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Ofsted has sharpened its focus on stability for children in care in its judgments of social care providers, particularly children’s homes and independent fostering agencies.

The changes to its social care common inspection framework (SCCIF) are a response to concerns that some providers are rejecting referrals for children with complex needs due to concerns about the impact on their Ofsted ratings.

As a result, those children are being placed far from family or friends, experiencing multiple moves or ending up in unsuitable or unregistered accommodation.

Ratings concerns ‘driving rejection of children with complex needs’

Research for the regulator published last year found that 60% of local authorities believed these concerns were often or always a reason that homes rejected referrals for children with complex needs.

By contrast, 60% of children’s home providers said concerns about the impact of a child with complex needs on their rating were never or rarely a reason for rejecting a referral.

At the time of the research’s publication, Ofsted said there was almost no difference between SCCIF grades for homes that care for children with complex needs and those for all homes, with about four in five judged good or outstanding.

This reflected the fact that the SCCIF “was designed to focus on children’s progress and experiences, as opposed to their outcomes”, meaning inspectors should take account of children’s starting points.

However, in a blog post published last month, Ofsted’s national director for social care, Yvette Stanley, said that the perception persisted among some homes that taking on a child with more complex needs would hurt their rating.

Greater focus on stability in inspection framework

Ofsted said the changes, enacted last week, would put a sharper focus on:

• how providers promote and sustain stability for children, including those with high needs;
• how providers balance the needs of a child requiring placement with those already living in the setting;
• the timeliness of a provider’s work to prepare children for their next move;
• how accurately placement decisions reflect a provider’s statement of purpose.

“We want providers to be risk-aware, not risk-averse,” said Stanley.

“I hope these changes send a clear message that we will recognise providers who step up to support our children with complex needs, and who stick with them though the most difficult times.”

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Anyone who has read Hope Daniels’ first book, The Sunday Times bestseller Hackney Child, will know that when she was nine, she walked into Stoke Newington police station with her two younger brothers and asked to be taken into care.

What readers will not know from reading Hackney Child is that Hope was a victim of child sexual exploitation, abuse and rape. This is because Hope herself didn’t realise it at the time.

The publication of Hackney Child led to Hope being invited to talk at events across the country for professionals from social services, police, health and education about being a child in care. And it was, ironically as it turned out, at a safeguarding conference in 2016, that Hope went off script and talked about “an affair” she had had with a married man when she was 14.

The lens of realisation

A police officer approached her afterwards and gently explained that there had been no affair or relationship: she had been groomed, sexually exploited, abused and raped by this man. She was the victim.

In that moment, Hope’s world “jolted and shifted” and “a single atom of the shame and blame which had weighed on me, and bent me double throughout my life, was lifted. From me. To him. This was the start of my healing”.

And so the second part of Hope’s autobiography, This Isn’t Love, retells her childhood through the lens of that realisation.

With a few exceptions – the teacher, social worker, and residential care workers in Hope’s life who showed compassion – this is a story about a care system that spectacularly fails to deliver anything approaching “care”.

It is a care system that makes a girl spend her childhood repeating the mantra: “I am a whore. I am a little slag, I am a slut.”

An uncaring care system

This book made me angry on Hope’s behalf for so many reasons, including at:

• Social workers and teachers who either failed to notice or do anything about what was going on in Hope’s family home. Her parents were alcoholics, neglect was obvious – the children were often hungry and wore dirty clothes. Wherever they lived reeked of urine, sometimes there were rats. Hope’s dad stole a variety of items including food, things for the house and goods which he peddled out of a suitcase at the local market to make money. Hope herself stole food so that she and her brothers could eat. Their mum had stints in prison for soliciting and her dad was convicted twice for living off immoral earnings. Knowing this alone, at the very least, why did it not occur to any professional to question how many bedrooms there were and where Hope’s mother took clients? A walk upstairs would have revealed that Hope slept in her parents’ bedroom and saw everything. The family was moved multiple times, often because of complaints from neighbours. And yet, there were no interventions, as if by moving the family on, the responsibility for what was happening would also be passed on.
• The person responsible for replacing the staff at Hope’s children’s home with no explanation or warning. The children woke up to find a new team in place, denying them the opportunity of saying goodbye to anyone they had become attached to. Yet again, they were given no control over anything in their lives, which left Hope thinking they left because of something she’d done.
• The professionals who not only turned a blind eye but, in some instances, colluded to allow neglect and abuse to continue in children’s homes, secure units, and foster placements. Hope was self-harming by 11, drinking and sniffing aerosols; staff knew but did nothing.
• A system that selected completely unsuitable people to become foster carers and then allowed them to continue when it must have been apparent they were cruel at best, abusive at worst.
• A system that, to this day in some places, gives children bin bags for their possessions when moving between placements. What message does this give?
• The head of the children’s home who told Hope she was disgusting for seducing a married man – when she was 14.
• The construct of secure units – for Hope, these placements were the complete opposite of therapeutic, and to this day traumatised children, young people and adults can be further harmed in such settings. In one secure unit staff encouraged an atmosphere where children fought and then watched rather than intervened – except to physically hurt them under the pretence of restraint. And in another secure unit, a residential youth worker openly sexually abused the girls.
• The fact that some of these people are still working as foster carers and in social care.
• The male doctor who after Hope gave birth to her first baby, didn’t stop to think why a woman would scream at him, “Don’t come near me”. With the pain and drugs, Hope delusionally thought he was the man who groomed and raped her. How many women who have been abused or raped go through childbirth with no thought from professionals about the lack of control and position of vulnerability they are in, lying there with an unknown man over them? All this doctor said to Hope was: “If you don’t settle down, we’ll leave you unstitched. Stay still.”

One of the most heartbreaking stories in this book is when Hope receives an email, not long after Hackney Child is published. It was from the couple that she thought were going to foster her but whom she never met. They were also never told why the placement fell through and were so badly affected that they never reapplied to foster. Hope went to meet them and saw the bedroom that would have been hers.

