Monday 18 February 2013

Private-run Children's Homes....

Homes alone: Firms sending kids hundreds of miles from their friends and families to cheaper children's homes.

The companies are breaking guidelines by placing kids in homes in the North West, Kent and parts of the West Midlands, where costs are lower.



Private firms are moving ­vulnerable children to care homes hundreds of miles from their ­families to boost profits.
The companies are breaking guidelines by placing kids in homes in the North West, Kent and parts of the West Midlands, where costs are lower.
Young girls sent miles from home are particularly vulnerable to sexual grooming. In the past five years, there have been more than 600 cases of children in care homes being sold for sex.



Government guidelines say looked-after children should only be placed more than 20 miles from their home in exceptional circumstances.
But 23,000, more than a third of all children in care, are living outside their home local authority.
Rochdale, in Greater Manchester, with a population of just 205,000, has 47 children’s homes – four more than all the 14 inner London boroughs combined.

In May it emerged one 15-year-old from Essex was the only person staying at a private home in Rochdale, which charged £252,000 a year to give her 24-hour care and protection.
She went missing 19 times in three months and was sexually abused by men linked to a sex-grooming ring.

Private equity funds are making huge profits from buying up firms looking after vulnerable children, with one gaining a 500% return in six years.
International care firms charge average fees of £200,000 a year per child.
Annual fees at one home were as high as £378,000, which would pay for a child to board at Eton for almost their entire school career.

Kevin Williams, chief executive of TACT, Britain’s largest fostering and adoption charity, said local authorities were paying huge sums “into the pockets of global venture capitalists”.
He said: “There’s a moral question about making large sums of money from children who’ve suffered abuse and neglect.
“Can they demonstrate that they’re delivering the best possible outcomes for those children and not simply making money by increasing workloads and reducing training and support? I would question whether they can.”

The revelations come as the Government today sets out reforms to better protect youngsters in the country’s 455 children’s homes.
It follows a report published by England’s Deputy Children’s Commissioner Sue Berelowitz after the jailing of a sex abuse ring in May which preyed on girls in Rochdale.
She said yesterday that children in care homes were suffering “violent and sadistic” sexual abuse.
A Department for Education spokesman said: “It is alarming that so many children are still being put in care homes hundreds of miles away without the proper checks, without even local social workers told.”

1 comment:

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