Over recent months, we have seen a rise in the number of cases where local authorities are attempting to place children in unregistered children’s homes.

Unregistered children’s homes are illegal and any provider who is providing care and accommodation wholly or mainly to a child in a setting that is not registered with Ofsted, is committing an offence.

Last year, Ofsted opened over 1,000 cases to investigate potential unregistered settings.  Over 900 of them were found to be unregistered settings.  This was 200 cases more than the previous year.

Local authorities are not required to tell Ofsted when they place a child in an unregistered children’s home and so Ofsted suspect that there are more children living in unregistered children’s homes than it is currently aware of.

This is a worrying trend and demonstrates a significant rise in numbers from previous years.

Children’s Commissioner Report

The Children’s Commissioner has also recently published her report into this concerning practice.  Dame Rachel de Souza has underscored the fact that children are being placed in unsuitable, poor quality and extremely high-cost settings.   For example, the Children’s Commissioner found that 33 children were in placements that had each cost the public purse over £1 million.  In total, the annual cost of unregistered placements to English local authorities was almost £440 million.

Children’s Wellbeing Bill

Against this backdrop, there has been a resounding welcome for The Children’s Wellbeing Bill.  The Bill covers a range of different proposed matters to ensure enhanced protections for children and young people. A summary of the proposals includes new legislation to:

• Strengthen the role of education in safeguarding;
• Establish multi-agency child protection teams;
• Improve information sharing and introduced a “Single Unique Identifier” – similar to the NHS number;
• Introduce a duty for local authorities to publish support for kinship carers;
• Introduce a provider oversight regime;
• Introduce a “compulsory children in school register” for each local authority area in England.

Further details about the bill and its changes can be found here in the Department for Education policy summary notes.

Local Authorities, Ofsted and URN

As noted above, we have seen an influx in the number of cases where local authorities are seeking to place children in unregistered provision, sometimes using the justification that a prospective (or existing) provider has a live application for registration with Ofsted and therefore a URN.  The existence of a URN does not negate the fact that unregistered children’s homes are illegal and a provider who is providing care and accommodation wholly or mainly to a child is committing an offence.

The landscape for children’s social care has been turbulent, particularly with the recent coverage around missed opportunities for children such as Sara Shariff and Alfie Steele and countless other tragic cases.

Get In Touch

We urge providers or prospective providers who have been contacted by a local authority regarding placement of a child in an unregistered provision to seek legal advice so that your situation can be properly considered. The consequences of operating a children’s home without registration can be significant.  We are an experienced team of Ofsted solicitors and have significant experience in advising providers across the country.  Please do not hesitate to get in touch with Alice Thursfield on 01202 786353 or Alice.Thursfield@LA-Law.com so that we can discuss your situation and your specific circumstances.