Unregulated Accommodation: 16 to 17-year-olds

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

“This cannot be right.” Those were the words of Dr Jackie Sebire, the assistant chief constable of Bedfordshire police, after her officers had spent four to five days trying to find a 16-year-old boy who had gone missing from his unregulated accommodation in Bedfordshire. Her officers had spent an enormous amount of time and effort to return the child to a provision that was inadequate, in which no local Bedfordshire authority would place one of their own children and for which there was no regulatory oversight.

The standards in the accommodation in which the 16-year-old was placed were so poor that this young man regularly went missing, and shortly afterwards he became involved in organised crime and went on to recruit other young people into organised crime. So we have, in effect a multiplier of misfortune as a result. The Local Government Association and the police are concerned that children are being drawn into organised crime, including county lines, from unregulated homes. About 2,000 16 and 17-year-olds are placed outside their home local authorities in this type of unregulated provision. That is a doubling over the last five years. Around 5,000 children in total are in this type of unregulated provision—a 70% increase in the last decade.

Let me provide some further illustrations of why regulatory oversight is needed urgently. We know from the brilliant investigation undertaken by Sally Chesworth and her team at “Newsnight” that a 16-year-old girl was brought to a room in one of these homes late at night. It was freezing cold and had no bed sheets and no curtains, even though it was a ground-floor room looking straight out on to a road. We know that staff regularly enter rooms without knocking. We know that a 17-year-old girl was hit in the face by a 6-feet male staff member who would not let her speak to the police about the incident. We know that staff members are being abusive. One child was told, “It wouldn’t matter if anyone kills you. No one cares about kids in care.” Members of opposing gangs were sent by one London borough to the same home in Bedfordshire, where one duly stabbed the other.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing this debate to the House. I sought his permission beforehand to make a comment. The Social Care Inspection blog on the gov.uk website states that unregulated care homes

“should be used as a stepping stone to independence, and only ever when it’s in a child’s best interests”.

Given what we now know from the BBC investigation, which concluded that young people were at risk of organised abuse, is it not time for the Government to at least examine the ways in which the regulatory regime governing such accommodation is structured?

[Andrew Selous]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I will go on to call for exactly what he has just highlighted to the House.

Many of these homes also have adults up to the age of 25 in them, and we know that drug taking is prevalent in many of them. We know that a young man on bail for knifepoint robbery was placed in a home with 16-year-old girls. We know that two girls were placed alongside a male sex offender, and that one 17-year-old boy was murdered by another resident. The home had not told either sending local authority about an earlier fight between the two boys.

The impact on police forces of the number of missing person incidents from unregulated homes is significant. Police officer availability is an extremely precious resource to local communities. Quite rightly, a missing child is always a high priority for any police force. If there is a significant increase in the episodes of missing children in a police force area, that means that other vulnerable children and adults in the population area of that police force are left much more unprotected than they should be.

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing this important issue to the House for consideration. Does he agree that one of the major concerns is how 16 and 17-year-olds in care regularly go missing? Does he also agree that local authorities and the Department for Education should reform how data on the number of young children is collected, and that the figures should be made available and published on a quarterly basis?

[Andrew Selous]

More data is always good. I will come on to suggestions about what local authorities need to do.

In 2018, the top six locations for episodes of missing persons accounted for one quarter of the overall number of missing episodes in Bedfordshire. Of those 1,049 episodes, 779—three-quarters of the total—came from these unregulated settings. The Centre for the Study of Missing Persons at the University of Portsmouth estimates the average cost of investigating a missing person at £2,400. That is a financial cost to Bedfordshire police of around £1.9 million caused by these unregulated homes. It means that the officers involved cannot respond to other serious incidents. What makes the situation worse is that most of those children are being placed in this substandard provision in Bedfordshire by local authorities outside the county.

[Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)]

Has my hon. Friend come across Home for Good, a fostering and adoption charity, and its five-star campaign, which is looking not for five-star accommodation for young people, but for five-star care? If he has not come across it, perhaps he will look into it and encourage the Minister to do likewise?