Adult legacy of childhood trauma

The adult legacy of childhood trauma runs deep. In 2022, to the outside world it looked like Hope was thriving: she was married, had successfully raised two children, had become a grandmother, had a job she loved and had been sober for many years. But a catalyst of events led to her drinking again and then making a serious attempt to end her life.

Fortunately, she was found in time and it finally led to her getting the help she had needed as a child.

It can be no coincidence that the author chose Hope as her pseudonym. Her story ends with hope: she is free from addiction, working and happy. In Hackney Child, Hope feels a lot of anger towards her mum and blames her more than her dad for her childhood.

At the end of This Isn’t Love, Hope has reconciled with her mum after not seeing her for 20 years, and realised that she too was a victim of the care system (as was her dad). After hearing her mum’s story – much of which mirrored Hope’s own – she gradually begins to forgive her and recognises that they are both strong women and survivors.

And so the story comes full circle.

More change needed

Every professional who works with children in care can learn so much from reading This Isn’t Love. It is only because of brave, resourceful, resilient people like Hope that these stories are written. There are signs their voices are being heard, but more change is needed for the care system to live up to its name.

Hope is inspiring and courageous, and so it feels fitting to end this review with her own words from her author’s note at the beginning of the book:

“Since Hackney Child I’ve had a major breakdown and I’ve come to terms with all these issues. I’ve also learned that my mother, whilst she made mistakes, was a victim herself. This book addresses all of this, once and for all. For me, it’s closure; it’s my full stop. There is no more shame, no more secrets. This is my everything. I hope you can enjoy it – it’s a bumpy ride but there is so much light at the end.”

• Jenny Molloy writes under the pseudonym Hope Daniels. To learn more about Jenny’s story and the adult legacy of childhood trauma, you can listen to our Learn on the Go podcast if you subscribe to Community Care Inform Adults or Community Care Inform Children. Or you can subscribe to the series through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
• This Isn’t Love is published by Mirror Books. ISBN: 9781915306722. £9.99.

The government has pledged to “crack down on care providers making excessive profit” from care placements, in children’s social care reforms unveiled today.

Labour’s proposed reforms to tackle “profiteering” are similar to those put forward by its Conservative predecessor, including through the regional commissioning of care placements and increasing the transparency of providers’ pricing.

But the government also warned that, should these not work as anticipated, it would cap providers’ profit levels from children’s social care placements.

The reforms, set out in a policy paper today, also include empowering Ofsted to investigate companies running multiple children’s homes and more speedily take enforcement action against unregistered services.

The Department for Education (DfE) will also tighten recently introduced rules limiting councils’ use of agency social workers by placing these into legislation and extending them to cover other children’s social care staff.

New safeguarding requirements on councils

In addition, it will require councils to set up multi-agency child safeguarding teams, and to also offer family group decision making meetings when cases reach the pre-proceedings stage, to give family networks the chance to find alternatives to children going into care.

In response to the huge rise in children being deprived of their liberty under the powers of the High Court due to a lack of suitable placements, it will create a statutory framework for these cases.

The DfE added that its reforms, generally, would also seek to rebalance the system towards early intervention in order to keep families together, in the context of the care population standing at near-record levels.  

This continues the emphasis of the agenda set out by the Conservatives in their Stable Homes, Built on Love strategy published last year, which was itself based on the recommendations of the 2021-22 Independent Review of Children’s Social Care.

The policy paper said the legislation the DfE was proposing would be brought forward when parliamentary time allows. This is likely to be through the Children’s Wellbeing Bill, which was promised in the King’s Speech.

‘We will crack down on providers making excessive profit’

Education secretary Bridget Phillipson said the care system was “bankrupting councils, letting families down, and above all, leaving too many children feeling forgotten, powerless and invisible”.

“We will crack down on care providers making excessive profit, tackle unregistered and unsafe provision and ensure earlier intervention to keep families together and help children to thrive,” she added.

A key focus of the reforms is the rising cost of care for looked-after children, which the government said had “ballooned” from £3.1bn in 2009-10 to £7bn in 2022-23.

Photo: pla2na/Adobe Stock

This has been driven by a shortage of suitable placements located in the right areas, which some providers have been accused of exploiting to increase fees and extract undue levels of profit from children’s care.

In its 2022 report on the placements market, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found that, among the largest 15 providers, profit margins averaged 22.6% in residential care and 19.4% in fostering.

It said this was higher than would be expected in a well-functioning market, though it rejected the case for banning or capping profits on the grounds that this would reduce incentives for providers to invest in services and further shrink supply.

Backing for regional care co-operatives

Concerns about profit have led the Labour government in Wales to issue legislation to restrict the making of profit from children’s care, with a long-term aim of eliminating it altogether.

Its counterpart in Westminster will largely follow the blueprint to tackle profit set out by the Conservatives in Stable Homes, including by creating regional care co-operatives (RCCs) to commission placements on behalf of member authorities.

Photo: momius/Adobe Stock

RCCs are currently being developed in two areas, Greater Manchester and the South East, where they will go live next year.

In its policy paper, Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive, the DfE said RCCs would “harness the collective buying power of individual local authorities”, improving value for money from commissioning, while also developing provision to fill gaps.

It said it would legislate to enable groups of councils to set up RCCs, with ministers also taking powers to direct them to do so or intervene if a co-operative was not performing at a required standard.

Boosting pricing transparency

In another echo of Stable Homes, the government said it would seek to fill gaps in councils’ data around care costs, to “enable them to negotiate effectively with providers to secure the best placement for children at the lowest possible cost”.

“We will engage with the sector to bring about greater cost and price transparency which will aid local authorities in challenging profiteering providers, as well as enabling greater central government oversight of the placements market,” it said.

However, to guard against these measures not engineering a reduction in profiteering, the government said it would legislate to obtain powers to cap profit levels from children’s care placements, which would be enacted if required.

The idea sparked concerns from provider representative body the Children’s Homes Association, which said it risked “serious unintended consequences”.

“The CHA supports efforts to eliminate profiteering, but this law will incentivise more providers to adopt offshore interest and debt-driven business models,” it warned.

