The corporate takeover of children’s care has led to more children moving between short-term, unstable placements far away from their families, according to research.
The Oxford University study – which drew on more than 600,000 care records – revealed 17,000 out-of-area placements in England can be attributed to the outsourcing of care to for-profit providers between 2011 and 2022.
The research, to be published on Monday, also shows growing private involvement in care provision has disrupted the lives of vulnerable children, with higher rates of outsourcing linked to higher rates of placements breaking down within two years, which is regarded as a benchmark of stability by the government.
“Our analysis shows that for-profit outsourcing is consistently associated with more children being placed out of area and placement instability,” said the study’s co-author Dr Anders Bach-Mortensen from Oxford’s Department for Social Policy and Intervention and Roskilde University. “Over the last decade, we see that these outcomes have deteriorated or stagnated while for-profit outsourcing have increased.”
Children taken into care can end up hundreds of miles from their communities and families. Jade Barnett, 21, who grew up in London, was sent to a private children’s home near Blackpool, Lancashire, when she was 15. “When I first found out [I was moving] I was angry because I had no say,” she said. “But then the anger turned to tears because it was not something I could control. I cried all the way to Blackpool in the cab.”
Barnett, who tried to run away from the home twice, felt isolated as she was one of the few black people in the largely white seaside resort. She was stared at in the street and strangers touched her hair. “I felt like an alien,” she said. “There was no one to defend me. No one had my back. It made me feel uncomfortable. It made me feel small ... like it was weird to be black.”
The town, which is ranked among the most deprived in the country, was best avoided at night. “It’s what I’d call nitty central. There were crackheads and alcoholics. People would shout and scream,” she said. “It did not feel safe.”
There are close to 40 children’s homes in the Blackpool area. Barnett, who stayed in the home for less than two years, feels many private providers are attracted to Blackpool because property is cheap. “It’s 100% down to money,” she said. “It’s so sad that money is more important than our wellbeing and journeys and our growth.”
Over the last three decades, the private sector has almost completely taken over children’s residential care, as local authorities have been encouraged by successive governments to outsource services. Now more than 80% of homes in England are run to make a profit, with large, debt-laden chains, owned by private equity investors, increasingly gobbling up smaller firms.
The government’s independent review of social care found private providers often build residential children’s homes in parts of the country where property prices are cheapest to keep costs down and increase profit. Just over a quarter of all England’s children’s homes are in the north-west; more homes opened in the region than anywhere else in the country last year.
This trend has led to children in care having to move further and further away from their friends and communities. Nearly 65% of all children placed in private provision were placed outside their local authority area, compared with 30% of children not in private provision in 2022, according to research by the charity, Become.
Unlike the Welsh and Scottish governments, UK ministers are not seeking to eliminate profit-making from the care of children in England. Instead, the government’s reforms, unveiled in February, are focused on rebalancing the market by boosting commissioning power and providing capital funding for councils to build more homes. The government has also ruled out a windfall tax on the firms making excessive profits in what regulators have described as a dysfunctional market.
Ben Goodair, another of the study’s authors, said there was no evidence the private sector could improve the lives of children in care. “Outsourcing and private sector involvement continue to be highlighted as promising avenues for local authorities to achieve better outcomes for children,” he said. “But our analysis suggests the opposite is true: outsourcing is failing thousands of children.”
Previous research by the same Oxford department has revealed for-profit children’s homes receive, on average, worse Ofsted ratings and break more legal requirements than council-run homes.
Katharine Sacks-Jones, chief executive at Become, which represents children in care, said it was alarming that a growing number of children in care are being made to move, often without warning and sometimes multiple times a year. “This can have a devastating impact, disrupting education and relationships, including with brothers and sisters, and leaving children feeling lonely and isolated,” she said. She added capital funding for new homes, which has been oversubscribed, was completely inadequate.
A Department for Education spokesperson said local authorities have a responsibility to place children within 20 miles of their home: “As part of our £259m investment we will create more placements for children in high-quality and safe homes, and our new model for care placements will keep more children close to home networks.”
