Home secretary Yvette Cooper has ordered a national audit of gang-related child sexual exploitation (CSE), to examine the current scale and nature of the problem.

Alongside the three-month review, led by Baroness (Louise) Casey, the government will support – and fund – councils to carry out local inquiries into gang-based abuse, initially in five areas, Cooper told the House of Commons today.

The announcements are ministers’ latest moves to address the furore over gang-related CSE that has blown up in recent weeks.

Elon Musk’s interventions

That followed news that safeguarding minister Jess Phillips had rejected a request from Oldham Council to set up a public inquiry into CSE in the borough, instead advising it commission its own local review.

The revelation triggered a series of posts on X by its owner, Elon Musk, which were highly critical of Phillips and prime minister Keir Starmer. Meanwhile, the Conservatives called for a national public inquiry into gang-based CSE, with a focus on crimes committed by men of Pakistani heritage.

This was despite the issue having been covered by the seven-year Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), which reported in 2022, as well as by various local inquiries, for example, in Rotherham and Telford.

Mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse

Cooper responded, initially, with a statement to Parliament last week, in which she pledged to implement some of IICSA’s recommendations, including the introduction of mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse (CSA) by those in positions of trust over children.

She also said that Tom Crowther KC, who led the inquiry into CSE in Telford, would work with the government and councils where “more formal inquiries are required to tackle persistent problems”.

Today, she said Crowther would work with the government to “develop a new framework for victim-centred, locally led inquiries”, which would be piloted in Oldham and four other areas, backed by £5m of government funding.

Alongside this, Casey’s review would audit both police intelligence and child protection referrals, examine the demographics of gangs and victims, look at the cultural drivers of group-based CSE and make recommendations about further actions to address “current and historical failures”.

No public inquiry into CSE

Cooper’s announcement will be seen as a concession to the government’s critics. However, neither Casey’s audit nor the local reviews are public inquiries, with the power to compel witnesses to give evidence, as called for by the Conservatives and others.

On this point, shadow home secretary Chris Philp questioned how they could “possibly get to the truth when faced with cover-ups”.

Cooper said the government would work with councils “to bolster the accountability mechanisms that can support and follow up local inquiries, to ensure that those who are complicit in cover-ups, or who try to resist scrutiny, are always robustly held to account so that truth and justice are never denied”.

Inquiry implementation plan to come

In her previous statement, Cooper said the government would implement some of the recommendations from IICSA’s final report and its separate report into child sexual exploitation by organised networks, including:

• Mandatory reporting of CSA, which was recommended in the final report.
• Creating a new performance framework, with data collection requirements, for the police concerning CSA and CSE. This responds to IICSA’s recommendation, from its final report, to introduce a core data set for the issue, to tackle what it found was a lack of reliable data, particularly in relation to CSE.
• Legislating to make grooming an aggravating factor in the sentencing of child sexual offences, a recommendation from recommendation from IICSA’s report on CSE by organised networks.

In her latest statement, the home secretary said the government would publish a plan for taking forward the 20 recommendations from IICSA’s final report before Easter, though did not commit to implementing all of them.

She said the government had accepted in full four recommendations that were directed at the Home Office and had started implementing them. Besides mandatory reporting, these include improving compliance by relevant organisations with their duty to refer concerns about people’s suitability to work with children to the Disclosure and Barring Service procedures.

Recommendations from report on CSE by organised groups

Cooper added that the government would also implement all remaining recommendations from IICSA’s report on CSE by organised networks beyond making grooming an aggravating factor in sentencing.

Of the other five recommendations, one – updating the Home Office’s child exploitation disruption toolkit to improve guidance to practitioners on tackling CSE – appears to have been met.

Another concerns improving police and local authority collection of CSE data, including by separating it from data on other forms of abuse, such as CSA, and collecting information on the sex, ethnicity and disability of both the victim and perpetrator. This will likely be covered by the plan to create a new performance framework for the police in relation to CSA and CSE.

