MP calls for Children’s Homes “League Tables”

Ann Coffey MP has stepped up her campaign to improve unruly children’s homes in Stockport with a call for “league tables” like those produced for schools.

Ms Coffey wants to see children’s homes, which provide inadequate care, exposed and forced to change or close.

She held a Commons adjournment debate this week to press for more stringent inspections of children’s homes and for the reports to be published on the Ofsted website.

Ms Coffey became concerned that inspection reports were not reflecting the true picture of what is going on in the homes after she was provided with evidence of hundreds of examples of children running away and going missing; repeat offending and committing assaults and criminal damage in Stockport. None of these things were mentioned in the relevant Ofsted inspection reports.

She told the Commons: “This anti-social behaviour was causing problems for local residents who live near the children’s homes.”

Last year Ms Coffey revealed that 225 young people in care in Stockport had been “exported” to the borough from other areas and that 53 per cent of all looked-after children in Stockport were from outside the borough. She was concerned that there had been increased criminal activity and anti-social behaviour in residential areas around some children’s homes, which was not being reflected in Ofsted inspection reports.

Since then she has met the Children’s minister, Kevin Brennan and Michael Hart, the head of Ofsted Children’s Directorate.

Ms Coffey revealed that she had read inspection reports for ten homes in Stockport where there had been high levels of children going missing, assaults and criminal damage and that none of them mentioned these incidents.  Even without this information, four of homes had been officially classed as “inadequate” three as “satisfactory” and only three classed as good.

“I dread to think how they would have been classed if all this relevant information had been taken into account,” she said.

“It cannot be right, for example, that one inspection report into one Stockport home failed to mention that one young person had run away 89 times. Another one did not mention that there had been 69 missing cases, six assaults and 31 incidents of criminal damage,” she said.

She said that one private Stockport children’s home, which charges £4,250 a week per child, had sent out advertising flyers trying to attract placements for prolific and priority offenders, from local authorities outside of Stockport.

The flyers: “Our aim is to drastically reduce offending behaviour and achieve positive outcomes for the most challenging young people”

But detailed times and dates of incidents reveal that the home is failing dramatically in this stated aim.

She said: “In the case of one young person, who was already electronically tagged, there were more than 35 incidents over nine months. The incidents ranged from assault, burglary, missing from home, criminal damage, punching and biting care workers, throwing a knife at another resident and stealing a car. Another young person had 15 similar incidents. The relevant Ofsted inspection report did not reflect any of this behaviour.”

Responding to Ms Coffey’s debate, Kevin Brennan, the children’s minister, agreed with Ms Coffey that where the behaviour of children in children’s homes was unacceptable and affected the surrounding community, then inspection reports should reflect that and should take account of information that is available locally.

The minister also supported Ms Coffey’s idea of a pilot scheme to collate information from other agencies, such as the police, Crime and Disorder Partnerships and Community Safety teams, in advance of Ofsted inspections.

“That is an interesting and innovative suggestion and I see no reason why that could not happen. I know that she has been in touch with Ofsted to explore the benefits of collating information in advance of inspection,” said Mr Brennan.

He said that the National Minimum Standards for children’s homes were being revised and that the government would also be revising the existing guidance of children missing from care. He also said that Ofsted were consulting on putting children’s homes reports on its website.