Vulnerable teenagers in care are being placed in hotels by cash-strapped councils, with experts warning they are being “served up” to criminal gangs.
Children aged 16 to 17 are entering care in greater numbers than any other age group, often with complex needs, and experts say many councils in England now have nowhere to put them. They are increasingly resorting to budget hotels, with no adult support, as a way of cutting costs and keeping teenagers off the streets.
One teenager, who lived in a hotel for six months and who asked to remain anonymous, said: “It was full of older men who drink and fight all the time. I called my social worker numerous times, begging her to find me somewhere safe to live. She said there wasn’t anywhere else.”
The girl ate biscuits and instant noodles because she could not cook in her room and felt increasingly isolated because there was no wifi. She said there was “music blaring all night”. She is now on medication for severe depression and said the experience made her feel “nobody cares about us”.
Children’s social care is widely understood to be the single biggest factor pushing English councils towards bankruptcy as increasing numbers of young people being taken into care coincide with steep fees for private children’s homes.
More than 80% of children’s homes in England and Wales are now run to make a profit, with many owned by private equity companies. A 2023 survey by the Local Government Association (LGA) found more than 1,500 placements costing at least £10,000 a child a week.
Chris Wild, who grew up in care and campaigns for better support for care-experienced young people, said he is finding increasing numbers of 16- and 17-year-olds across the country who have been put in budget hotels by their local council.
“Imagine being 16 to 18 years old and this is your reality: dumped and abandoned by the state,” he said. “Forgotten and left to your own devices in a room with no support whatsoever.”
Wild said that councils gave these children food vouchers but they only had a kettle in their rooms so they were “surviving on Cup a Soups and Pot Noodles”. He warned that, with no adult supervision, they were vulnerable to grooming by gangs and other predators.
Anne Longfield, founder of the Centre for Young Lives and a former children’s commissioner, said 16- and 17-year-olds had been placed in a range of “totally unsuitable” semi-independent settings, including hotels, for some time, but it was getting “more extreme” as rising numbers of councils faced bankruptcy.
She warned that “county lines” drug gangs were now targeting hotels where they knew vulnerable young people were living. “We are serving up these vulnerable kids on a conveyor belt to those who want to exploit them,” she said.
Longfield said that putting an already traumatised young person alone in an “anonymous place where people come and go all day and night and there is no support” made them more susceptible to grooming by gang members offering friendship and money.
Earlier this month, the Observer revealed that hundreds of vulnerable children, the majority of them under 16, were sent to illegal and unregulated homes in England in 2022-23.
In 2021, the government pledged to prohibit councils from housing children of 15 and under in unregulated settings that did not provide care and consistent support. This pledge was not extended to those of 16 and over.
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Carolyne Willow, director of Article 39, a campaign group for children in care, said: “None of this is accidental. The government made it lawful for councils to put 16- and 17-year-olds in these settings with no adult supervision.”
She added: “The argument is they are 16 so they can manage on their own. But we know that to be anywhere near the care system in the first place, they are in a desperate state. Their level of need is very high.”
Katharine Sacks-Jones, chief executive of Become, a charity that supports children in care, said it was seeing “scandalous” examples across the country of 16- and 17-year-olds in care being placed in hotels, bed-and-breakfasts, and even in some cases in caravans and barges.
She said: “These children are highly traumatised and vulnerable. The litmus test should always be: would you accept this for your own child?”
Sacks-Jones acknowledged that the financial crisis at local council level was driving these decisions, but she said the buck stops with the government: “This is a national crisis and the reforms we are seeing are piecemeal and too slow, and investment is nowhere near what is needed.”
The LGA said this weekend that “keeping young people safe is one of the most important roles a council plays”. It did not deny that local authorities were placing teenagers in budget hotels.
Councillor Louise Gittins, chair of the LGA’s children and young people’s board, said: “With record numbers of children in care and significant pressure on budgets, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to ensure every young person gets the support they need.” She said the government needed to go further and faster on tackling the market for children’s social care placements: “We also need to invest in the services that can help prevent young people coming into care in the first place.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Education said: “These reports are concerning – since October 2023, it has been illegal to provide children in care or care leavers aged 16 and 17 with accommodation in a setting that is not registered with Ofsted, and we are distributing over £100m funding to support local authorities with these reforms.
“Local authorities are responsible for providing safe, appropriate homes for children and are held to account for the quality of care they provide. When Ofsted believes a setting is operating without registration, it has powers to investigate, including prosecuting where necessary.”
