Reports have noted the challenges that local authorities face in planning to meet demand – sufficiency approaches are patchy at best and this brings with it a range of consequences, such as increased use of unregulated provision and inappropriate use of non-specialist residential provision, often leading to placement breakdown.
By not specifying the “types” of children’s homes and the range of practice models that are required to meet different needs and a more regional approach to planning these, we leave the “market” unmanaged. There is little control over the type and location of new homes, whether by councils or private sector entrants, and we see an increase in new homes having serious regulatory breaches early in their existence. There is a degree of naivety on what is needed to establish and sustain these services, and how to use them to best effect rather than seeing them as “beds” or “places”.
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