‘Providers can charge what they want’: how Merseyside council paid £50k a week to house vulnerable child

Tier 3.5 support offers a bridge between a hospital and community services, with the aim of preventing the need for an admission, or facilitating a more swift discharge back to the community. Photograph: Christophe Ena/AP

Margaret Harvey, the cabinet member for children’s services in Knowsley, Merseyside, said she reacted with “absolute horror” when told the local authority was going to have to pay almost £50,000 a week for one child’s placement earlier this year.

But the council had no choice, she insisted. It had a statutory duty to find that teenager a safe place to live after a judge made them subject to a “deprivation of liberty order” (DOL).