Greater oversight of hardest to-replace providers

Another Stable Homes policy being taken forward by the Labour government is setting up a financial oversight regime for the hardest to replace providers, to avoid children’s care being disrupted by businesses failing.

These providers, up to parent company level, would have to supply the DfE with financial information to enable it to assess the viability of their whole organisations.

Credit: lovelyday12 / Adobe Stock

They would also have to develop contingency plans to ensure that they did not exit the market in a disorderly way, while the DfE would have enforcement powers to ensure compliance with the regime.

Regulating children’s home groups

The DfE also pledged to give Ofsted the power to investigate multiple children’s homes run by the same company. The regulator has longed called for this to enable it to scrutinise companies’ decision making in relation to issues such as admissions, ending placements, budgeting and staffing levels.

The DfE said that, despite some companies ran over 100 children’s homes, Ofsted could not hold them to account for organisational failings that affected children’s care.

Under its plans, the regulator would be able to request, and monitor the implementation of, provider-wider improvement plans and be given powers, such as fining or preventing further registrations by the group, to enforce compliance.

Ofsted welcomed the proposal, with national director for social care, Yvette Stanley, saying: The proposed powers will strengthen our ability to hold providers to account at group level. This will mean that we can secure widespread improvements for children if there are patterns of failure.”

Tackling unregistered provision

The DfE said it would also give Ofsted powers to tackle a “worrying” rise in the use of unregistered provision, particularly of children’s homes and supported accommodation.

In 2023-24, Ofsted opened cases on 1,109 potentially unregistered settings and found that 887 (87%) should have been registered (compared to 370 in 2022-23).

Under the plans, the regulator would be given powers to fine providers of unregistered provision, as an alternative to criminal prosecutions, enabling it to act more quickly against organisations.

This was also welcomed by Ofsted, with Stanley adding: “It is only right that we are given additional powers and resources to better tackle persistent offenders and put a stop to unscrupulous and profiteering providers, once and for all.”

Housing support for care leavers

The reform package also includes legislating to require all councils to provide any care leaver (up to the age of 25) whose welfare requires it with support to access and maintain accommodation, along with practical and emotional support from someone they trust.

Photo: AdobeStock/Monkey Business

This would be based on the current Staying Close programme, which the DfE is funding 47 councils to deliver in 2024-25, at a cost of £22m, and would be designed to tackle the lack of support experienced by care leavers on moving into independent living.

The plan to extend Staying Close nationwide was also proposed by the care review and set out in Stable Homes, Built on Love.

The DfE said the duty on councils would not come into force until three years after the legislation is passed, to give them sufficient time to develop the service.

Charity Become, which supports young care experienced people, said it was “a very welcome and important first step” but must not become “another postcode lottery”.

Multi-agency safeguarding teams

Outside of the care system, the government has pledged to introduce a requirement on councils to set up multi-agency child safeguarding teams, involving professionals from social care, police, health and education, and other services, where required.

They would be responsible for investigating child protection concerns and managing cases, and would be staffed by specialists from the various constituent agencies.

This adopts a recommendation from the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel’s 2022 report into the murders of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson.

That review found a “systemic flaw in the quality of multi-agency working”, with “an overreliance on single agency processes with superficial joint working and joint decision making”.

The panel’s proposed model of multi-agency safeguarding teams, along with the care review’s proposal for child protection cases to be held by specialist social workers, are being tested in the 10 families first for children pathfinder sites.

The DfE said the details of how the proposed teams would work would be based on the evaluation of the pathfinder, and councils and their partners would have time to prepare.

Annie Hudson, chair, Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel

In response to the plan, panel chair Annie Hudson said: “We believe that this will provide a crucial new lever for tackling some deep-seated perennial problems in safeguarding children.”

Other child protection measures

Other child protection measures include placing a duty on parents to seek local authority consent to home educate their child where the child is subject to a child protection enquiry or on a child protection plan.

The DfE also plans to introduce a unique identifier for every child, to promote better information sharing between professionals. This will be piloted before the relevant legislation is implemented.

Alongside this, it will introduce a duty that would provide “absolute clarity on the legal basis to share information for the purposes of safeguarding children”.

This is designed to tackle findings that practitioners lack confidence to share information without families’ consent when there is not clear evidence of harm, despite there being other lawful bases to do so.

Rollout of family group decision-making

Councils will also have to offer families in pre-proceedings a family group decision making (FGDM) meeting, enabling them to be involved in decisions about their children’s future, where this is in the child’s best interests.

This is based on the findings of a randomised controlled trial (RCT), commissioned by what works body Foundations, into the use of family group conferences – a particular form of FGDM – at pre-proceedings, which reported last year.

This found that children whose families were referred for a family group conference (FGC) were less likely to have had care proceedings issued (59%) compared to those not referred (72%) and were less likely to be in care one year later (36%) compared to those not referred (45%).

Photo: zinkevych/Fotolia

The DfE acknowledged that “there may be barriers for local authorities in implementing FGDM at scale, including financial constraints and challenges around the recruitment or training of staff”. But it said it hoped its ambition could be realised through investment and the sharing of best practice.

Families should be offered ‘tried and tested’ FGCs – charity

Foundations’ chief executive, Jo Casebourne, welcomed the move, adding: “This type of family-led approach helps to avoid costly, late-stage interventions, and ensures that children and families get effective support at the right time.”

The Family Rights Group (FRG), which runs an accreditation programme for family group conferences services, was also supportive, but said it was vital that families were offered FGCs.

“For this radical ambition to be achieved, the offer to families must be of a family-led, robustly evaluated approach that has been tried and tested in the UK and abroad, namely family group conferences,” said FRG chief executive Cathy Ashley.

“They operate to clear standards and reduce the likelihood of a child entering or remaining in care. For children who cannot remain at home, they enable prospective carers to be identified from within the family.”

Virtual school head role extended

The government also pledged to legislate to require councils to appoint an officer responsible for promoting the educational achievement of children on child in need plans, on child protection plans and in kinship arrangements.

