Care-home children sent into sex danger

Ministers have pledged to take action over growing concern that many local authorities are taking an “out of sight, out of mind” approach to children in their care, leaving youngsters vulnerable to sexual exploitation by predators who are “targeting” those in residential care.

Children’s Minister Tim Loughton said Ofsted inspections have proved useless at pin-pointing failing care homes, and that he suspects at least one in 10 of Britain’s 1,800 children’s care homes are failing to meet standards. Ofsted currently puts the figure of failing homes at only two per cent.

Mr Loughton said care homes had sprung up in “clusters” in run-down coastal towns such as Blackpool, Margate and Worthing – areas into which sex offenders and other convicted criminals are often released on licence.

A new report showed almost half of young people requiring residential care are sent out of the area by the local authority concerned.

Mr Loughton said this was often a “matter of convenience” for the councils concerned, but that it left children feeling “isolated and rejected” and that the practice must end except in special cases where youngsters needed to be moved out of the area for their own good.

Deputy Children’s Commissioner Sue Berelowitz, who is investigating the abuse of children in care, said children in care homes were often being subjected to sexual abuse of a “violent and sadistic nature”.