The children who no-one knows what to do with
“Childhood should be carefree, playing in the sun; not living a nightmare in the darkness of the soul.”
A Child Called “It”
In 2019 Children in Kent were placed in unregulated homes more than 1,000 times in three years, more than anywhere else in the country. By the beginning of July 2021, the number of Kent County Council (KCC) children placed into unregulated homes had more than doubled to 2,369 times a Shepway Vox investigation has found.
These vulnerable children looked after by KCC have been placed in unregulated care settings as far afield as Newcastle, Lincolnshire, Isle of Wight and Bristol at a cost of millions to KCC taxpayers, our investigation has discovered.
The Children Commissioner’s Dec 2019 report – Pass-the-parcel makes it clear children and young people who are placed in unregulated accommodation; which is NOT monitored by Ofsted, are at significant risk of “abuse or exploitation“. Yet since the Children Commissioner’s report KCC have continued to place children into unregulated accommodation.
Unregulated accommodation is allowed and is within the law because it offers support as opposed to care, and young people housed there live semi-independently. To put this into plain English, care is not provided 24/7. Critics say such unregulated accommodation is unsuitable due to the lack of checks to monitor children aged 16 and 17. However, we discovered in the course of our investigation that 58 children in the care of KCC were under 16 when placed into unregulated accommodation. Given the age of these children, one can only assume they would be at significant risk of exploitation from abusers or drugs gangs, particularly given the local issues in the boroughs they have been placed in.
The Shepway Vox investigation based on data from KCC reveals that despite calls for use of these homes to be banned by the Children’s commissioner:
At least 2,369 KCC children have been placed in semi-independent accommodation – in the last five years. More than a 25% of these placements (621) were out of the Kent area, meaning children were sent over 300 miles away to unregulated accommodation.
-
Speaking anonymously, a KCC social worker said,
As a KCC Social Worker, these figures truly break my heart. I wish KCC would bring some of these services back in house
Foster carer rates per child per week average £450 … doesn’t take much investigation to work out why we don’t have enough foster carers.
Local authorities paying £5k for one weeks board for a child that cannot be placed in County…. £450 vs £5k … the answer to the problem is in there.