The Independent Reviewing Officer: What the Role Should Mean to a Child

In the life of a looked-after child, there are not many moments when someone with no direct stake in the outcome of decisions sits down and asks: how are things, really, for you? The Independent Reviewing Officer is supposed to be that person. The IRO's statutory function — to chair looked-after children's reviews, to monitor the local authority's performance of its functions in relation to the child, to ensure the care plan is being followed and the child's wishes are being heard — represents, on paper, a meaningful form of independent oversight. In practice, the gap between that description and what many young people actually experience in their reviews is considerable.

What young people consistently report, when researchers and advocacy organisations take the time to ask them, is that reviews can feel like events that happen around them rather than for them. Professionals talk across the table. The language is dense with terminology that was not explained in advance. The young person may have been told to attend for thirty minutes before leaving the room while the adults continue. Their views, where they have been recorded, may have been summarised in a way that loses something — the texture of what they actually said, or the strength of it. The review ends; little appears to change. The IRO, to some young people, is just another adult at another meeting.

An IRO who is genuinely useful does things that go beyond chairing a competent meeting. They meet the young person before the review, not to rehearse what will be said but to understand what the young person actually wants from it. They read the care plan critically and are prepared to challenge gaps in it. They maintain continuity — they are the same person across multiple reviews, which means a young person does not have to re-establish themselves at every meeting. They follow up on actions that were agreed and were not delivered. When the local authority is not meeting its obligations, they say so.

Residential homes have a role here that is sometimes underestimated. A home that prepares a young person properly for their review — that explains what it is for, who will be there, what they are allowed to say and to ask for, that the review belongs to them in a way that most professional meetings do not — is already shifting the dynamic. Staff who attend reviews and speak honestly about what they are observing, rather than offering the version of events most likely to keep the relationship with the placing authority comfortable, are providing something valuable. The review should be the moment when the quality of daily care is tested against the stated plan. That test only has meaning if people are honest.

The IRO system has structural problems — caseloads that are too high, insufficient independence from the employing local authority, inconsistent training — that sit beyond what any single home can address. But within those constraints, homes can do a great deal to ensure that the young people in their care arrive at reviews prepared, supported, and with a genuine expectation that their voice will matter.