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.

Such a provision would be totally inadequate for the type of young person who is in a care placement needing continual two-to-one or three-to-one staffing.
That means two or three members of staff monitoring them 24/7, in addition to any other staff who interact with them 1-2-1 like teachers or tutors etc.
(Not even counting the general staff - cleaners, admin, etc.)

Left alone in a flat, they would likely smash the place up completely, including their own possessions, then self-harm, or go and get drugs, and invite all the local drug takers home.
They would be evicted within days, if not dead.

Of course, when they turn 18, they usually end up in prison or a secure mental hospital within a short space of time.

The idea behind these very expensive placements of a few weeks is that there is a chance to "stabilise" the young person enough to go into a normal care home with a lower staffing ratio, by giving them an intensive intervention.
It is meant to save money in the long term - which it can do if the young person is about 13 or 14.
At 17, it is likely that ship has sailed.

Whilst this an extreme example, there are loads of children sent to privately run 'specialist provision' out of area and paid for by local authorities (transport provided too) That cost racks up!

Am I missing another link? The boy's age is not mentioned in the article.

17 weeks, £17k per week

This is the tip of the iceberg! Welcome to the UK being run by private profiteering companies!!

I misread - he may not be age 17.
If he is a lot younger, this could be money well spent, to save both him and more money in the long term.

Sometimes they are local medical folk …GPs, nurses etc etc who’ve seen an opportunity to profiteer and run with it …any hint of trouble though and they end the placement and abandon children

How depressing.

Some Local Authorities are fighting back and building new children’s homes but the reason council tax is ‘high’ is profiteering by care companies sometimes international companies - children, elderly etc.. there is no vulnerability they won’t exploit for extreme profit…the problem is never other poor people. The problem is our politicians having private meetings and taking money from these companies then planning our state policies to push for ‘ a mixed economy of provision’ 🤢

It’s been going on for decades local care homes for the elderly are often GP owned and part of a huge profiteering industry paying care staff peanuts and having 1 overstretched medically qualified staff member of dubious ethics

What do you suggest? Because spending £500k a year on every child with this profile is just pie in the sky. You can’t do that without saying which other struggling agency should go without to fund it, and the taxpayer would be rightly fed up. You seem to think money is a guarantee of success when it isn’t.

There isn't a threshold at which it is reasonable or ethical to decide that a child's life isn't worth saving or that we don't have to try to meet their needs because of the complexity of those needs

Yes there is, in terms of meeting complex needs. Vulnerable disabled and SEN children up and down the country have to fight tooth and nail for the most basic of support. Anyone without the means to go to SENDIST to challenge decisions about EHCPs is left to rot, and they are asking for a fraction of what has been spent on this person. It’s totally immoral for disproportionate funding to go on one individual while others are being denied.

The truth is, and I say this as someone who was a family lawyer in public law for several years, this child should have been removed from this family long ago. Now that he hasn’t been, and he has these very significant needs which he almost certainly would not have had were it not for his upbringing, I doubt there is very much prospect of helping him. The only way to prevent situations like this, which are not fair on the individual child (most importantly) or on society, is early intervention to ensure children are brought up in an adequate home with good enough parenting. Every child deserves that and it just doesn’t happen.

@FenceBooksCycle so what do you suggest? Euthanasia? Releasing the teen with inadequate support into the community - they may just be a danger to themselves but might be a danger to the wider pubic.

Even teens have to want to help themselves before they can be helped. I’ve never seen this notion not apply in any aspect of life bar small children who can by physically forced to do things they don’t want to do. With teenage boys, forcing expensive intervention on them won’t work unless they want to engage with it. If he’s still at the point of smashing up his lodgings at this point it’s unlikely he will engage with help.

I’d have thought that part of the decision to spend this money would be about preventing the harm to wider society that could be done if this boy was left to get on with it.

If that much money being spent on one person bothers you, don’t look up the figures for how much is spent on school transport for children who already receive mobility money, and definitely don’t consider how may of those parents drive or live under ten minutes away. You should probably also avoid looking at how much councils spend on private school fees.

