Anne Longfield, Children’s Commissioner for England, has published a set of reports (Private provision in children's social care / The 2020 Stability Index) showing how the children’s residential social care system is broken and is failing many of the most vulnerable children, in particular those who are most at risk of falling through gaps in the system and becoming victims of criminal or sexual exploitation.
The first report, ‘The children who no-one knows what to do with’, is the culmination of three years of wide-ranging research into children’s homes. It highlights the issues faced by certain groups of children in care for whom the system is not working, including:
- The 8,000 children who have three different homes within a single year
- The 13,000 children who end up in unregulated homes at some point during the year
- The hundreds of children who need a place in a secure children’s home but cannot get one anywhere in England.
The paper details the experiences of these children, including constant moves. One teenager talked of being placed 8 hours from her hometown and not seeing her Mum for months. Other children say they felt “dumped” in areas they had never heard of and could not identify on a map, only to then be isolated at home for months waiting for a school place.