Care Review response renews debate over use of supported accomodation for teenagers

The government released its response to the Independent Review of Children's Social Care yesterday (3 February), which detailed a £2m package of measures to reform the children’s social care system, though sector leaders have questioned whether the response goes far enough to implement the needed reforms.

• Care Review response: Key points and sector reaction

• Unregulated accommodation for 16- and 17-year-olds cannot be normalised

One concern of sector leaders is that the response does not include the remove policies which allow the use of unregulated supported accommodation for 16-and 17-year-olds.

Experts have expressed concerns that the proposals put forward, which were recently consulted on, around regulating this type of accommodation do not meet the needs of looked-after teenagers.

The government’s strategy states: “We will work with Ofsted to strengthen its inspection and regulatory powers to hold private and voluntary/charity providers to account. We are continuing to reform supported accommodation for 16- and 17-year-olds.”

Anne Longfield, chair of the Commission on Young Lives told CYP Now that she was “disappointed” that supported accommodation was not being removed as part of the government’s reforms, saying: “Unregulated accommodation has no place in an ambitious, high quality, aspirational care system.”

She added that supported accommodation puts vulnerable children at increased risk of exploitation, adding: “These children are being put in unregulated hostels, in the middle of areas where exploiters are, where there are drugs and alcohol, and sometimes even organised crime running the place, often putting these children at increased risk of coming into contact with exploiters.

“We are almost handing teenagers over to exploiters who want to bring them into their gangs and criminal activities.”

Longfield added that the proposed quality regulations proposed in the recent government consultation cannot replace the value of providing 16-and 17-year-olds with care.

She said: “Regulations will help improve the quality of the buildings, but what they will never do is require there to be a care element or a support element.

“Anyone who has had any contact with 16-and 17-year-olds know that they need support as they move toward adulthood. Guidance, support and care is what care means, as well as protection, and you won’t get that by putting them into some semi-independent place.”

She noted that during her time as children’s commissioner for England, she found that children in supported accommodation experience more instability than other children in the system, with the average child in these settings being moved between placements five times per year.

Carolyne Willow, director of children’s rights charity Article 39, also criticised the failure to remove these placements, saying: “The government is in the process of putting care-less standards into law for children aged 16 and 17, together with inferior inspection arrangements – a process that is costing more than £140m, which is equivalent to 70 per cent of what has been pledged today overall for all children’s social care reform over the next two years.

She added that latest data shows that at least 34 children living in unregulated accommodation have died over the past six years, and yet 37 per cent of 16-and 17-year-olds in care are in placements without any day-to-day care.

Willow said that the government’s announcement of the strategy failed to mention the reports of more than 200 asylum seeking children going missing from Home Office-contracted hotels.

She said: “These children should have been quickly found loving homes in the care system, as the Children Act 1989 requires. Central government has been actively diverting these children from the care system because local authorities are telling ministers that they do not have the capacity and resources to look after them now, as highly vulnerable children, and into their adulthoods.”

Longfield added: “The use of hotels should just end, it is a temporary measure that has to go. Some of the vulnerable children are staying in there not only for weeks, but months.

“Stop using those hotels, and sort out the care arrangements that should be in place. Ensure that they are absolutely safeguarded and protected at any time, even before they move onto permanent arrangements. It’s not just good enough just to say they’re not here anymore.”

This comes after the Commission on Young Lives held a parliamentary seminar on youth violence and exploitation, which saw sector leaders, campaigners and MPs urge the government to protect vulnerable young people most at risk of harm and criminal exploitation.

Children in care were identified as one such vulnerable groups during the seminar, with Longfield saying she was concerned the government's strategy to reform children's social care "did not go far enough to support children who are most vulnerable that need care."