This role is currently carried out on a non-statutory basis by virtual school heads, who have a statutory role to promote the educational achievement of looked-after children and provide educational advice and information in relation to former children in care.

The DfE said its proposal would “bring consistency to the deployment of the role” and “ensure that children with a social worker and those in kinship care are in school, safe and are learning”.

Payment by results scrapped for Supporting Families

In her statement to Parliament announcing the policy paper, Phillipson said the government would consolidate more than £400m of children’s social care funding within the local government finance settlement in 2025-26, to simply resourcing arrangements for councils.

As a first step, it has suspended the payment by results mechanism of the Supporting Families programme, under which families with multiple needs are provided with multi-agency support, co-ordinated by a lead practitioner, to resolve issues.

Under payment by results, most councils receive some money for the programme up front with the rest delivered based on the outcomes achieved for families.

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services welcomed the decision to scrap the approach.

ADCS president for 2024-25, Andy Smith (photo supplied by the ADCS)

“[It] is a hugely positive step in the right direction towards ensuring that the limited funds in the system are used in the best interest of children and families, rather than on the mechanisms of tracking and reporting on this vital work,” said ADCS president Andy Smith.

The care population in England has fallen for the first time in 16 years but remains at historically high levels, Department for Education (DfE) data has shown.

The number of looked-after children in England fell by 0.5%, from 83,760 to 83,630, in the year to March 2024, the first reduction in the care population since 2008.

However, the total is 5,500 more than was the case in 2019, when councils were looking after 78,140 children, while the DfE figures also showed growth in the number of those placed out of area.

Fall in number of unaccompanied children entering system

The rises in the care population in 2021-22 and 2022-23 were driven by increasing numbers of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children  entering the country.

The DfE estimated that the number of unaccompanied children joining the care system fell from 6,180 in 2022-23 to 5,300 in 2023-24. It calculated that, overall, 31,090 children joined the care system in 2023-24, down 3.1% from the 32,060 who joined in 2022-23.

The department calculated that 31,490 children left care during 2023-24, up 3% on the year before, with the average duration of time spent in the care system among leavers declining from a peak of 907 days in 2020-21 to 864 in 2023-24.

The numbers of children leaving care through adoption in 2023-24 (2,980) was similar  to 2022-23 (3,000), with the same number leaving the system on special guardianship orders in each year (3,860).

Decline in mainstream fostering

The data reinforced the decline in mainstream foster care evidenced by separate statistics released last week by Ofsted.

Barely half (51.2%) of children were in these placements as of March 2024, down from 58% in 2019, with their number falling from 45,310 to 42,730 over the past five years, despite the overall growth in the care population during this time.

Over the same period, the share in kinship foster placements grew from 13.4% to 16%, growing from 10,450 to 13,660 from 2019-24.

Growing numbers in children’s homes

In line with the sharp rise in the number of registered children’s homes in England over the past few years, more children are being placed in these settings.

As of March 2024, 8,640 young people were in children’s homes – the vast majority in open settings – up from 7,990 in 2023 and 7,100 in 2020, and accounting for 10% of the care population.

This year’s figures are the first since the government required organisations providing formerly unregulated independent and semi-independent placements to register with Ofsted as supported accommodation providers to be able to continue supporting looked-after children aged 16-17.

Supported accommodation data incomplete

This followed mounting concerns about the quality of unregulated care and its growing use, with the proportion of looked-after children in these placements rising from 8% (6,070) to 10% (8,650) in the two years to March 2023.

The DfE recorded 6,250 young people – 7% of the care population – as being in supported accommodation as of March 2024. However, this figure only covered the subset of providers that registered with Ofsted by the deadline of 27 October 2023, meaning the figures are incomplete.

Placements delivered by providers that did not register in time were classified as “other placements”, the number of which grew from 1% (1,150) to 5% (3,790) of the care population in 2023-24 as a result.

Growing proportion of out-of-area placements

The proportion of children placed out of area has grown steadily in recent years, from 41% in 2020 to 45% (37,520) in 2024. Over the same period, the share placed more than 20 miles from home has grown from 20% to 22%, with half of this group being children placed for adoption.

There has been little change in the level of placement stability in recent years, with 10% of children having three or more placements in 2023-24, compared with 11% in each of 2022-23 and 2019-20.

Levels of offending were consistent year on year, with 2% of looked-after children aged over 10 being convicted of an offence or subject to youth cautions or youth conditional cautions during 2023-24, the same rate as in 2022-23.

The same was true for levels of substance misuse, with 3% of children identified as having a problem with this in 2023-24, the same proportion as 2019-20.

Increasing concern about wellbeing

There was a small increase in concern about children’s wellbeing, based on responses to the strengths and difficulties questionnaire from the majority of looked-after children aged 5-16.

Forty one per cent of them had scores that were a cause for concern, up from 40% in 2022-23.

Among care leavers, the proportion of 19- to 21-year-olds who were not in education, employment and training rose from 38% to 39% in 2023-24.

‘A system in desperate need of reform’

The figures come with government children’s reforms – initiated by the Conservatives and inherited by Labour – focused on enhancing family support in order to reduce the number of children going into care.

However, charities have criticised perceived delays in implementing the reforms on the grounds that this would prolong a “crisis” in children’s social care.

This message was echoed by the County Councils Network, which warned that local authorities were “having to operate in a false economy of increasingly paying astronomical sums for placements and less on preventative services”.

Its children’s services spokesperson, Roger Gough, said the figures revealed “a system in desperate need for reform” and that change needed to come “urgently”.

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The government will legislate to tackle “profiteering” from children’s care placements in England, a minister has vowed.

Children’s minister Janet Daby said that the forthcoming Children’s Wellbeing Bill would strengthen regulation of the sector to “return children’s social care to delivering high quality outcomes for looked after children at a sustainable cost to the taxpayer”.

Her pledge came as Ofsted, in a bid to influence the legislation, called for new powers to regulate providers of children’s care placements, including in relation to profit-making.