[Andrew Selous]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; like him, I am a huge admirer of Dr Krish Kandiah, and I will say a little bit about that charity and what it can do later in my remarks.

In three of the unregulated homes that I visited in September with the police, only three out of the 17 children there came from Bedfordshire. All the other children were from other local authorities. They had all gone missing on multiple occasions; one child, indeed, had gone missing 41 times. Local authorities sending 16 and 17-year-olds to Bedfordshire include Stockton-on-Tees, Peterborough, Sandwell, Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire, Swindon, Windsor and Maidenhead, Manchester, Birmingham, Essex, Nottinghamshire, Devon, Enfield, Barnet, Hillingdon, Redbridge, Waltham Forest, Haringey, Ealing, Merton and Croydon. Some of those have lamentable due diligence in their placing decisions.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I declare my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I congratulate my hon. Friend, who is generous in taking interventions. It is not just a case of the quality of the accommodation that many of these vulnerable young people are put into, or indeed the services available to them, but the locations they are placed in. Is he aware that some years ago in the Department for Education we produced “heat maps”, which showed areas where children should just not be placed? Children were being placed in homes on the same street as sex offender hostels, for example. There is a duty on directors of children’s services to ensure that the areas in which these children are being placed are appropriate and safe.

[Andrew Selous]

I completely agree; that is another reason for more regulatory oversight, which I will call for. Perhaps this issue needs to come up in planning policy as well.

Central Bedfordshire sends very few of its own children out of the area. As a Bedfordshire Member of Parliament, I am simply not prepared to accept this wholly unacceptable diversion of police resources caused by other local authorities acting irresponsibly and using provision that no local authority in Bedfordshire would put its own children in.

It is not as if this provision is cheap, either. A typical cost per child in these unregulated homes is around £800 per week, which is £42,000 per child per year. Some unregulated provision will cost considerably more than that, and it is completely unacceptable that taxpayers are paying such enormous amounts of money to private businesses, some of which do an appalling job and are more interested in making money than in looking after vulnerable children.

Given that several members of staff that I spoke to when I visited some of these homes told me that they needed no training whatsoever to undertake this work, I suspect that rates of pay are low and significant profits are being generated for the directors of these companies. Who is overseeing value for money for taxpayers, who are having to fork out these enormous amounts per child for such poor-quality provision, which in turn is placing a huge burden on other parts of the public sector such as the police?

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an important speech on an important subject. In my own constituency, we have a high number of homes—often regulated ones, which is good—but because we are in the wilds the children who tend to be sent there are the runners, who have run away from other homes. That means that when they go missing, as they often do because they have a history of it, they can be missing for a very long time and take not just police but mountain rescue out looking for them. Does he agree that it does not help that the care homes themselves are still charging fees when children are missing, so they have no incentive at all to go and look for them, and it is left to the police?

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Selous]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. Why should the duty of care fall only on the police and not on the sending local authority or on the home itself? She makes a pertinent point.

It is also completely unacceptable how little information is shared between sending and receiving local authorities, and between sending and receiving police forces. All local authorities have a statutory duty to check the standard of provision in which they are placing their vulnerable 16 and 17-year-olds.

Thirty-four locations in Bedfordshire are providing unregulated supported living for 16 and 17-year-olds. Central Bedfordshire Council has a quality assurance manager, Sharon Deacon, who will not place the council’s own children in many of those homes, and her role has been commended by the Howard League for Penal Reform.

It is extraordinary that other local authorities continue to use much of this provision when Central Bedfordshire Council will not place its own children in these unregulated homes. Those sending local authorities, in many cases, do not even bother to check whether the provision is suitable, which is vital. Sharon Deacon has conferred with her counterparts at Bedford Borough Council and Luton Borough Council, and sending authorities do not always notify the hosting local authority in Bedfordshire about the children they are sending to the county, as required by the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010, so the current law is not being adhered to and there are no checks or enforcement actions in respect of those breaches.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is being generous in giving way, and he raises some important points. For some time I have been pushing for a regulator of supported housing for people with addictions and the homeless. I have a high-profile property in my constituency where, again, the local council does not send people but outside local authorities do.

