How can a child in care cost £281,000 a year? Ask the wealth funds that have councils over a barrel

‘How could we have reached this point, in which the exchange of children for profit has been normalised and generalised?’ Photograph: Cultura RM/Alamy

I’m a patron of a small local charity that helps struggling children to rebuild trust and connection. It’s called Sirona Therapeutic Horsemanship, and it works by bringing them together with rescued horses. The horses, like many of the children, arrive traumatised, anxious and frightened. They help each other to heal. Children who have lost their trust in humans can find it in horses, which neither threaten nor judge them, then build on that relationship gradually to reconnect with people.

It’s an astonishing, inspiring thing to witness, as the children begin to calm, uncurl and find purpose and hope. It can have life-changing results. But, though I can in no way speak on Sirona’s behalf, I’m painfully aware that such charities can help only a tiny fraction of the children in desperate need of stable relationships, trust and love.