‘Profiteering from vulnerable children unacceptable’

Daby, a former fostering social worker, was responding to a written question from fellow Labour MP Helen Hayes about what the government would do to tackle “excessive profits in the residential children’s social care sector”.

In her response, the Department for Education (DfE) minister said that “profiteering from vulnerable children in care [was] unacceptable” before saying that the Children’s Wellbeing Bill would tackle the issue.

Her comments follow longstanding concerns about profit levels among providers, particularly the largest, enabled by their leverage over councils needing to place children, often at short notice, amid an insufficiency of placements.

Profit levels of largest providers

In its 2022 report on the placements market, the Competition and Markets Authority found that, among the largest 15 providers, profit margins averaged 22.6% in residential care and 19.4% in fostering.

Since 2020, English council spending on children’s homes has risen sharply, with the cost of these placements increasing by 13% in 2021-22 and 15% in 2022-23, according to a recent report commissioned by the major children’s charities (source: Pro Bono Economics, 2024).

The number of registered places in mainstream children’s homes has grown by 28% over the past four years, compared with a 7% decline in the number of approved mainstream fostering households from 2019-23.

Promised children’s social care regulation

The Children’s Wellbeing Bill was announced in the 2024 King’s Speech, meaning it will be debated during the 2024-25 parliamentary session and should become law next year.

Initial information on the bill did not include any pledges to tighten the regulation of children’s social care services – a pledge in Labour’s manifesto – but Daby has now confirmed that the legislation will enable the government to deliver on its election commitment.

It is not clear as yet what the bill will contain on regulation and how far it will draw upon work commenced under the previous government to address service costs, profit levels and placement sufficiency through the so-called market interventions advisory group (source: Children and Young People Now).

However, last week, Ofsted set out a wish-list of measures for ministers to include in legislation, to bolster its regulatory powers over children’s social care services.

Ofsted’s call for new powers

This included being able regulate profit-making by large groups that provide multiple social care and education services, “to make sure their decisions are made in children’s best interests and not solely for profit”.

Ofsted also called for powers to:

• Regulate groups providing children’s homes or other social care services, including being able to restrict growth where there are systemic issues across multiple settings, requiring group leaders to tackle quality issues revealed by inspections and being able to enforce actions at a group-wide level.
• Fine unregistered settings, to deter providers from operating them. Its current powers are limited to prosecution, which Ofsted said was “costly and time-consuming”.
• Refuse registration applications based on need, for example, in areas, such as in the North West, that are oversaturated with children’s homes.

Other measures proposed by the regulator included setting quality standards for all places where children live away from home, including residential special schools, to ensure consistency across all settings, and enabling registered managers to be able to move from one setting to another without having to re-register, reducing burdens on providers.

Regulator ‘optimistic’ about reform

The proposals were made in response to the Big Listen, Ofsted’s biggest ever consultation, which also resulted in its plan to scrap single-word judgments for inspections of local authority children’s services and of children’s social care providers.

Its national director for social care, Yvette Stanley, said the regulator could not “pre-empt future ministerial decisions” but it was “working very closely with DfE officials” and was optimistic about the prospects for reform.

Daby indicated that the DfE was looking at at least one aspect of Ofsted’s proposals, on the location of children’s homes.

In answer to a parliamentary question, from Labour MP Mohammad Yasin, on the issue, Daby said: “The department is developing options in regard to planning of children’s homes,
including considering the location of new homes and registration requirements.”

Ofsted’s proposals were welcomed by the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS), which has long sought action to tackle profit levels among children’s home providers.

Children’s directors seek ‘bold action’ on ‘huge profits’

ADCS vice president Rachael Wardell said it supported the regulator being able “to look at the contribution groups of providers make to children’s outcomes and experiences, and their use of scarce public funds”.

“In recent years there has been a trend towards business mergers and acquisitions giving rise to some very large providers and an expansion of private equity investment in children’s homes, which is increasingly being seen in the childcare sector too,” she added.

“We await the government’s response to these asks and hope to see bold action from ministers to prevent huge profits being generated and extracted from the system on the backs of vulnerable children and young people, in particular.”

Daby’s commitment to ‘cracking down on excessive profits’ 

For the government, Daby added: “We know that all too often care placements for vulnerable children come at a massive financial cost to councils and a human cost to young people who aren’t getting the support they need.

“We are committed to cracking down on providers making excessive profits, and our Children’s Wellbeing Bill will strengthen regulation to make sure every child has a safe, loving home.”

Meanwhile, the DfE has selected two areas – Greater Manchester and the South East – to test the commissioning of care placements by region-wide bodies, rather than individual local authorities.

Regional care co-operatives – proposed by the previous Conservative government are designed to give councils – collectively – greater clout over providers to shape services across their regions and ensure sufficient high-quality placements for children in care.

A “worrying” number of looked-after children and care leavers have been wrongly placed in supported accommodation, Ofsted’s social care chief has warned.

Yvette Stanley said that inspectors had encountered young people who were “clearly in need of a higher level of care than supported accommodation is equipped to provide” in visits to the settings.

In a blog post published last week, the regulator’s national director for social care added that, in some cases, supported accommodation providers were, in effect, operating as unregistered children’s homes by straying outside the terms of their registration with Ofsted.

Previously unregulated placements

Supported accommodation is similar to what was previously referred to as semi-independent provision for looked-after children.

However, unlike its predecessor, it is regulated when provided to 16- and 17-year-old children in care and care leavers. Providers, who have been required to register since October 2023, may not admit children under 16.

The introduction of regulation is the former Conservative government’s chief response to longstanding concerns about the safety and suitability of provision for young people in what were unregulated settings, including the placement of some in barges, caravans or even tents.

Comparisons with children’s home regulations

However, the new regulatory regime is relatively light touch, with Ofsted regulating providers as a whole, no mandatory qualifications requirements for registered managers or staff and organisations expected to meet four standards and deliver ‘support’, but not ‘care’.

By contrast, children’s homes are regulated at an individual service level, their registered managers and staff must have, or be working towards, defined qualifications, they must meet nine standards, and their core regulatory purpose is to deliver care, along with accommodation.

