UK Social workers banned from routinely ‘decanting’ children to distant care homes
“Children will no longer be sent to care homes far from family and friends other than in exceptional circumstances, under new rules being introduced in the wake of the Rochdale grooming scandal.
Edward Timpson, the children’s minister, said that an unacceptable “out of sight out of mind culture” had grown up in social services in recent years, in which troubled children were routinely sent to homes often hundreds of miles away from family and friends.
The Rochdale case, in which one of the main victims came from hundreds of miles away, highlighted how sending young people far from their usual support networks can leave as easier prey for abusers.
New rules coming into force this month will mean that social workers need high-level authorisation to send children out of their immediate area.
Neighbourhoods where new children’s homes are to be opened will also have to be triple vetted by police, Ofsted and the local authority to ensure that they are safe.
A Government dossier published in The Daily Telegraph last year showed that more than half of children in residential homes had been sent away from heir home area, often hundred miles away.
It also showed that the majority of children’s homes are situated in neighbourhoods with higher than average crime rates and that three out of 10 are located in the worst crime hot spots in the country.
The report named 14 councils which placed all of the children under their responsibility outside the immediate area — while having homes on their doorstep filled entirely with children from other regions.
Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, accused social services departments of deliberately “decanting” problem children to other areas and said he had been met with a “wall of silence” when he first tried to find out even where the homes are.
The children’s care system has changed rapidly in the past decade, with small, privately run homes, usually housing only one or two children but with the round-the-clock staff, replacing traditional council-run institutions.
Mr Timpson said: “It is totally unacceptable for local authorities to routinely place children miles away from their homes for no good reason.
“Far too often an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ culture prevails, and I’m determined to tackle it.
“In future, only senior council officials in charge of children’s services will be able to place children out of area and only when they judge it to be the right decision for a child to be moved away from their home area.
“There will be one individual in each local authority who is directly accountable for these decisions.
“I’m also removing the secrecy around residential care by putting more information in the public domain than ever before on the location and quality of homes and working with Ofsted to improve inspection.
“There is still more work to be done, and I expect councils and care homes to rise to the challenge.””
Social workers banned from routinely ‘decanting’ children to distant care homes
[The Telegraph 1/3/14 by John Bingham]
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