Call for ban on unregulated placements

IICSA also called for a ban on the use of unregulated placements in independent or semi-independent accommodation for 16 and 17-year-olds in care who have experienced, or are at heightened risk of, CSE, in the light of the risks many have faced in those settings.

The recommendation came after the government had banned unregulated placements for under-16s, but before it ended the legal use of unregulated provision for looked-after children, by requiring organisations to register as supported accommodation providers and comply with regulations.

These include ensuring that staff “have the skills to identify and act upon signs that a child is at risk of abuse, neglect, exploitation or any other harm, and act to reduce such risk” and can “support children to maintain appropriate and safe relationships with family, friends and other people who are important to them”.

It is likely this recommendation will be interpreted as met by the government, despite longstanding criticisms from campaigners that the supported accommodation regime is insufficiently protective of children and young people.

CSE guidance to be revised

That leaves two recommendations, both of which concern the Department for Education updating its 2017 guidance for practitioners and leaders on protecting children on CSE.

This should include providing further advice on online exploitation and abuse by organised networks and making clear that, where there are signs that a child is being exploited, they should not be treated as merely being “at risk” of CSE, IICSA said.

The inquiry found “a distinctive professional language around child sexual exploitation has developed over many years, which describes children being ‘at risk’ despite clear evidence of actual harm having occurred”.

As a result, children who had, for example, contracted sexually transmitted infections or were regularly going missing with adults, were not being given the support they needed because they were not treated as having experienced CSE.

In her statement, Cooper told the House of Commons  that the DfE guidance would be updated, in response to IICSA’s recommendations.

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”.

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.

The care population in England has grown for a 15th consecutive year, official data shows.

For the second year in succession, the increase has been driven almost entirely by increasing numbers of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children arriving in the UK, revealed the Department for Education’s (DfE) annual looked-after children’s statistics, issued last week.

There were 83,840 children in care as of 31 March 2023, up 2% on a year earlier, with unaccompanied children accounting for 1,620 of the 1,760 increase.

Unaccompanied young people made up 21% of the children taken into care in 2022-23 (7,090 out of 33,000), more than double their proportion in 2020-21 (10%).

Over that time, the number of other children taken into care each year has remained relatively static.

Doubling in number of asylum-seeking children in unregulated settings

The data also illustrated the substantial change in provision for unaccompanied young people, with a 110% rise in the number placed in unregulated settings from 2021-23.

The number in independent or semi-independent settings more than doubled, from 2,120 to 4,450, outstripping, proportionately, the 76% increase in the number of unaccompanied children – 4,150 to 7,290 – over the same period.

This meant 61% of asylum-seeking children were in unregulated settings as of March 2023, up from 51% two years previously.

With councils having been prohibited from placing under-16s in unregulated settings since September 2021, the proportion of 16- and 17-year-old asylum seekers in these placements was even higher, at 71% in March 2023, up from 56% in 2021.

Regulation of semi-independent provision

Since October 2023, councils have been banned from using independent settings altogether, and from placing young people in semi-independent placements whose providers were not registered under Ofsted’s new supported accommodation regime.

The DfE introduced national standards and registration for supported accommodation to address longstanding concerns about the quality and safety of provision for looked-after children in unregulated settings.

However, the DfE’s figures show that, in the two years prior to the introduction of registration, use of unregulated placements rose by 48%, from 6,080 to 8,980.

The majority of this increase (2,330 out of 2,910) involved provision for asylum-seeking children who, as of March 2023, accounted for half of unregulated placements.

Split views on reforms

Charities have criticised the supported accommodation reforms as inadequate and discriminatory because they do not require services to offer ‘care’ to 16- and 17-year-olds, as children’s homes must do.

Also, supported accommodation services face a lighter-touch regime than children’s homes, as they are regulated at provider level, rather than as individual settings, and face inspections every three years, rather than annually.

