Education secretary Gavin Williamson has been warned the “deepening” crisis in children’s care homes means the government must take “urgent steps” to support the sector.
Labour shadow ministers Tulip Siddiq and Kate Green have written to Williamson, telling him homes “should be a safe haven” for vulnerable children “but are far too often a source of neglect and exploitation”.
Keir Starmer’s frontbenchers are raising the issue after a number of alarming reports.
An analysis of official data by the Children’s Commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, found that 8,000 children in local authority care were put in three or more different homes within the space of 12 months.
One in eight are spending time in unregulated accommodation that isn’t even inspected, her office also discovered.
The two shadow ministers also underlined that there were over 37,000 cases of looked after children going missing from children’s homes in 2018/19 – an increase of around 150% from 2015.
Experts fear children in care may be being targeted for sexual exploitation and by “county lines” drug gangs.
The Conservative Party’s 2019 election manifesto promised a review of children’s social care and Labour says there is “no sign of progress on this”.
Green and Siddiq’s letter says: “We knew that lockdown would increase the disruption and threats that already vulnerable children would face, so this crisis should have been a catalyst for change rather than an excuse for inaction.”
It comes after the Court of Appeal ruled that the government unlawfully removed rights of children at the start of the pandemic.
HuffPost UK revealed in April that emergency coronavirus legislation, pushed through using executive powers, meant children in care would, among other measures, get less frequent contact from their social workers.
Charities later mounted a legal challenge, which the courts backed earlier this month.
“Children’s homes should be a safe haven, but a decade of Conservative cuts and poor regulation have left far too many children at risk of exploitation and neglect,” said Siddiq.
“The government should have acted to protect children from increased threats in lockdown. Instead Ministers pushed through a dangerous and unnecessary attack on children’s rights, which has now been found to be unlawful.
“There is still no sign of progress on the long-promised children’s care review, despite the fact that we’ve known about problems in residential care for a long time. A strategy to safeguard these vulnerable children is urgently needed, alongside a plan to fix our broken social care system.”
HuffPost UK has contacted the government for comment.