Children’s care pressures leading to more unregistered placements, says Ofsted
Ofsted’s annual report has warned that pressure on children’s social care is leading to increasing numbers of children living in unregistered placements.
The regulator’s 2022/23 report said that rising demand and limited supply in social care services meant the right provision and support for children and young people was not always available locally. The pressure has led to an increasing number of children ending up in unregistered placements, often deprived of liberty or living too far from home.
Ofsted said that while the best performing local authorities and providers had mitigated these issues, to provide continually good, and sometimes improved, practice for children and their families, there is still too much national disparity in the services and support children receive.
Unregistered homes represent a significant issue in the social care sector. Last year, Ofsted identified 370 such premises that were operating illegally. Most closed when they were challenged.
The number of children’s homes increased compared to the previous year, but councils still struggled to find the right homes for children in their care, partly because children’s homes, and particularly specialist homes, are not evenly spread across the country. The report said that children’s homes continue to open disproportionately in the regions where numbers are already the highest. The North West accounts for a quarter of all children’s homes and almost a quarter of all places. The distribution of homes, including new home openings, does not reflect the distribution of need.
‘The number of registered places also does not reflect the number of places available,” the report said. “More homes are operating below their registered capacity. This can be because the complexity of a child’s needs means that a solo placement is commissioned, so other places are blocked. While solo placements might be right for some children, we remain concerned at the continuing rise in children living alone and with very high staffing numbers. In some cases, the home charges the local authority for all the places, despite caring for only one child. In other examples, homes are caring for fewer children because they cannot recruit enough staff.
‘These factors are resulting in poor experiences for some children. More are living in homes that cannot fully meet their needs, in unregistered places or in places that are far from their previous home. Moving away from their local area can disrupt children’s access to services and education, as well as their contact with friends and family.’
In addition, the report describes the recruitment and retention issues across education and social care:
- In the early years, providers are having to either use agency staff and apprentices to maintain child staff ratios or scale down their provision
- In schools, staff shortages are reducing expert teaching, increasing stress, limiting intervention when children struggle, and creating a barrier to teachers accessing training and development
- In further education and skills, shortages in key industries are tempting tutors back into the workplace because their skills command a premium
- Social care providers are competing against roles in sectors like hospitality, and in social work there is an overreliance on agency social workers
Every Ofsted annual report for the last seven years has highlighted that some children are invisible to authorities, including children in illegal unregistered schools. Most of these places offer a poor standard of education and many are unsafe. Without new legislation, Ofsted’s powers to investigate and close these schools remain limited.
As well as illegal schools, there are children in unregistered alternative provision (AP). Currently, not all AP needs to be registered or inspected, leading to a wide disparity of provision for some of the most vulnerable children. Where AP is registered, inspection outcomes are worse than for other schools.
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