As a result, the reform was widely criticised by campaigners for looked-after children on the grounds that it created a “two-tier system” that left many 16- and 17-year-olds without the care they needed. They also warned that supported accommodation would become, in effect, the default, for older teenagers in care.

Their fears appear to have been at least partially borne out by Stanley’s comments.

‘Worrying’ number of children wrongly placed

“Many providers are delivering well-targeted and appropriate support to young people who are ready for more independence and responsibility and do not require additional care,” she said.

“But we are also encountering a worrying number of children who should not be in supported accommodation.”

Stanley pointed to guidance on the 2023 supported accommodation regulations. which states that the setting caters for “children aged 16 and 17 who have relatively high or increasing levels of independence, who are ready to gain further skills in preparation for adult living, and who do not need or want the degree of care or type of environment provided in a children’s home or foster care”.

While she said supported accommodation services who temporarily provided young people with ‘care’ when they needed it would not usually be straying outside the terms of their registration, some were going beyond this.

Services ‘acting as unregistered children’s homes’

“Increasingly, we have begun to hear the use of terms such as ‘higher needs support’ or ‘high support’, which stretch the parameters of supported accommodation too far,” added Stanley.

“In some cases, it means that providers are operating unregistered children’s homes and that children are not getting the care they need from people who are suitably skilled and qualified.”

She said that Ofsted expected supported accommodation providers not to admit children if:

• they had high or complex needs;
• their liberty was restricted;
• they needed a high level of ongoing care and supervision, possibly requiring high staffing levels;
• they required help and support with personal care;
• there was no realistic expectation for increased independence in the foreseeable future.

More providers than expected

While there had been concerns from council leaders that the regulation of supported accommodation would lead to a reduction in provision, Stanley said Ofsted had received “far more applications” to register than expected: more than 1,300 as of the beginning of July, with 400 providers now registered.

She warned that the sector may have become too big in order to compensate for gaps in provision for looked-after children elsewhere.

“The high (and growing) number of 16- and 17-year-olds in supported accommodation should give us all cause for concern that, as a result of gaps in provision elsewhere, too many children are being pushed towards an independence for which they are not properly prepared,” she added.

Ofsted ‘will not hesitate’ to act

Stanley warned that, where providers were breaching the terms of their registration, Ofsted would act.

This could include supporting providers to become suitably registered, however, she added: “When we have immediate concerns for the safety and welfare of children, we will not hesitate to take more urgent and serious action.”

Under the terms of Ofsted’s enforcement policy, this could include imposing a condition prohibiting a supported accommodation provider from delivering a service at particular premises.

By David Jones*

“In my time I’ve seen some quite frankly astonishing things, those that have made my heart soar and others that have brought me to the edge of despair. That the former have outnumbered the latter is testament to the generosity and resilience of spirit of both kids and staff, which have prevailed in some often testing environments.”

A qualified social worker who, over 22 years, has been the manager of three council-run residential children’s homes, Dorothy* is about to retire at 62.

While she has long had serious concerns about a care system that was never perfect, she says it is fast becoming one that she no longer recognises, because of the decline of the child-centred ethos that has inspired her and many others.

Private equity and prioritising profit

“A major change is the proliferation of private equity-run homes, situated in cheaper and more deprived areas of the country,” she says. “These are often hundreds of miles away from the child’s family, and the priority is profit over care.

“Another consequence of cash-strapped councils is the placing of young people in budget hotels and other illegal and unregulated settings, none of which are registered with Ofsted.

“This in turn leaves vulnerable youngsters at risk of being groomed by county lines drugs gangs. I appreciate that local authority finances are a mess, but the lack of political will to confront these issues is scandalous.”

Criticism of unregulated care ban

The rise in the number of unregulated placements prompted the government to ban them for under-16s in 2021, while creating a system of regulation for remaining provision for 16- and 17-year-olds in care.

However, providers of such supported accommodation were not required to provide young people with care, only support.

“So, the government has essentially allowed local authorities to put these kids in places without any adult supervision,” says Dorothy “Who could have imagined that traumatised young people would ever be treated like this?”

Dorothy’s hope is that a new government will address this.

Celebrate those who’ve inspired you

For our 50th anniversary, we’re expanding our My Brilliant Colleague series to include anyone who has inspired you in your career – whether current or former colleagues, managers, students, lecturers, mentors or prominent past or present sector figures whom you have admired from afar.

Photo by Daniel Laflor/peopleimages.com/ AdobeStock

Nominate your colleague or social work inspiration by either:

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If you have any questions, email our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com

Deprivation of liberty

Equally shocking is the increasing use of deprivation of liberty orders on children. A draconian measure, only to be used as a last resort, they are now becoming commonplace.

“This is outrageous and evidenced by judges voicing their frustration. Because alternative provision does not exist, kids with complex needs are being locked up in high security mental health hospitals. And the judges’ hands are tied.”

Having started working with teenagers when she was 28, Dorothy became a home manager for the same age group when she was 40.

After eight years, she moved to a post as manager looking after youngsters aged eight to 12. Four years later she moved to her final position, again working with teenagers, where she has spent the past 10 years.

A proper functioning care system, comprising dedicated staff and where the child’s voice is paramount, can work wonders, she insists.

Forging connections with children

“The younger children were an absolute joy, but eight and nine-year-olds can also present with some very challenging behaviours,” says Dorothy. “Often, they struggle to understand why they are in care, and can make little or no sense of some very chaotic backgrounds.

“I remember one occasion when a nine-year-old boy became uncontrollably upset after his auntie missed a visit. He threw books and toys out of windows, screaming that he was going to run away and kill himself.

“A member of staff bided her time, talking gently to the boy before approaching and hugging him. She spent the remaining three hours of her shift talking and listening to him, making sure he became settled, which he did.

“Of course it’s heartbreaking to deal with, but when you see a real connection being reinforced in such circumstances, it does show how sensitivity and understanding play a crucial role in this work.”