There is no answer. Sometimes there just isn’t, all we can do is manage an issue as best we can. This seems to be one of those issues.

This is so much more common than you’d think - my husband works as a therapist (part of his work) in 3 separate homes (all privately run).
While the children desperately need this kind of intervention given their histories it is colossally expensive for councils and lucrative for the owners.
And it won’t be changing any time soon.
And it’s nothing to do with education or EHCPs or disability either btw (though of course some of the children may have disabilities of some sort it’s not BECAUSE of disability that they end up in care).

There isn't a threshold at which it is reasonable or ethical to decide that a child's life isn't worth saving or that we don't have to try to meet their needs because of the complexity of those needs

in my view there absolutely is, and the threshold is when the spending on these cases becomes so high as to induce taxpayer outrage. I don’t see the taxpayer as many do - miserly selfish NIMBYs who unless they’re prepared to hand over all their money to worthy causes should keep quiet - just very fed up hardworking people who don’t mind helping others just not to their own extreme detriment. I don’t think that’s selfish at all.

This is what it’s like in councils they have to use companies the council has a contract with regardless of cost .
when i worked in a disability facility that catered for around 10 kids aside from staffing/utility costs etc. any expenses such as when we bought food, we couldn’t go to say Lidl and spend £30 we had to order from the company our council had a contract with so it would cost £150 but we would end up with things like an industrial block of cheese that half of it would have to be thrown when it went out of date . Toys had to be ordered from a specific company despite them being 3x more expensive. I needed a chair with lumbar support for medical reasons it cost ££££ because it had to be a council agreed one. So much money wasted.

Yeah, I think you're right. Assuming they do need that level of support.

He may engage with very intensive specialist support, which can lead to a better outcome for him and lower costs if he can then go into a normal care home.

Even if he doesn't want to engage, the state has a duty to house him and very high staffing ratios may be the only way to keep the staff safe. Given that we cannot lock under-18 in padded cells (not that we even do that for adults now - more likely to use a chemical cosh).

If he is left alone in a room for hours, that is what will trigger the self-destruction.

That is astronomical and highly unlikely to work. The boy will be back to his usual ways very soon I suspect. Maybe moving away from the area at 12-13, pushing him into doing a sport at a high level and not allowing any contact with his previous friends might have worked but at 17 he will have formed habits and will be too enmeshed in that culture.

Nobody is saying he should be abandoned. We’re saying 17k a week is utterly ludicrous. The poll indicates the vast majority agree with me. Everyone knows this care isn’t cheap, but this is extortionate.

The Tories allowed this mass profiteering from desperate councils and families. It’s criminal. I know of providers who will add thousands on when they get a call on a Friday afternoon for a child who needs a safe place, they know the council won’t be able to find anything else so screw them over. These companies have annual events where they celebrate their profits. It needs proper regulation and costing. Private fat cats and Saudi investors making millions from a broken system.

There is a kid near us, top of his class academically - social, well liked...

His parents have secured him a boarding school place at a special dyslexia school. He is driven in a private car on Sunday nights, from London to Kent, stays all school week, driven back to London in a private car on Friday evening.

So he has a top school, full boarding, and private car twice weekly back and fourth from London to Kent.... all paid for by the tax payer. Because he can't spell.

Just to note. His parents could easily afford private school. And this kid was totally fine at primary. The parents paid for a good legal team to get this sweet package...

Before anyone says I don't understand dyslexia. I am dyslexic (got a free dictionary from school as support) and so is my daughter. Who gets jackshit.

There are 14 state secure childrens homes in the Uk with between 10-25 places in each. They accommodate children with extreme, complex semh needs that lead them to be high risk for exploitation, danger to themselves and others.
many are 2:1 24hrs a day not including; education staff the children often have to have individual lessons so between 7-12 teaching staff and specialists. Social worker, nurse, salt, oT, paychologists, coordinators, liaison officers. It takes an awful lot of support, intense therapies for children to be safe to be moved on.

edited to add

These 14 state secure homes have nhs/dfe staff so they are cheaper to run than private placements but they are still incredibly expensive and with less than 200 places there's a desperate need for those private placements.