In an email to Conservative supporters this week, Kemi Badenoch said that a national inquiry into the rape gangs was needed to “identify those public servants who facilitated or ignored this abuse so they can be removed from their roles.” That is right. It is not only a matter of justice for the victims – though that is important – but of preventing those who allowed such crimes to take place from being able to continue to do so. The best safeguard against extremism and lynch mobs is to restore public confidence that the rule of law will be upheld without fear or favour.
However, another aspect of this scandal should also be addressed. That is the unnecessarily high number of children in care. Those in institutional children’s homes are at particular risk.
The Jay Inquiry into child abuse did not focus on the rape gangs. It was much broader. But it included a research report on residential care which interviewed victims who had been brought up in children’s homes. It said:
“Under half of the participants sexually abused in a residential care context disclosed or reported the abuse at the time (42 per cent). Fear of retribution by the institution or perpetrator were common barriers to reporting as a child. Participants also spoke about the fear of not being believed. Those who did disclose the abuse at the time often told someone in authority inside the place where they lived. While the reasons for this are not always known, it could suggest that they may have had constrained opportunities to report the abuse outside of their residential care at the time. In most of these cases, participants explained that their claims were denied, minimised or deflected, ultimately describing institutional failings to protect them.”
The main report included the following account of the experience in Lambeth:
“It is hard to comprehend the cruelty and sexual abuse inflicted on children in the care of Lambeth Council over many years, by staff, by foster carers and their families, and by ‘volunteers’ in residential settings. By 2020, the Council was aware of 705 former residents of three children’s homes examined in this investigation who had made complaints of sexual abuse. Foster care was equally bad, with foster carers not adequately vetted or made the subject of criminal records checks. A review of criminal records checks in the late 1990s led to Lambeth Council’s foster care placements being reduced by one-third.
“In the 1980s, the culture of Lambeth Council was dominated by politicised behaviour and turmoil, as it took on the government of the day. In 1986, its stance in failing to set a council tax rate resulted in 33 councillors being removed from their positions. This preoccupation meant the majority of members were distracted from their primary task of providing good-quality public services, including children’s social care. Despite what was claimed to be a ‘progressive’ political agenda, bullying, intimidation, racism, nepotism and sexism thrived, and were set within a context of corruption and financial mismanagement, which permeated much of Lambeth Council’s operations. All of this directly impacted on the safety and protection of children in care.”
So far as the rape gangs are concerned we can see that they often found girls in children’s homes made for easy pickings. Last year the BBC reported on seven men imprisoned in Rotherham:
“The trial heard the defendants had regularly picked up the victims – often from the children’s homes where they lived – in their cars and gave them cigarettes, alcohol, cannabis and money. The girls would then be assaulted, forced to perform sexual acts or raped.”
It was a similar story in Rochdale. Also in Telford. Also in Oldham.
There is no shortage of money being spent. The cost of residential placements is astronomical. Nor is more regulation the answer. Too much bureaucracy is already contributing to a shortage of foster carers and thus making matters worse. I don’t see how the Jay recommendation for a Cabinet Minister for Children would be any use in itself. Nor the proposals for extra legal duties on local authorities – given the existing ones are already being missed. A growing number our placed in unregulated children’s homes. Some feel that building more local authority children’s homes is the answer. But they also have a record of leaving children vulnerable to abuse – as well as often costing even more to run than independently owned children’s homes.
The problem is more fundamental. “Children in care” are the responsibility of the state. But the state is inherently bad at caring for children. Families are better suited for it. Of course, that will usually be the biological family. But if that arrangement breaks down then whenever possible the child should join a new family via adoption.
What is needed is a far more vigorous challenge to the premis that the children in care need to be in care and that the children in children’s home need to be in those awful institutions. I have written previously that a good start would be to review such placements for children that are in mainstream education. Where is the logic in concluding that their behaviour is manageable to a regular classroom teacher but that foster care or adoption would not be viable?
A year ago Oldham Council told me, via an FOI request, that they had 28 children in children’s homes that were in mainstream state education. One of these placements cost £337,480 a year.
Telford and Wrekin Council had 14 such placements – at a total cost of £1,865,294 a year and an annual cost of £247,313 for one child.
Rotherham Council had 17 children in children’s home and mainstream education. ..at a total cost of over £5 million a year.
Rochdale had even more – 25 at a cost of over £7 million a year.
How astonishing it is that so many children are being denied the permanent secure loving home that adoption could provide and instead we spend these huge sums to put them at risk of the most horrendous abuse.