Gove is right on children’s homes

Michael Gove has got it – generally – right on children’s homes – though he does not go far enough. They are secretive and almost invisible – and I include both council-run and private children’s homes. The secrecy is endemic at a regulatory level as I discovered when I became a director of children’s services. Looking back at what I did then, I really should have made greater efforts to find out what was going on, and to open up a debate. But hindsight is a great thing, and I had other urgent issues to deal with.

But two things stand out in my memory – first, the absolute need to ensure that children’s homes are as good as they can possibly be, and as like a “real” home, not a prison or a secure unit; and second, the public concern about children’s homes being opened in their area.

The first point, about being a “real” home was used to justify (both in regulation and in practice) the secrecy – not telling the police, for example. The second point was that children’s homes were seen as unwelcome neighbours – for no good reasons. In my corporate role, for several years I served an area committee as liaison officer, and on one occasion I arranged and attended a public meeting about a proposed new private children’s home. The level of public vitriol was distressing – and although it was no part of my business as liaison officer, I attempted to give a balanced view, alongside the promoter. My intervention did no good at all – the unmovable public view was that a new children’s home for three disturbed adolescents would generate a local crime wave. In the end the proposal was withdrawn.

So what do I think now? First, children’s homes should be run locally by councils with local supervision over standards, providing local places wherever possible – and for good reasons it is not always possible. In these cases, children should be placed in another council’s children’s home with appropriate contracting and accountability arrangements. I recall a case when a teenage girl was deeply besotted by an older and seriously abusive man – she was placed, after several more local attempts, in distant foster care, with local schooling. In the end it did not work, but I challenge anyone to say that we didn’t try really hard.

Private (for profit or not for profit) children’s homes will always be set up in areas of cheap housing, leading to some of our seaside towns or deprived areas being home to many children in the care system, very often well away from their home area.

Of course children’s homes need to be held to account – and councils should have all the information needed to do that, and should report in public, not of course on individual children, but in a way that does not identify individuals.

Here we go back to the Children Act 2004, and the requirement for public agencies to work together. In the case of children’s homes, the arrangements were feeble at best, and in the light of recent abuses, the arrangements need strengthening, with public reporting. The director, as corporate parent, should be able to seek nominations of partner corporate parents for children’s homes from education, from health and from the police.

It would be absolutely brilliant if every children’s home had a lead councillor, a lead police officer, a lead GP, a lead NHS dentist, and a lead head teacher, able to ensure that their respective organisations did their best for children.