Plans aimed at preventing companies that run children’s homes in England from making excessive profits have (apparently) been set out by the UK government – and certainly not before time (see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1wj5v711zzo).
Sadly, but unsurprisingly, this is yet another care and/or special education scandal (here in the UK) that has been left to go on for years – why? Well, lack of government interest and oversight – remember there were at least 27 secretaries, under-secretaries and ministers of state for education and health (including 8 ministers for ‘Children, families and Well-Being’) during the last 5 years of conservative government – that was as of October 2023, but there may well have been a few more; I stopped counting (see my Blog of 02/10/23 at https://wordpress.com/post/connectingwithintensiveinteraction.com/1138).
Now apparently, in 2023, more than 1,500 children were placed in private residential accommodation costing the UK taxpayer more than £500,000 a year for each child. Yes, at least £1/2 Million each! With the 15 largest children’s home providers making an average of 23% profit per year (that’s over £100,000 profit per year per child!); with these same companies often deliberately using complex and layered ‘tax-efficient’ company structures that make financial oversight virtually impossible.
Not only is this level of profiteering a scandal, but due to the shortage of public provision of specialist children’s residential care, often our most vulnerable and challenged young people are put into the care of ‘unregulated’ and sometimes even ‘unregistered’ services – despite it being against the law to do so – What? How could that ever have been allowed to happen? Well, see the point above about the previous government’s lack of interest and oversight – never mind the withholding of the necessary levels of investment that could save us all money in the longer term!
Now hopefully, things are about to change, with promises of greater investment, better oversight and effective regulation on the way (surely including the registration and inspection of every single service set up to ostensibly provide ‘care’) to protect our most vulnerable and challenged young people (and the taxpayer) from such unscrupulous and unregulated profiteering – but we need to keep an eye on this.
Promises are one thing – effective action is another!
Connecting with Intensive Interaction 