Profiteering in the care sector has come about as a result of underfunding of foster care - Dominic Macauley

Early intervention has not taken place and the families have been let down. The whole system is broken and has been underfunded for the last ten years. As a result of this, there is a small section of the sector exploiting the situation, but this does not apply to the majority.

Profiteering in the care sector has come about as a result of underfunding and support for foster care which has led to its decline, resulting in more children being placed directly into care, without the midpoint of a foster home.

This huge change means councils have the difficult job of where to place children, so some are being placed in unregulated homes who can charge what they want and are exploiting this to the point of making obscene profits. All stakeholders' focus should be the care provided, not the profit margins. If you weigh up the cost of providing foster care at roughly £500 a week, with a place in a regulated care home costing around £5k a week – investment in the foster care system would make a huge difference to local authorities’ costs.

At Timeout Childrens Homes we have organically grown our service to offer not just care but education and now clinical services. We have invested heavily in developing an in-house multidisciplinary team that can respond to all our children's needs across care and education. Our focus is entirely the child, not the bottom line and how much money can be made from what is always a difficult situation.

I agree with analyst Andrew Rome in the BBC report that the suggestion of a ‘backstop’ law to limit profits would be impossible, there isn’t even a register for the number or location of all the unregistered provision. What is needed is a transparent system across the board. Registered homes work within specific frameworks whereby costs are submitted, profit clearly stated and the whole system works very well. We always plough any profit into expanding the services we provide, the focus always being to benefit the children. Charging local authorities over £20,000 a week for provision, none of which is monitored, is unethical and is what needs addressing. In particular, the equity-backed organisations siphoning off what is actually taxpayers’ money, to companies and countries that don’t contribute to our tax system.

However, the number of children who are being referred into care is also of great concern and needs addressing. Understandably since the Baby P tragedy and other serious case reviews, social workers are in the spotlight and referrals have significantly increased. We have children coming to us whereby greater family support and intervention could and should have prevented it, so we are looking at how we could introduce more support along these lines to enable children to stay with or return to their families, if and when it is possible.

We have lost the human touch surrounding care, it should be monitored on the outcomes achieved, the children who are able to return to mainstream school, the children reunited with families, the ones who move on to make a success of their lives out of often tragic and difficult situations.

The longer-term impact of all the above? Recruitment, which is difficult enough in the care sector overall, but why would people want to work in an industry painted so badly in the press. The largest providers only make up 26 per cent of all homes, 74 per cent are a diverse range of smaller providers, all abiding by the rules and are not exploiting local authorities. I absolutely agree that the small percentage that are, need sorting, but it is the minority, not the majority.

The solution? All children’s homes need to be registered and fully monitored by Ofsted. Local authorities should not be forced into paying out ludicrous fees, and children should not be placed in homes that are not regulated and governed properly.

The foster care system needs much greater support. We have had children brought to us because the foster carers had to let them go so they could work full time. Fostering is a full-time job, people are taking on children who have significant needs, it isn’t that people don’t want to do it, they can’t afford to. It is a professional role, pay the right wages and then save on the longer-term costs of permanent care.

Finally much greater intervention and support is needed directly at the source of the concerns – in the home the children come from. Investment at the core of the problem, would save local authorities thousands that it then costs to fix it. Without proper investment, local authorities are being broken by these companies, and more importantly children are not receiving appropriate care.

Dominic Macauley is the managing director at Timeout Childrens Homes.