Urgent action is needed to raise standards in unregulated children’s homes
3 min read
Government must act now to regulate this out of control sector to bring up the standards of the worst performing accommodation to those of the best, writes Andrew Selous MP.
We know that there are around 5,000 16- and 17- year olds, and even some 15 year olds, living in this unregulated accommodation, a 70% increase in the last decade, and that there has also been a doubling of 16- and 17- year olds placed in this type of accommodation outside their home area in the last five years.
Very worrying evidence has come to light on the basis of investigations by Newsnight and others of these children being lured into a life of crime.
This accommodation operates in an unregulated twilight world where a large number of private businesses are providing wholly inadequate supervision.
There are examples of rival gang members being placed in the same home, leading to one stabbing the other, and an example of a staff member fighting with a young resident on the street. There are examples of staff members being abusive and of a young female resident being hit in the face by a six-foot male staff member.
Urgent action is needed to raise standards in this out of sight, out of mind world of unregulated children’s homes.
It is five years since Parliament’s Education Select Committee called this lack of regulatory oversight of the nation’s most vulnerable 16- and 17- year olds ‘unacceptable’. Since then the number of children sent out of their home area to live in this unregulated accommodation has doubled and we now have evidence of a multiplier of misfortune, young people being preyed on by organised crime gangs, and recruiting other young people into crime.
We must act on these facts now because we are badly failing many of these children, we are depriving other vulnerable children and adults of precious police resources, and we are wasting enormous sums of public money on wholly inadequate provision.
Local authorities, who in some cases are paying many thousands of pounds a week for this unregulated provision, are failing to assess properly the adequacy of the accommodation they are putting their young people into. There are numerous examples of local authorities around the country using provision within Bedfordshire which Bedfordshire local authorities would not use for their own children because they do not think the provision meets adequate standards.
The Government must act now to regulate this out of control sector to bring up the standards of the worst performing accommodation to those of the best.
Ofsted should immediately be given a role, there should be a fit, and proper person test so that the director of an inadequate home cannot close that business if it’s found to be unfit and immediately open another one. There must be a duty to inform the hosting police force and local authority of the children coming into an area. The Durham Police Philomena Protocol should also be adopted to help locate the children who go missing as easily as possible.
Central and local government need to plan for sufficient and high-quality provision and local authorities should minimise the number of children they send out of their areas for no good reason.
Andrew Selous is Conservative MP for South West Bedfordshire.
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