Private greed corroding our care system

Published by The i paper (29th July, 2024)

Annette and Kevin Maxwell will never know the extent of the abuse suffered by their son Jonah at his residential school in Bristol since he is non-verbal, autistic and has profound learning disabilities. But they do know he endured sleep deprivation for months after a staff member forced him to go to the toilet every two hours at night, since she did not want to change him if he was incontinent.

They also know that he was pushed around one evening since a shocked whistleblower reported the incident. One week later, the school their 16-year-old son attended for six years was shut after its registration was suspended by Ofsted. The police were called in to investigate after Bristol Council made allegations of cruelty to five children.

This school was owned by the Aurora Group, which is backed by a venture capital firm and is one of the country’s biggest providers of education, care and support services for children and young people with special needs. It was paid £292,000 a year by a local authority to care for this teenager. Eventually, after legal wrangling, the firm agreed to pay £18,600 for breach of human rights, without admission of any guilt. “I will always find it heartbreaking to know Jonah was badly treated and that I was unable to protect him,” his mother said.

Sadly, stories of abuse involving vulnerable young citizens are all too common. Yet those ending up in public are just the tip of the iceberg. Victims often cannot give evidence that will stand up in court and families are silenced with non-disclosure settlements.

Cases frequently involve major firms raking in huge sums from cash-strapped local authorities, which face surging demand for special needs education and social care. The detention of one autistic man held in solitary confinement cost at least £10m over two decades, even as his distressed parents fought hard to have him released back into more humane community care.

No one faced criminal charges over those children in Bristol. One staff member was suspended, then fled the country. Another denied wrongdoing. Families and former staff members told Channel 4 News that the school’s culture grew more toxic after Aurora took it over in 2016. An overnight nurse’s post was being phased out. But the firm insisted it tried to save a school rated “inadequate” under a former owner, investing heavily to improve facilities and staffing while introducing a whistleblowing policy that meant a staff member “felt safe enough to report historic and ongoing concerns”.

It added that “after a thorough investigation, police decided to take no further action”. Yet Jonah’s anguished parents were shocked to discover a glaring legal loophole that means, incredibly, children are less well protected from abuse than adults. For the owners of a residential school cannot face criminal sanctions – unlike a place registered as a healthcare or adult social care unit. Police could not question, let alone even consider charging, executives overseeing Jonah’s unit.

The same gap in legislation exists with the use of restraint and seclusion: teachers do not have to tell parents or local authorities, so there are stricter safeguards for adults under the law and Care Quality Commission (CQC) watchdog.

Now consider a recent case involving a residential home called Wings for up to 50 children with “social, emotional and mental health needs” in Cumbria. It was shut down after Ofsted discovered children “suffered harm due to serious and widespread safeguarding failures and that the leadership and management arrangements were ineffective”. Its damning reports detail chaotic management, a “culture of poor and unsafe practice” and children complaining of injuries due to excessive force and use of “physical intervention” to “force compliance”.

This home was run by Kedleston Group. It had a £43.7m turnover in 2022 from 121 residential and 654 day school places, according to its latest accounts – averaging out at more than £56,000 per place, more expensive than Eton. The chief executive is Paul Brosnan, son of a man who was once one of Ireland’s richest men. He was previously chairman of a firm called Castlebeck when it owned Winterbourne View, a care home for people with learning disabilities that closed in 2011 after the BBC exposed horrific abuse that led to the jailing of six staff.

Last week, the Health and Social Care Secretary, Wes Streeting, condemned the CQC for failing patients. The Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, has also criticised the “broken relationship” between government, schools and families as Labour tries to heap all the blame for decrepit public services on the Tories. Yet huge chunks of the care and mental health system for the most vulnerable children have been farmed out to the private sector under both parties. And successive ministers ignored how greedy financial operators moved in to ramp up their profits while often offering dreadful – and sometimes damaging – services.

The biggest private provider of children’s homes is CareTech, which also delivers other care services. It boasts gross profits of £202m on a turnover of £574.6m in its most recent accounts – and that £133.3m of this money taken largely from taxpayers goes on “finance expenses”. The firm was founded by two brothers with a single care home in 1993 and now employs 12,000 staff. Its highest paid director earns £1.13m. The accounts also talk of trying to boost recruitment by increasing the minimum national hourly rate to a pathetic £10.75.

There are some very fine private providers – and the state can be equally guilty of atrocious services. Yet Labour needs to tackle these rapacious and poorly regulated private firms – often backed by private equity operators – that have muscled in to fleece the state, cutting costs and routinely damaging children who depend on them for happy and fulfilling lives.

As Annette Maxwell puts it, we have a system that allows young people to become money-making commodities – and the dreadful consequences will be felt across society for generations to come. 

Categorised in: Disability, Health, home page, Public policy, Social care