There are 80,000 children in the care of local authorities in England. At the current rate of growth of 2% a year, the figure will be 100,000 in a decade. If removing more and more children from their families was producing good results in terms of preventing harm, and setting them up for life, that would be one thing. The truth is that while there are positive experiences of care, and inspirational stories of people who overcome tough beginnings to build successful lives, far too many are repeatedly failed. Care-experienced people face some of the most severe disadvantages of any section of the population. Overrepresented among homeless people and in the criminal justice system, they also suffer from worse health, education and employment outcomes than almost any other group.
This is the moral and social case for reforming the children’s social care system, the rising cost of which is also placing huge pressure on councils. A review promised in the Conservative party’s 2019 manifesto, and prepared over the past year by Josh MacAlister, makes no bones about the extent of the dysfunction – or the role of the private sector in exacerbating it. While local authorities have faced an ever-tightening squeeze on budgets over the past decade, the private providers that control 83% of the residential care market have been cashing in. Profit margins averaged 22.6% in 2016-20, and the Competition and Markets Authority believes that fostering is on a similar trajectory, with a handful of providers increasingly dominant.