However, council leaders have warned that the reform will exacerbate the existing shortage of placements for looked-after children.

Not only must they find alternatives to independent settings, who accommodated 2,300 young people as of March 2023, but they also face a loss of some of the 6,680 semi-independent placements they were commissioning at the same time.

Providers of these plan to register 81% of the beds they currently provide with Ofsted, according to a report from the County Councils Network (CCN) and London Innovation and Improvement Alliance (LIIA), published in July this year.

Meanwhile, the number of mainstream fostering households has fallen in each of the past two years, reducing further the supply of placements.

Hotel placements ruled unlawful

The inability of councils, particularly port authorities like Kent, to accommodate increasing numbers of asylum-seeking children led the Home Office to start housing them in hotels in July 2021, in what was designed to be a temporary measure.

In December 2021, it made its national transfer scheme (NTS) mandatory, requiring social services authorities with relatively few asylum-seeking children as a share of population to take in young people from areas with a higher share.

But despite a rise in the number of NTS transfers since, the Home Office has continued to use hotels, a practice that has sparked significant safeguarding concerns and whose routine use the High Court ruled unlawful in a judgment in July 2023.

To reduce and, ultimately, end hotel use, the government has offered authorities £6,000 to take in children from hotels or directly from Kent within five days of a notification to do so.

However, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) has warned that the NTS “no longer functions”, including because of inadequate funding and a national shortage of placements.

‘Higher levels of need and risk’

The figures showing the latest rise in the care population came in the wake of news that the number of child protection enquiries hit a record high in 2022-23.

The ADCS attributed the latter to an erosion of preventive service provision over the past decade, and repeated this message following the publication of the looked-after children’s statistics.

John Pearce, ADCS president, 2023-24

“Higher levels of need and risk are now being seen in children’s social care and families continue to present later, with complex, multifaceted needs which are more acute,” said ADCS president John Pearce.

“Day in, day out, we are working hard to support children and families, but our services are stretched to beyond breaking point.”

He added: “Only through long-term national investment in early help can we ensure that children are not taken into care when they could have stayed with their family had their needs been met earlier.”

Social care reform agenda

The DfE’s children’s social care reform agenda includes plans to improve the quantity and effectiveness of early help, to keep more children with their families, through the creation of so-called ‘family help services’.

However, these are currently being tested, with any rollout – and associated investment – coming on stream from 2025 at the earliest.

The DfE is also aiming to boost the sufficiency of care placements, by providing councils with £259m from 2022-25 to expand children’s home capacity and £27m from 2023-25 to recruit more foster carers.

Over the longer-term, the DfE plans to introduce regional care co-operatives (RCCs) to take responsibility from individual councils for both commissioning and delivering placements.

It belives these will boost sufficiency and quality of placements, including by providing councils with the economies of scale to exercise more clout with providers; however, council leaders are sceptical about RCCs’ potential to achieve this.

DfE response to care data

In response to the looked-after children data, a DfE spokesperson said: “Every child deserves a safe and secure home, no matter their background, and local authorities have a responsibility to provide appropriate support for all children in their care.

“We are supporting them by improving the recruitment of foster carers and increasing the number of places available locally in both secure and open children’s homes.

“The placement of under-16s in unregulated provision has been banned since September 2021, and this year we have ended its use for 16- and 17-year-olds.”

The government must phase in its standards regime for currently unregulated care placements to avoid a “catastrophic” loss of provision, after a study found 20% of existing beds were set to close.

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) issued the warning after a report published last week found several providers of semi-independent placements for 16- and 17-year-old looked-after children and care leavers were planning to shut beds because of the introduction of regulation this year.

From 28 October 2023, councils will no longer be able to place 16- and 17-year-old looked-after children or care leavers in unregulated provision, with fully independent settings banned outright and providers of semi-independent services having to register these with Ofsted as “supported accommodation” to continue operating.

