support. Advisers are expected to provide advice and assistance, contribute to pathway plans, coordinate services and monitor the progress and wellbeing of the young people they support.
However, there is currently no mandatory qualification for the role. Government statutory guidance states that personal advisers should normally possess or be working towards a professional qualification, but councils retain considerable discretion over recruitment and training.
Become’s research, based on Freedom of Information responses from 140 of England’s 153 local authorities, found that 59% of councils did not provide personal advisers with accredited training or qualifications. Meanwhile, 67% did not require practitioners they recruited to have accredited training or qualifications. Almost half of councils — 45% — neither required nor provided accredited training or qualifications for their personal advisers.
Where training was provided or required, the charity found significant variation in both the type and standard of qualification. Level 3 qualifications, broadly equivalent to A levels, were the most common standard. Become also found relatively few externally provided qualifications specifically designed for personal advisers, with its own level 4 PA training course the most commonly funded specialist qualification, used by 20 councils.
The organisation said conversations with personal advisers and leaving care managers suggested that practitioners were receiving training in a range of subjects but lacked training specifically focused on the experiences and challenges faced by young people leaving care. The implications for young people could be significant, the charity warned.
Some care leavers interviewed for the research said that a lack of knowledge and understanding among their advisers had made it more difficult for them to discuss their experiences, resulting in needs going unmet.
Become acknowledged that personal advisers could not be expected to be experts across every area of support. However, it said they needed a strong foundation of knowledge, the confidence to recognise when specialist intervention was required and the relationships and professional networks necessary to connect young people with appropriate services.
The research also highlighted pressures within the workforce itself. The 140 councils responding to the survey reported 2,664 personal advisers, equivalent to 2,481 full-time practitioners, as of 31 March 2025. Councils reported 220 full-time equivalent vacancies, representing an 8% vacancy rate, while 360 advisers had left their positions during 2024-25, giving a reported turnover rate of 13%.
The median of the average caseloads reported by councils was 20 young people. However, one in five councils reported an average caseload of at least 25. Become stressed that the figures represented only a snapshot of the workforce, but said professionals it spoke to described caseloads as having “spiralled” in some areas in recent years, while the complexity of young people’s needs had also increased.
Staff sickness, turnover and fluctuations in the number of young people requiring support were also reported as factors affecting caseloads. The charity’s research did, however, identify the benefits of specialist personal adviser roles. Just under half of councils — 47% — employed one or more specialist advisers, with expertise covering areas such as housing and homelessness prevention, education, employment and training, support for former unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, care leavers in custody and young parents.
Become said these specialist roles were highly valued by both young people and practitioners. Some had been supported through the Department for Education’s Staying Close pilot, which aims to help care leavers secure and maintain stable accommodation and access essential services.
The findings come as the government implements a series of reforms intended to strengthen support for children in care and care leavers. These include expanding the Staying Close approach, placing new duties on public bodies to promote opportunities for looked-after children and care leavers, and requiring councils to publish their arrangements for supporting young people as they move into adulthood and independent living.
The government is also funding a national rollout of schemes intended to help children in care and care leavers build and maintain relationships with important people in their lives. New measures on enduring relationships are also intended to strengthen accountability for local authorities and make the issue a focus of Ofsted inspections.
Become welcomed the reforms but warned that they would only deliver meaningful improvements if accompanied by investment in the workforce responsible for putting them into practice. Its report sets out 12 recommendations for the Department for Education, including the development of a national workforce strategy, increased and ringfenced funding for personal adviser services and the introduction of professional standards and mandatory qualifications.
It also called for caseloads to be capped at 20, with lower caseloads for advisers supporting young people with additional needs or those living outside their home authority.
The charity wants a national pay scale and spine for personal advisers and the wider leaving care workforce, alongside clearer progression routes into senior PA positions. It also called for statutory guidance to place greater emphasis on relationship-building, including helping young people develop and maintain networks of important people in their lives.
Councils should also be supported to develop senior and specialist PA positions, Become said, creating clearer career progression while allowing practitioners to develop expertise in particular areas. The Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) backed calls for greater investment in the workforce.
Dheeraj Chibber, chair of the ADCS policy network for health, care and commissioning, said the organisation had previously called for greater focus on the wider children’s services workforce, including personal advisers, potentially through higher-level apprenticeship routes.
He said the knowledge and skills of the workforce had been identified as an area requiring attention in the recent review into the early deaths of care leavers, adding that ADCS would welcome discussions with government about the next steps.
“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,” he said.
Become’s findings underline a wider challenge facing the care leaver system: reforms can create new duties and entitlements, but their success ultimately depends on the people responsible for delivering support.
With thousands of young people relying on personal advisers during one of the most significant transitions of their lives, the charity argues that ensuring those practitioners are properly trained, professionally supported and given manageable caseloads must become a central part of the government’s reform agenda.
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