Victims' commissioner backs call to ban unregulated accommodation

Sowing the Seeds: Children’s Experience of Domestic Abuse and Criminality, a report by the victims’ commissioner for England and Wales Dame Vera Baird also found an “overlap” between children living in such settings and looked-after children placed far away from home and those involved in gang crime. 

The report also warns that children who experience domestic abuse in the home are also more at risk of such issues and is calling on the government to recognise children who witness abuse as victims of crime.

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The report states: “A quarter of children who were identified as having socially unacceptable behaviour also have identified concerns about domestic abuse of a parent or carer. Practitioners who support children out of gang-related activity tell us the children and young people they work with commonly come from backgrounds of domestic abuse.”

Baird said: “Children must not be made more vulnerable to exploitation by sending them far away from their homes and support networks when taken into care.

“Therefore, I am calling for all care homes to be regulated, including those for young people aged 16 who can be just as vulnerable and susceptible to exploitation as those under 16.”

The report comes amid a controversial public consultation on unregulated supported accommodation.

Government proposals suggest banning the use of such provision for children under 16, however, children’s rights organisations and charities supporting children in care and care leavers have called for greater support until 18.

Launching the report, Baird also highlighted the heightened risk of coronavirus for victims of domestic abuse and their children.

She said lockdown measures implemented by the government to stop the spread of the virus could cause a “substantial rise in the number of children and young people who experience domestic abuse”.

“The domestic abuse they are experiencing today could act as one of the factors influencing their experience of offending behaviour such as serious youth violence and criminal exploitation in the future,” the commissioner added.

The report comes days after BBC Radio 4’s Today programme reported that a 14-year-old boy had walked a “significant distance” to a radio station in Plymouth after hearing a discussion about a rise in domestic abuse due to the pandemic.

He told producers, who contacted Devon and Cornwall Police, that he did not have access to a phone and had been isolated in his bedroom for a week due to the virus.

Earlier this week schools were advised to update child protection policies to reflect how schools will “support children the school or college are concerned about who do not meet the ‘vulnerable’ definition”.

Settings must detail “what arrangements are in place to keep children not physically attending the school or college safe, especially online and how concerns about these children should be progressed”.