The introduction of regulation is the Department for Education’s (DfE) response to longstanding concerns about the safety and suitability of provision for young people in currently unregulated settings, including the placement of some in barges, caravans or even tents.

The regime being introduced 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. 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 and they must meet nine standards.

One in five beds due to close

However, despite this, providers of semi-independent settings plan to register 81% of the beds they currently provide for 16- and 17-year-olds with Ofsted, found last week’s report, commissioned by the County Councils Network (CCN) and the London Innovation and Improvement Alliance (LIIA).

The finding was based on a survey of 65 providers, carried out by the consultancy Newton, which produced the report for LIIA and CCN.

Councils have made increasing use of semi-independent provision to accommodate children in care, with a 27% rise in its use in the year to March 2022, driven by the rising numbers of 16- and 17-year-olds in the system.

Despite this, the Newton report concluded that a 19% drop in provision would not result in a national shortage of such placements and those for 16- and 17-year-old care leavers.

However, it warned that there could be local shortages of beds and that more capacity would be needed if the growth in demand for semi-independent provision continued.

Mounting costs of semi-independent settings

Image: Supakrit

In 16 local authorities it analysed, Newton found that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and care leavers accounted for 84% of the growth in semi-independent provision from 2019-22.

The report forecasted that demand pressures could add £386m to the annual costs of semi-independent provision for local authorities up to 2026-27, while inflation in provider fees could add a further £145m.

This would be in part mitigated by £41m a year from the DfE to implement the new standards regime plus a projected £122m in payments from the Home Office and the Department for Work and Pensions to fund accommodation costs for unaccompanied children and young adults, and for care leavers, respectively.

However, overall, it projected that council costs for semi-independent provision could rise from £1.22bn in 2022-23 to £1.589bn in 2026-27.

‘Catastrophic’ loss of capacity feared

In response to the report, the ADCS called on the government to phase in requirements on providers to meet the new standards to avoid the “catastrophic” loss of any capacity in the supported accommodation sector.

“No child should live in unsafe, unsuitable accommodation and we should be working collectively to maintain a sharp focus on improving standards for all children in care,” said the chair of the ADCS’s resources and strategy policy committee, Chris Munday.

“However, there is a very real risk that this will lead to providers terminating their services at a time when the system is already under extreme pressure as the number of children in our care increases year on year.”

CCN children’s services spokesperson Keith Glazier said the projected withdrawal of 20% of beds from the market “could result in more children being placed in areas far from where they have grown up”, adding: “We need an urgent solution to this issue, and we want to work with government and providers over the coming months to preserve as many beds as possible.”

He urged more government funding to accompany the introduction of the regulatory regime, saying: “Councils cannot afford this and, this will push many to breaking point at a time when other reforms to the children’s social care system are being introduced.”

Munday agreed, saying the introduction of the new regime required an increase in “wholly inadequate” levels of funding, adding: “We face an ever-shrinking number of private providers who can pick and choose which children to accept and at what cost despite local authorities being the sole purchaser.”

Regime will ‘shed light’ on quality of services

A spokesperson for the DfE said: “Our reforms to the use of supported accommodation are backed by £142m in funding over three years, including £17.2m to Ofsted and £123m in new burdens funding, to support local authorities to respond to these changes and offset the costs associated with the reforms.

“To further support the implementation of the new requirements, we have awarded the National Children’s Bureau a contract up to April 2024 to provide practical support, information, and good practice resources targeted directly at providers and local authority commissioners.”

In its response to the report, Ofsted defended the introduction of regulations of supported accommodation, to address children’s “unacceptably poor” experiences of provision to date.

“Our oversight of this sector is likely to shed light on the uncomfortable reality – that too many children are currently living without the right kind of everyday safeguards that they should expect from a system that is there to protect and care for them,” said a spokesperson.

“However, we are acutely aware of the challenges that commissioners are facing in finding places for children in care and care leavers to live. We also understand that regulation may lead, at least in the short-term, to further difficulties.”