FROM 01 MARCH 2021 BIGISSUE.COM | 27
This announcement will help around
100 children at any one time, leaving several
thousand in accommodation where staff are
not legally able to provide them care. This is
because the law requires that establishments
which provide both care and accommodation
must be registered as children’s homes and
be inspected by Ofsted. What Williamson
has sanctioned, and intends to entrench in
legislation from September, is the denial of
care to children in care from their 16 th birthday.
Standards are to be developed for what is
currently unregulated provision, including the
type of accommodation in which Jacob Bates
last lived. Often called semi-independent or
independent provision, this encompasses
rooms in shared housing, flats in large
buildings, hostels, bedsits and bed and
breakfast accommodation. While support may
or may not be provided, the common feature of
all of these places is that children cannot by law
receive care, and that won’t change.
Three quarters of children who live in
children’s homes are aged 14 to 17 years. Those
who run and work in them must uphold nine
quality standards, including a care standard.
This requires that children receive personalised
care, that staff help children “understand
and manage the impact of any experience
of abuse or neglect” and provide a physical
environment which enables children to live
there comfortably. This is a far cry from what
has been unearthed by investigations by
both the BBC's Newsnight and the Children’s
Commissioner for England, which found
children in unregulated accommodation
without bedding, curtains or heating.
As part of the government’s consultation
process, I facilitated a discussion with 10
young people who had lived in unregulated
accommodation. One young person was
admitted to hospital with damage to her lungs
because of mould in her property. Another
had to be rescued by the police, because of
threats from drug dealers. Aged 17, he had
been in care since he was three but was now
in a house on his own with just nine hours of
support a week. The children’s homes care
standard also requires that staff are supervised
by a skilled and qualified person.
A young man during our consultation
session shared that he had been the victim of
a very serious crime by a member of staff in his
unregulated accommodation. He had nobody
there he could speak to, so made his way to
the manager of a children’s home where he
once lived.
To help the consultation with young people,
campaigners developed a non-exhaustive list
of what care looks and feels like in a children’s
home. Our list, approved by the Department for
Education, included teenagers having meals
cooked for them, staff accompanying them to
medical appointments and to university and
job interviews, staff and young people enjoying
films and board games together and having
a fuss made on birthdays. If this sounds like
ordinary family life for teenagers, it is intended
to – being in care should feel like care.
The majority (72 per cent) of children in
care live with foster families, and the law was
changed in 2014 to allow them to ‘stay put’ untilthe age of 21. No such provision was made for
children living in residential settings, who are
often the most troubled and traumatised.
Research carried out for the Department
for Education found 6,190 children in care
were living in unregulated accommodation
on March 31 2019 (nearly as many as the
6,570 children living in children’s homes).
The vast majority (98 per cent) of children in
unregulated settings were aged 16 and over,
71 per cent were boys and more than half (53
per cent) were from black, Asian and minority
ethnic communities. Nearly one in three (29
per cent) were the subject of a care order,
where a family court has granted the local
authority parental responsibility for the child.
If we go back to March 31 200 9, there were
3,100 children in care living in independent
or semi-independent accommodation – so
the numbers have nearly doubled. This rise is
often, rightly, associated with the growth of
unaccompanied children in our care system.
These are children seeking refugee status who
arrive in the UK alone, without any parent
or guardian. It is also noteworthy that over
this same decade the number of children
incarcerated in our prisons has reduced by
more than 68 per cent (from 2,625 children to
835).
But rather than bolstering support to
children and families, there have been
swingeing cuts to youth and family services
as well as social security changes including
the bedroom tax, the two-child limit on child
benefit and the benefit cap, causing severe
impoverishment
Last summer, the Child Poverty Action
Group, the Association of Directors of Children’s
Services and the Child Welfare Inequalities
Project published a report on the effects
of poverty on children and families. The
publication’s title proclaimed: ‘The safety net is
gone’. The Children’s Commissioner for England
recently accused the Treasury of “institutional
bias against children”. Is it any wonder
teenagers and their families are struggling?
This year marks the 3 0th anniversary of the
UK ratifying the United Nations Convention
on the Rights of the Child, which grants all
children a comprehensive set of economic,
social and cultural rights together with civil
and political rights. A Children’s Rights Act
and a national strategy to implement these
obligations are long overdue, but children who
are in care now cannot wait for this longer-term
change. Prejudice persists towards children in
care, epitomised by perpetual media reports
of opposition to the opening of children’s
homes in residential areas. We need to become
a society where would-be neighbours, on
hearing that a children’s home may open
nearby, feel pride and relief that they live in a
community that looks after children who’ve
been through the toughest of times. Our
government’s actions last week take us further
away from this possibility, in creating a dividing
line between those children it deems deserve
care, and those it says can manage without.Carolyne Willow is founder-director of
the Article 39 children’s rights charity
and a social worker. @article_39Kids in care –
timeline of a crisis
MAY 2019 BBC's Newsnight finds
thousands of teenagers in care are being
"dumped" in unregulated homes and
"abandoned to organised crime gangs"JULY 2019 Former children’s minister
Nadhim Zahawi says full regulation of
some 16-plus accommodation would be a
"knee-jerk reaction" to criticismSEPTEMBER 2019 Another BBC
investigation finds children as young as
11 being illegally placed in unregulated
care homesDECEMBER 2019 Peter Nieto, area
coroner for Derby and Derbyshire, reports
to Education Secretary Gavin Williamson
expressing concern over unregulated
placements following the death of
17-year-old Jacob BatesFEBRUARY 2020 Williamson launches
consultation to ensure care provision
meets the needs of young people,
promising “immediate and decisive action”SEPTEMBER 2020 Children’s
Commissioner for England Anne Longfield
calls for the government to change the law
to stop councils placing under-18s in care
in unregulated accommodationFEBRUARY 2021 Government announces
ban on unregulated accommodation
for vulnerable children aged 15 and
under, which campaigners slam as
“bitterly disappointing”children were living in
unregulated accommodation
in March 2009were living in unregulated
accommodation on March
31 2019, according to DfE
figures, meaning numbers have almost
doubled in 10 years98% of children in unregulated
settings were aged 16 and overCampaigners say the new ban on unregulated
accommodation will help just 100 children at
any one time, potentially leaving thousands
in accommodation where staff are not legally
able to provide them careThe amount it can cost
a council to provide
semi-independent
accommodation for an individual child for
one year, according to a BBC investigation
in September 2019Words: Josh Sandiford. @joshsandiford_3,10 0
£250k
6,190
98%
The numbers