Children’s homes

Barnardo’s has said that children’s homes are magnets for groomers and traffickers. Unfortunately this is not a new problem and social care managers have been fighting it for years. As Anne-Marie Carrie says: ‘You might as well put up a neon sign saying ‘Get your most vulnerable children here.’

One of the great benefits of Every Child Matters was supposed to be the joining up of services, but too often the police simply saw children’s homes as an intractable problem with misbehaving and difficult young people. And, of course, most children’s homes are not secure, they are not prisons, and the young people they serve can just walk out and meet people – often very unsavoury people.

So the specialist foster-care scheme announced by the Department for Education is welcome; the challenges, I think, will be both costs and the supply of foster carers. But we need to act – the Rochdale case is certainly not unique. And I look forward to the children’s commissioner’s report.

But it isn’t simple – and it’s not new. Remember that Anne-Marie Carrie, Maggie Atkinson – and I – were directors of children’s services when these abuses were going on. I’m not blaming them – or me – I know that we did our best and that current directors are doing their best – I’m just saying that it is not easy to make sure that the best is good enough.