Joint investigation by the Guardian and Bureau of Investigative Journalism exposes scandalous treatment of vulnerable children.
More than 480 private firms have been paid a total of more than £250m for 1,800 unlawful placements of children into illegal, unregistered care homes in just the past two years. Among them, Thurrock Council paid £2.7m to DMC Consulting Services – a provider with no previous care experience – for just two children over a two-year illegal placement.
It is a criminal offence to operate a children’s home that is not registered by Ofsted. Yet local authority payment records accessed through freedom of information requests show that almost every council in the country has been found to use unregistered settings. Where at-risk children need several carers and/or round the clock care, costs to councils can spiral. At least nine local authorities each paid more than £1m for a single placement.
The result, says Tom Wall of the Guardian who helped lead the investigation, says there is a ‘booming industry of businesses profiting from a shortfall of beds for the most-at-risk children in Ofsted-inspected homes.’
And despite the money being spent, there are serious concerns about the level of care being given to these vulnerable children. One shocking case highlighted an incident involving Durham County Council, where a 15-year-old girl was abused by two ex-soldiers with criminal records while staying in an illegal home run by Map Adventures.
A former carer has also revealed a vulnerable boy in the jurisdiction of Derbyshire County Council was kept in an illegal outdoor placement for over 100 days living in a tent on a farm, with access to a gas cooker. Meanwhile, Merseyside councils placed children with SafeSpace4U, an illegal care operator whose headquarters are owned by a convicted drug dealer currently under criminal investigation by Ofsted.
Fourteen London councils paid agency Prospero Health and Social Care some £7.6m for illegal placements. Seven of these councils have since reported receiving safeguarding allegations regarding care workers: of 44 allegations in total, 16 have been upheld.
Earlier this month, Ofsted secured its first ever conviction for such illegal operations, as Catalyst Care Limited was fined £92,000 for operating three unregistered homes in Kent. The local council had placed 10 children with the company, which received more than over £1.7m from local authorities.
For more details, see the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s full story, Revealed: The Vast Scale of England’s £225m Illegal Care Industry
Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner for England, is this afternoon giving evidence to the House of Commons’ Justice Committee’s inquiry into children and young adults in the secure estate. De Souza told the journalists who investigated the story that: ‘For too long, illegal children’s homes have been allowed to operate in the shadows, where children are treated as a business opportunity, and huge amounts of public money are spent on placements that are not properly registered or inspected.’
Photo by Mohamad Azaam / Unsplash
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