Quick thread: Yet another organisation has emerged claiming to represent care leavers. The latest tweets @CareLeaversUK 1/
If you go to their website, there's a lot about being a "voice for change" and all the usual stuff. But it isn't clear at all who they actually are. 2/ nclalumni.co.uk
If you look really closely you will find that they are set up by Northpoint Care, a private foster care agency. Northpoint has not been on my radar before. 3/
Children were locked in their rooms alone for up for ten days and a staff member was drunk at a children's home run by the multimillion pound private company Cambian. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan…
Also today, shares in the company that owns Cambian, CareTech, has reached a five-year high. The company is now worth more than £600 million. Profiting from a pandemic.
CareTech, one of the biggest private providers of children's homes and foster care, has published its annual financial report today. Prepare to get very angry (thread, 1/).
While the rest of the country has been struggling during the pandemic, CareTech has been growing fast and earning lots of money. Profits have risen 20% to £60 million. 2/
Last year it charged local authorities £430 million for care of vulnerable children and young adults.
Sanctuary is one of the private companies that profitably exploits the acute shortage of workers for critical public services, including children's services. Its business is booming. Last year it was paid £102 million, mostly by the public sector, to fill vacancies.
...and profits have almost doubled to £1.1 million.
All paid for by health and care organisations, who have no money to actually provide health and care to the people who really need it.
As many followers know, reported profits are just part of the story. Serious money is also being made by private equity by loading theses businesses with high interest debts and management fees.
Think Wonga.
The most urgent concern is not profit but the way children and young people are treated. The latest example of abuse and neglect concerns Care 4 Children Residential Services
State of this children's home in Lancashire, run by the private company Care 4 Children Residential Services Ltd: this Ofsted report was uploaded today files.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/501600…
Firstly, it is a shit hole (excuse the language, but...)
A child's clothes and shoes are taken away to stop him from running away.
"The single factor most closely associated with positive outcomes for children is meaningful, lifelong connections to family." Exceptional work by, among others, @FamilyRightsGp and @ReesCentrefrg.org.uk/involving-fami…
Worth pointing out that #LifelongLinks is needed now more than ever because so many children and young people in care are being sent to live many miles from their birth families and other significant people in their lives.
More than 60% of children and young people in children's homes are living at distance from their families; many are hundreds of miles away and have moved town multiple times.