MP raises concern over private children’s homes

Two hundred and twenty five children and young people in Stockport children’s homes have been “exported” into the borough from other areas.

Ann Coffey MP raised concerns in the Commons about the increasing number of small private children’s homes in Stockport and the high numbers of children they are taking from other boroughs.
 
This is a breach of government guidelines as the advice is that children should be placed as near to home as possible, except in exceptional circumstances.

Ms Coffey told MPs during a Commons debate on the Queen’s Speech: 

“My concern is that in some parts of the country local authorities are not heeding this government advice and that children, especially those with complex behavioural problems, are being “exported” from one borough to another.”

She said: “In Stockport we have 225 children placed from other boroughs and have 17 per cent of all children’s homes within Greater Manchester.

“Whilst most homes offer a good if not excellent service, there are, as there are in any industry “rogue traders”.”

She said that the area around one three-bedded children’s home in Stockport, which had taken offenders from Liverpool, had been  hit with a swift rise in burglary, car thefts and criminal damage.

“In Stockport we have seen the very profitable development of a market in importing prolific and persistent offenders from other boroughs,” she added.

She cited the example of one case where authorities were leafleted by one Stockport home owner with an offer to send their persistent offenders and schedule one offenders to his private children’s home in Stockport.

 “The problem is that the care provided by these homes does not seem to manage or stabilise the behaviour of those young people” she said.

Fifty three per cent of all looked after children in Stockport are from out of the borough compared to a national average of 35 per cent throughout the country. It is estimated that, of the 225 children being looked after in Stockport from out of the borough two thirds are in children’s homes.

There are incentives to placing children out of their own borough. The placing authority pays fees to the private home – of in some cases up to £4000 per week per child. But it is the receiving local authority and the local police who have to foot the bill for tackling repeat offending and running away, education and health provision, including mental health.

She called for more rigorous inspection of these private homes by Ofsted to make sure that the children are being looked after and supervised properly and said that the inspection regimes should take into account things like repeat offending and the number of times children runaway or go missing.

“I understand some inspection reports are not adequately reporting how often children are getting into trouble or going missing and are more concerned with issues like the quality of food and cleanliness of bathrooms. It cannot be right that one inspection report into one Stockport home failed to mention that one young person had runaway 89 times.” she said.

She also called for financial penalties or sanctions for those homes whose supervision is inadequate and so puts the young people themselves and the wider community at risk.