On the 13th September the Government published a set of statistics and some analysis relating to children who live in a range of institutional residential settings across the UK. The full set of data available can be found on the website of the Department for Education here. The collective term used for most of these children is ‘Looked After Children’ a group that does not include children who have been adopted or are being fostered to live in family settings. Two articles including this one were published in the Telegraph on the eve of the publication as part of an interview with Michael Gove. One of the big issues that he raises in the paper and on the radio following the publication of the statistics is the apparent failure to inform local police forces when such homes are being established, implying that there is some form of barrier to this level of openness. This sounds like a long echo from the past. As a Chair of a youth charity from 2004-2012 which has recently opened a small home for Looked After Children, there were significant hoops that we had to get through before we were allowed to open to our first residents. Long discussions were part of this with local government and OFSTED. It is inconceivable that an additional conversation with the police would have added anything to our workload or indeed removed any sense of privacy from the young people who in the future would be accommodated in our property. Whilst I cannot say for certain that the Police were involved, the level of partnership working between the Police and the charity and between the Local Authority and the Police leaves me in little doubt that they would have been fully aware. Clearly there will be places in the country where this is not the case but I cannot imagine that this is a common occurence.

The real challenge that these statistics create, which did not appear to be a major concern for the Government Minister was the lack of explanation for very substantial differences between the homes. This may be because he has access to the data that lies behind the graphs. The DfE website claims that: “Residential care remains an important placement option for looked after children. In September 2010 we established a programme to work to support the residential care sector and encourage continuing improvements in the quality of residential care for children. We want to make sure examples of excellent practice in some children’s homes are shared as widely as possible.” Although there are some graphs that relate to the qualitative aspects of the care, this is no more than an indication of how many homes nationally are subject to different Ofsted ratings or how far from the commissioning local authority the children are placed as quantified across the whole country. The only hard data that has been published relates to the numbers of children in different types of accommodation and the cost of providing this care. It is impossible to make any correlation between the cost of care provided in each local authority area and their effectiveness as a place for these vulnerable young people to live. There were two websites mentioned in the DfE report for more details but both of these led to broken links! One magazine that focuses exclusively on young people ‘Children and Young People Now’ published a précis of some of Michael Gove’s comments and the statistics themselves in this article. They report the average amount spent on local authority provision was £4,135 per child per week (£215,020 a year) and £3,860 per child per week (£200,720 a year) on private/voluntary provision. Whilst this is technically accurate, it overlooks wide swings in cost, none of which are explained in the notes or the analysis. For example three local authorities spend more than £20,000 per child per week on the provision they have made, and another three spend £500 or less on their provision. Indeed one other local authority has a figure of £66,700 per child for their provision and another £58,000 for private sector care. There is no way of knowing if the care correlates to cheap or expensive provision, or children with differing needs. There will no doubt be some children who need the equivalent of one to one care, 24 hrs a day in a secure environment. Despite this £3.5M is a very costly price tag. On the other hand £100 a week would barely cover the cost of food for a 14 year old (the average age of those in care), let alone the cost of accommodation. If the Government is to take seriously its commitment to transparency, we need to have more information. Whether we treat this as a priority because of the 5,000 young people involved or because of the costs to society of £3Bn a year, we do need more information.

Who looks after our children best? Sadly it is impossible to tell from this information, even if this is “the most comprehensive information ever compiled about children’s homes in England”. Let us hope that next year the data is a bit more comprehensive!