Campaigners call for end to B&B use for care leavers

Giving evidence to the Education Committee this week, Natasha Finlayson, chief executive of the Who Cares? Trust, said she had heard “horror stories” of care leavers aged 16 and 17 being placed in “unsafe” B&Bs and hostels.

She said: “B&Bs are not suitable accommodation. Young people end up there because local authorities struggle with having enough provision available. Some of the people making these decisions don’t care enough about where they are putting these young people – they need to get them off their books.”

Finlayson’s views were echoed by author Ben Ashcroft, himself a care leaver. He told the committee that he had spoken to one care leaver who had been living in a B&B for seven months.

“That’s just not on,” he told the committee, which is holding an inquiry into care options post 16.

Currently, accommodation for 16- and 17-year-old care leavers is classed as social housing and regulated by the Homes and Communities Agency, which Finlayson said is not required to look at safety and support for young people.

“I think it is a question of who the regulatory body is and I think it should be Ofsted,” added Finlayson.

Later in the session, committee chair Graham Stuart asked those giving evidence if there was any reason why B&B use for care leavers should not be banned within four years.

Andrew Christie, executive director of children’s services at the Tri-borough authorities (Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster) in London, defended councils’ use of B&Bs. He said they were only used for a “handful of young people with the most complex needs as a short-term stop-gap measure” in his area. Without them there was the risk that “you have nothing to provide for that young person”, he warned.

But Stuart told Christie that using B&Bs because there was no “decent” alternative “is not something you’d want to be defending in too many public places”.

Christie added that he would not oppose the ban on B&Bs but said the implications would need “thinking through”.

“It would probably, on balance, do more good than harm,” he added.

Christie was also skeptical about the suggestion that Ofsted should regulate post-care accommodation. He instead advocated the regulator checking that councils commission good-quality post-16 accommodation that conformed to a national quality standard as part of the inspection of children’s services.