To think this is a shocking waste of taxpayer’s money??

[Ticklyoctopus]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9v12dwddmwo.amp

Not the boy having some form of placement or help of course, but 300k for a little over 4 months! I’m sure this will be ‘controversial’ but I think we need to seriously rethink how much can be spent on just 1 person, unless (for example) they need round the clock nursing care to stay alive and specialist medical equipment of course.

How do you know they weren’t? Ultimately the problems of so many families are so extensive and widespread it’s impossible to be all things to all people. I work in crime and honestly to step in in the way you clearly think we should, is impossible on the scale it is needed. And often they don’t want help, or the help just isn’t a silver bullet.

And what do you think will happen when he turns 18? If he’s been so exploited and harmed, he’s not gong to suddenly cope at 18. I guess it means we can wash our hands of him though, and wait til he offends, or ends up dead. Much cheaper.

It is striking that there are more comments in the thread on the cost of the placement than the absolute shame of children’s care being outsourced for (huge) profit.

There’s a house I often pass when I walk the dogs, it’s been beautifully renovated and has a vintage and a brand new Porsche on the drive. How did they make their money? Children’s homes. I find that wild.

Austerity has caused so much harm, and decimated services that now there’s no money to revive. It’s quite frightening.

It is disgraceful that so much money is spent on one person. That money is NEVER going to be put back into benefitting society by that individual.

We really cannot afford such specialist treatment for anyone.

And I think the government need to restrict what is paid to agencies and the like for similar services as it should not cost that much to house/feed/treat 1 person 24/7. It absolutely should not.

But there is a threshold in terms of cost when the nhs determine access to drugs for children of rare diseases - and these drugs could make a difference to a child/adult that means they could live full and purposeful lives. At some point, the government decides the money can’t be spent. Does that happen in extreme care cost situations? It feels like the spend is uncapped in this situation and therefore that is not a fair. The pot is not bottomless so who decides what the money gets spent on. Upholding ethics is a difficult and increasingly expensive thing.

I do t think an ehc plan covers this

And when no one will do it for the maximum price the government has set...?

The public don't want their taxes to be spent on people they perceive as not worthy. Not at all. The privatisation of this kind of placement is a direct consequence of that mindset. Any government that proposed reinstating council run services for people like this teenager will be met with howls of outrage from the public who resent their taxes being spent on something that looks like making the state larger. Never mind that their taxes now go to private profiteers who often deliver poor value for money, and that this is more expensive.

People can't have it both ways.

I work in this sector and the profiteering is disgusting. We are a CIC and charge 1/14 of what a local private company does. The private company is owned by the SIL of the Head of children's services at the council. Guess who gets more referrals? Make of that what you will, the corruption is off the scale.

Not my naive or optimistic take, it is what I presume was the intention.

And quite frankly once the child becomes an adult, and any restrictions on their liberty are removed (if restrictions are in place) the outcomes are likely to be prison etc. Absolute waste of time and money.

The role of Children’s Services is not diminishing, it’s increasing and I don’t think it’s only due to population increase. Drug use, domestic abuse etc is just increasing. All the strategies and services (there are loads) put in place over the past decades have not reduced these problems.

The cycles are not being broken.

I don’t know where it will end, but these payments have to stop. The government have to remove certain requirements currently placed on the Local Authorities. Our council tax is costing a fortune.

There’s a statutory duty to house him, his needs are such that no mainstream setting will accept him. Specialist places are expensive (and yes profiteering), so what do you suggest they do with him?

Prevention is better than cure and that has to be done at a young age before the neural pathways are forming and impact behaviour in some children. It can be done in the UK but we are up in arms about taxing the rich as they will leave planet earth apparently or something like that so instead we let them profiteer from housing vulnerable children whilst they sit like Goblins on heaps of gold coins, partying over the poverty gap ever widening!

Having worked in offender rehabilitation, I can confirm that yeah, it takes much more than four months. If we're going pound for pound, my old charity's services were cheaper than trying this sort of scheme.

Having also worked in the education sector, I am also aware of the staggering naivety of ministerial ambitions. We were asked to create a certain education process that was fully inclusive of and suitable for children of ALL educational needs.

When consulting with SEN providers, they were kind but explicit that there were damn good reasons they had different needs and entirely different objectives to mainstream children, and any attempt to shoehorn them into the mainstream would just add needless bureaucratic burden to their task load.

I strongly suspect that "equality of opportunity" causes a great deal of harm, when what a lot of profoundly disabled individuals need is to be loved and cared for.

Yes! It’s also seen as somehow a net good because economic growth is everything. But we all pay for whatever the profit margins are on any type of public service paid for by the private sector. Some people paying a bit more tax on their profits doesn’t wipe out that cost I’ll bet. Yet the profiteers are not seen as gaming the system.

And you need specially trained staff - not just standard teachers or care staff. It’s much more than that to keep safe. The building will need to be adapted for safety and other measures too.

he may need more that 1:1 staffing - so that will double the cost. Might be waking too.

So the requirements placed on the Local Authorities by the government should be relaxed. We didn’t have this years ago, and the outcomes for these children currently, are no different. So it hasn’t made a difference, it has just made someone rich.

It's akin to those generous landlords opening HMO after HMO and raking in the maximum rates of housing benefit - around £800 a month per room in London, straight from the public pot.

The housing crisis means they will never be short of tenants with councils desperate to put people anywhere. Or the converted office blocks where tenants live in a room sized 'flat'.

As this thread shows, people don't blame private profiteers for this - them making their money off vulnerable children is still somehow public sector workers' fault.

Capitalism in action

The costs associated with private children home placements are a true scandal too...for really crappy minimum wage care...whilst private providers cream off HUGE profits

I sort of understand what you’re saying but at the same time this boy seems capable of actually murdering somebody and I’m sure the cost of him doing so would be far greater than helping him now also he deserves this because let’s be honest what led him to turn out this way he’s a failed boy

Yes, disgusting and who are these people that profiteer from this kind of thing, I always think they must be like Bill Murray in Scrooge!

He would probably prefer the flat, as would the people who are in a leading role in the organised crime he’s connected with. The placement is for his protection.

It’s very strange to me. Quite a coup on the part of Osborne et al to make it seem so obvious that no-one even questions it now when we can see the impact right in front of us.