New rules regarding residential care will be implemented at the end of this month, the Children and Families Minister, Edward Timpson, has confirmed.
The regulations will bring to a close the trend of vulnerable children being placed “unnecessarily far” from home and local councils will be placed under greater scrutiny as regards the locations of placements.
“It’s totally unacceptable for local authorities to routinely place children miles away from their homes for no good reason. Far too often an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ culture prevails, and I’m determined to tackle it,” said Mr Timpson, announcing the new rules.
“In future, only senior council officials in charge of children’s services will be able to place children out of area and only when they judge it to be the right decision for a child to be moved away from their home area. There will be one individual in each local authority who is directly accountable for these decisions,” he added.
Alongside these changes, the Government is also working alongside Ofsted to ensure that its inspection and intervention powers are strengthened. This will see a rating of ‘good’ becoming the only acceptable standard for the homes.
Other new regulations include an obligation for the homes to inform local councils when children move in and out of the area.
Homes will also only be able to operate in so-called ‘safe areas’ and run by ‘competent’ providers. Information about the location and quality of such homes will also be made far more transparent by putting it into the public domain in a bid to improve standards.
Previous efforts to improve the lives of children in care included the introduction of the Junior Independent Savings Account, for which all care leavers were eligible, and the pupil premium plus for children in care, meaning that they were awarded additional funds to support their education.