The Guardian view on the care system: stop this cruelty to children | Editorial

Ministers and councils are failing to provide the care that vulnerable young people need. Change must start now

What kind of a country are we, in which the most vulnerable children cannot rely on ministers and councils to treat them well? New research published by the children’s commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, is far from the first time that the system used by local authorities to provide residential care for children has faced strong criticism. The use of unregulated placements, the disruption caused by frequent moves and the damage done to those forced to relocate many miles from their homes, schools and families, have all featured in court judgments and parliamentary and National Audit Office reports as well as in journalism by the Guardian and others.

More extreme cases of abuse and criminality, of a kind which most people hoped belonged to a distant past, recur with disturbing frequency. A children’s home owned by a private equity firm was at the centre of the Rochdale child grooming scandal. This week it was revealed that allegations of drug-dealing at a home run by Care 4 Children in Lancashire has led to arrests. But Ms Longfield’s conclusion, in the piece of work that she has chosen as the finale to her four years in the job, is still startling: the government is guilty of “deep-rooted institutional ambivalence” to the 78,150 children that it is morally and legally obliged to look after.

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from Children | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3eV26gR