Conscious of the stigma of being looked-after children, they are quick to spot a less motivated staff member. “Kids will tell a care worker that they are ‘in the wrong job’ or ‘only doing it for the money.’ Such staff are always found out by young people.”

The ‘grossly inappropriate behaviour’ of some staff

A small minority of staff can also display grossly inappropriate behaviour, she adds.

“When I joined my third home, I noticed at lunch on my first day, that staff were using different cutlery and plates to the children. When I invited the deputy manager into my office to explain what on earth was going on, he said staff brought their own from home, not wanting to use plates the young people may have urinated or defecated on.

“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. But this area of work can attract people who simply aren’t emotionally or intellectually invested in what we are trying so hard to do. I still wonder how they pass an interview, and then aren’t weeded out more quickly.”

Reprimanded straight after lunch, the staff members involved voluntarily left the service within the next six months.

On another occasion, a 14-year-old girl was being verbally abusive towards a male member of staff, whose responded by forcibly grabbing the girl’s arms.

“I was just outside with another member of staff, when we suddenly heard raised voices,” Dorothy recalls. “When we entered the room, we saw the staff member shaking the girl so aggressively that a hairpiece she was wearing actually flew off her head.

“At this point she became hysterical and ran to her home. It was the last thing that bully ever did in the home.”

Of course, with the best will in the world, some young people’s experience of residential care is a miserable one. And Dorothy says that this is understandable.

“Missing loved ones and friends, trying to function in an environment that is so alien, is simply too much for some youngsters, who feel totally alone and adrift. But I’d still like to think they know we care and are there for them.

‘Warts and all, the ideal form of care’

“It can make you feel impotent of course, but I remain convinced that the model of residential child care is the best we have. It can help stabilise and give structure to young lives, aspiring as it does to offer a family home life in every sense, warts and all. In this respect, it is the ideal form of care for looked-after children.”

In terms of outcomes, it remains the case that care leavers who have contacted Dorothy to let her know they are doing well, or even thriving, are small in number. Learning that someone has settled down, become a parent or is enjoying rewarding employment has, however, brought her to tears.

“I still wonder how, after all they’ve been through, they managed that? They deserve a medal. Of course we know what the statistics show, that the majority of care leavers struggle in later life. But as counter-intuitive as this might sound, it doesn’t necessarily indicate that the system is fatally flawed. It can’t be a cure-all as that simply isn’t realistic.”

‘A vocation, full of the best moments and the saddest’

Dorothy admits that she will miss what has been “a vocation, a challenging and rewarding experience, full of the best moments and some of the saddest”. But she doesn’t apologise for repeating her fears for the future. A core factor driving some English councils to bankruptcy, children’s social care is seeing more young people needing its services and more being failed.

“The only time I came close to resigning, was when I was powerless to prevent a 12-year-old boy being moved 200 miles to a private residential setting. Such a cruel and heartless policy is the wrong direction of travel. And it’s a sign of the times.”

Will a Labour government change the landscape? “It says it has inherited a massive financial hole, so that hardly augurs well. And within such constraints, I don’t anticipate the environments of looked-after children to suddenly become a priority. It’s difficult to feel anything but pessimism and anger, to be honest.”

*The author is a freelance journalist and former residential child car worker. His name has been changed, as has that of the manager interviewed.

The number of mainstream children’s homes in England has grown by 44% over the past four years, amid a contraction in the fostering sector.

Children’s home numbers grew by 12% in the year to 31 March 2024, continuing significant increases seen in preceding years, showed Ofsted’s annual statistics on the social care sector, released last week.

The number of places in mainstream homes – a category which excludes secure units and homes also registered as residential special schools – has grown more slowly but still significantly, with a 28% rise, from 10,033 to 12,870, from 2020-24.

Reduction in foster carer numbers

The growth in the residential sector has accompanied a decline in the number of mainstream fostering households, a group which excludes family and friends carers.

Their number fell by 7% from 2019-23, from 37,520 to 35,005, with the number of approved fostering places dropping by 12%, from 78,995 to 72,770 over the same period (source: Ofsted).

The shift in provision is evident in statistics on where looked-after children are placed.

The number of placements in secure units, children’s homes and semi-independent living grew by 4,530 (to 14,580) from 2019-23, compared with an overall growth in the care population of 5,700 (to 83,840).

Over the same period, the numbers in foster care grew much more slowly, by 1,260, to 57,020 (source: Department for Education).

Children’s homes ‘in wrong places’

As in previous years, Ofsted’s data showed there were significant disparities in the distribution of homes and places between regions. The proportion of places ranged from 6% in the South West and 8% in London to 22% in the North West, significantly above that region’s share of looked-after children (18%).

Ofsted has long raised concerns about a mismatch between the location of homes and local levels of need and demand.

Speaking to the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) conference last week, Ofsted’s national director for social care, Yvette Stanley, said this reflected the lack of control over where homes are established.

“The homes are still in the wrong places,” she said. “We can’t stop the homes where there’s saturation nor is anyone stimulating growth where they are needed.”

Skills concerns despite improved performance

Ofsted’s data showed that performance among mainstream children’s homes had improved, with the proportion rated good or outstanding as of March 2024 standing at 83%, up from 80% a year earlier.

Despite the improving performance, Stanley raised concerns about skills levels in the residential sector.

“We have some real challenges out there,” she told the ADCS conference. “The needs of the children out there are growing, and we also know that our providers…have difficulty recruiting staff with the training and skills to work with those children.”

She added: “We must acknowledge that there are places where children really aren’t having their needs met – not many, but it’s really awful when I see them.”

Qualification levels falling

In its annual report last year, Ofsted said 54% of children’s homes staff of children’s home staff held a level 3 qualification, down from 61% four years ago. Regulations require homes to ensure staff are level 3 qualified within two years of starting work.

Providers and councils reported that staff in roles that required few or no qualifications were moving to better-paid jobs in other industries, while more qualified workers were moving into higher-paid agency roles, the regulator said.