I have secured a meeting with the Minister soon, and I am working with my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Ruth George). I would appreciate it if we all worked together on this issue.

[Andrew Selous]

I look forward to working with Members of good will on both sides of the House to get this right. This is not a party political issue, and we just have to get it right for children, for police forces and, frankly, for the taxpayer.

Sending police forces do not notify Bedfordshire police of the criminal records of the children concerned. One young arsonist was sent to my constituency without any prior notification to Bedfordshire police, which is simply unacceptable. There should be a full exchange of information between both local authorities and police forces on the quality of provision and the children concerned.

The Select Committee on Education published a report on 16-plus care options in July 2014, and it made the following recommendation:

“There are measures to ensure the quality and safety of settings for children and young people right across provisions: childminders, foster carers, residential children’s homes, secure training centres, schools, sixth form colleges and further education colleges are all inspected. Yet accommodation that falls within the category of ‘other arrangements’ is not subject to individual regulatory oversight. What makes this distinction all the more illogical is that the 22% of looked after 16 and 17 year olds who live in such accommodation are among the most vulnerable young people in society. It is unacceptable for these young people, still legally defined as ‘children’ and in the care of their local authority, to be housed in unregulated settings.

We recommend that the DfE consult on a framework of individual regulatory oversight for all accommodation provision that falls within the category ‘other arrangements’ to ensure suitability while allowing for continuing diversity of provision.”

The Government of the time did not accept that recommendation, but I am hopeful that the current Government will because members of the Select Committee who wrote that report include the Foreign Secretary, the Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation and the Under-Secretary of State for International Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart).

Five and a half years later, progress on this issue has been too slow. The Department for Education met Ofsted and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers on 13 December 2018, and I met the previous Children’s Minister, accompanied by the assistant chief constable of Bedfordshire police and officers from Central Bedfordshire Council, on 27 February 2019. I had a follow-up meeting with the Minister, accompanied again by the assistant chief constable, on 24 June, and I know that Sir Alan Wood hosted a roundtable to look at this issue on 11 September. It is now time to act, as we have all the evidence we need that local authorities are unwilling or unable to provide the necessary level of scrutiny of these unregulated homes.

Many providers of unregulated accommodation have been allowed to get away with unacceptably low standards, which have horrific consequences for some of the country’s most vulnerable children, because of a lack of scrutiny. Given that the current attempts to ensure standards have failed, it is now time for Ofsted to provide proper regulatory oversight. We also urgently need a fit and proper person test, so that the directors of the businesses that run these homes can be held to account personally. We need a duty on sending local authorities and police forces to notify receiving local authorities and police forces.

Of course, we need to work on providing more good- quality provision, especially for those with complex needs. The Local Government Association reports that the number of looked-after children reached a new high of 75,420 in 2017-18. That is an average of 88 children entering local authority care every day. A rising proportion are over 16—the figure was 23% in 2018, which was 17,330 children. The LGA also points out that only 28% of accommodation is local-authority-run, with 5% being run by the voluntary sector and two thirds provided by the private sector. This means that as the scale of need grows, it becomes even more urgent to rapidly improve the quality and quantity of provision.

We should mandate the implementation of the Philomena protocol brought in by Durham police to provide police forces with the very best information to help them quickly locate missing children. I am also grateful to Home for Good for its suggestions as to how we could encourage more fostering for these children, as exemplified by its own work, and to the Shared Lives movement for the example it provides. Of course, as always in these difficult matters of social policy, we need to think about what more we can do to slow down the demand and to provide greater support for families so that they can continue to be able to look after challenging children.

In that regard, I wish to single out the work of Wigan Council, which no longer places any of its children outside its own area. I am very grateful as well to the all-party group on runaway and missing children and adults for its report last month on children who go missing from out-of-area placements. The Children’s Society provided very valuable support for that inquiry, and I am grateful to it for its help with my preparation for this debate.

As a nation we need to do far more to support and strengthen families to help them keep children safely at home, and I am pleased that this Government have now appointed the Chief Secretary to the Treasury as the family champion across government. It is now high time to take decisive action to improve the standard of accommodation for 16 and 17-year-olds, as the Select Committee called for more than five years ago.