Stanley urged directors to work with Ofsted to “nudge” providers to invest more in having staff with the right skills, amid widespread council concerns about the rising costs of care placements, particularly in residential care.

Placement costs driving children’s budget pressures

Authorities are budgeting to increase children’s social care spending by £1.4bn in real-terms in 2024-25, with spending on looked-after children accounting for £933m of this, according to government figures.

This follows a planned £1.2bn real-terms rise in children’s social care spending in 2023-24, of which £700m was accounted for by looked-after children’s expenditure.

Annual council spending on private children’s home providers – who run the vast majority of children’s homes – grew by 105% from 2016-22, during which time the number of registered places grew by just 11% (source: Revolution Consulting).

Concerns over profits

These pressures have been linked to profit levels, particularly among private-equity owned organisations. In these cases, companies are bought out by investment firms using funds backed by high levels of debt, which must then be serviced through the providers’ profits.

Before they left power, the Conservatives set up a market advisory group tasked with looking at how to tackle “profiteering” in the children’s social care sector.

It remains to be seen what stance the incoming Labour government takes on this issue, though in its election manifesto it promised to strengthen regulation of the children’s social care sector.

However, Stanley told the ADCS conference that, even if councils saved money through restrictions in profit levels, they may have to spend more on helping children’s homes invest in their staff.

“We might make savings if we eradicate profit but we may need to invest more into therapeutic support for these children,” she added.

Management vacancies

Separate Ofsted data released last week revealed that 12% of all children’s homes – including secure units and dual-registered residential special schools – did not have a manager in post as of 31 March 2024.

This is unchanged on last year, when Ofsted reported, in its annual report, that in 40% of homes with a registered manager, they had been in post for less than a year.

The data showed there was a “significant gap in oversight of what is happening for children”, the regulator said at the time.

The previous government’s children’s social care strategy included plans to develop a leadership development programme for children’s  homes and explore professional registration of the sector’s staff.

The new government is yet to confirm how far it will take forward the Stable Homes, Built on Love strategy.

The majority of social workers support banning profit-making companies from providing children’s care, a Community Care poll has found.

This follows the publication of a bill in Wales to end profit-making from the provision of children’s care placements.

Under the Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill, only not-for-profit organisations and councils would be able to provide fostering, children’s home or secure accommodation placements, following a transitional period.

Wales would be the first UK country to enact such a ban, though the Scottish Government is committed to doing the same and for-profit provision is scarce – though legal – in Northern Ireland.

In England, as of 2023, independent fostering agencies (IFAs) accounted for 47% of filled mainstream fostering places and private children’s homes accounted for 81% of residential placements.

But what would be the ideal way forward?

In a recent Community Care poll, 55% of practitioners backed a ban on profit-making companies providing care placements. A further 35% said they supported a ban in principle, but feared it would worsen placement shortages.

The remaining 9% disagreed with children’s care placements only being provided by not-for-profit organisations or councils.

The body representing children’s home providers has decided to exclude providers receiving finance from tax havens from membership.

The Children’s Homes Association’s (CHA) new membership rules also stipulate that members must be ultimately owned in the UK and have at least majority shareholders who are UK-registered taxpayers.

The CHA will base these judgments on checking providers against Companies House records and with reference to a list of countries deemed to be tax havens, which includes the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Luxembourg, Monaco and Switzerland.

The decision, which came into force on 6 April 2024, has excluded just 2% of CHA’s 300+ members.

Reduction in fee income

However, these organisations collectively represent 20% of placements under the association’s umbrella, meaning the decision will lead to a 10% reduction in income from membership fees.

The association said the move was designed to ensure that its private-sector members – who make up the large majority of the CHA’s membership and the children’s homes sector alike – contribute, through their taxes, to the state-funded care system that pays them.

Excluding providers financed through tax havens will also affect private equity-owned organisations, where companies are bought out by investment firms using funds backed by high levels of debt, which must then be serviced through the providers’ profits.

An analysis of the largest 20 children’s home and fostering providers by Revolution Consulting, published last year, stated that six had owners based outside the UK, and ten had private equity involvement.

Concerns about private equity ownership

In its 2022 report on the children’s social care, the Competition and Markets Authority warned that debt levels carried by private equity-backed companies increased the risks of providers failing, harming children whom councils would then have to find placements for at short-notice.

On the back of this, the CMA recommended that the Department for Education set up a market oversight regime to monitor the finances of the largest and most difficult to replace children’s home providers, which the DfE agreed to take forward in last year’s Stable Homes, Built on Love strategy.

In a statement on its membership changes, the CHA said it was “not appropriate” for fees paid to providers to be spent on “unreasonably high levels of interest”.

Its interim chief executive, Mark Kerr said the association supported “a mixed economy of children’s social care which relies on public, charity, and independent for-profit provision”.

Providers ‘should contribute to tax-funded care services’

He added: “An amazing range of specialist expertise exists in the sector and the continuation of investment from private organisations is vital to ensuring the right care is available for our society’s most vulnerable children.

“However, we are also committed to social value and believe that organisations delivering tax-funded care services should fairly contribute to the system that makes care possible in the first place.”

As well as concerns over provider debt, council leaders and campaigners have also raised repeated concerns about profit levels among largest providers, which the CMA concluded was higher than would be expected in a well-functioning market.

It did not recommend caps on prices or profits in its 2022 report, while the DfE also did not include any specific measures to tackle profits in the sector in Stable Homes, Built on Love.

Instead, the department said it believed its plans to for regional care co-operatives (RCCs) to take over responsibility for commissioning care placements from individual councils would reduce profit levels by ensuring care was better planned.

Call for national rules to tackle profit levels

However, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services has warned that there is no evidence that RCCs – whose full establishment is several years away – would have this impact and that national rules were needed to tackle what it has described as profiteering.

The ADCS welcomed the CHA announcement, with president Andy Smith saying: “This sends a positive signal about the need for a more stable care system that is committed to meeting the needs of our most vulnerable children and young people above all else. We now urgently need national government to create a set of national rules to ensure the system is reset in favour of children’s best interests.”