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.

The money involved in children's care and residentials is just jaw dropping. My friend's son (complex behavioral presentations)is currently in a solo placement costing £1 million a year- he's 15 now. Prior to that she had to have two full time carers living with her for 3 years to protect her. These were elite carers, on a very good hourly wage. The cost to the LA was £2.2 million a year. Her son's current solo placement is just a holding pen. He won't engage with any therapeutic interventions, he hasn't engaged with education since he was 10. There has been zero improvement, if anything he is just getting worse.
I know 2 other boys from the area with not as severe needs as my friend's son, but their placements cost around £400-500k a year.

Perhaps the time has one for these services to to be provided by not for profit publicly owned bodies so that operational costs of placements can be broken down and scrutinised

Ultimately Private providers of services only exist to make a profit profit .

And do you know why they end up paying these astronomical fees for one child, because there aren’t enough SEN places and they aren’t building more SEN schools, despite there being a massive need! The schools they do have are massively underfunded so are often unable to meet specific needs.

An Ed psych writing an EHC plan doesn’t say to him/herself “Oh I’ll just check there’s a school locally that has trained staff that can provide this intervention or has a particular facility this child needs before adding it to the care expectations on the plan, and rightly so, but until we start putting more funding into Education, and particularly SEND, this will keep happening.

Private programmes often have much better facilities and learning programmes and can provide more specific care. Business owners spend money on their school and invest more, unlike state run schools which are running on a shoe string (Skilled LSAs are on minimum wage at my school and having to use food banks but that’s a whole other thread! 😡) These private businesses can therefore often offer the very best tailored care. Independent SEN schools also tend to pay better salaries than state schools (not all) and invest in their staff development. While this case sounds like a huge amount of money, council’s are usually getting much more for their money. It’s just very short sighted to keep paying out, rather than spending money to develop better SEN state schools themselves.

Oh and independent schools are usually tailored to a specific need (e.g. high functioning autism) whereas the SEN state schools usually throw children with many different needs into the same melting pot. I’m not saying it’s right to be spending all that on one child but I’m trying to explain why it happens…

— From an SEN Teacher, with 18 years service in the same state SEMH SEN school (this is children with Social, Emotional and/or Mental Health needs and that basically covers everything, hence my comment about the melting pot!) who is currently considering applying for a role in a new local independent, offering a higher salary and with amazing facilities!

Totally agree, these are usually private companies which charge what they like and the councils have no choice but to use them! The government needs to do more to cap placement costs for the private sector for children and adults!

@plumclafoutisi wouldn't be so sure about that.

So if you had cancer, or a stroke, and required surgery, rehabilitation, medication and maybe care at home, while being unable to work for an extended period or maybe ever again, you’d say ‘no thanks, don’t think my contributions will cover it’? If you thought a secure placement would keep your child out of OCG involvement and potentially death or prison, you’d say no? I find that incredible.

Exactly my thoughts, Allisnotlost1

@Ticklyoctopus This is the outcome of privatised care systems. The "no such thing as society" brigade. It won't get better until it becomes "not for profit," again.

I'm sure it's not one size fits all. Many children have incredibly complex care needs.
Yes, it's very wrong to make massive profits on other people's "misery" so to speak. That's how capitalist societies work unfortunately.

Exactly. People have voted for this over and over. People want low taxes, small state? Fine, but the sick, elderly and vulnerable don't vanish. They are still there. The only option then is to kill them off or leave them in utter dickensian penury. Which seems to be certain posters' goal.

But don't be surprised when the ultra capitalist people they've voted in take full advantage for themselves and their kind.

Ironically, we now have a sort of hybrid monster. People are paying tax, not only to the state but to private organisations that charge even more.

The politicians of the past decade and then some have played a blinder. And they're secure in the knowledge that the little people will blame one another.

Disgraceful on the amount of money.
Lots of unregistered, unqualified people and companies seem to to got onto the private children's home, gravy train, bandwagon.

Especially since the profits for people owning Residential and Care Homes has reduced.

Remember the madness of the Blair Labour Government. Who used to pay for this type of offender to be taken a six month world trip.

Can this teenager not be put onto secure accomodation at a Young Offenders Institute to receive his daily care from.relevant visiting professionals?

Also dislike when teenagers of.a certain age are referred to a children. He is 14 and not a child.

He is lucky he did not live back in the day when Approved Schools and Borstals were par for the course.

He’s legally a child, and he’s not convicted of a crime and therefore can’t be held in prison. Yes, he’s lucky not to live in the time of borstals and approved schools. You might have seen the report on the horrendous systematic abuse at one such place this week.

The link doesn't mention his age.

A 14 year old is a child? Not a small child of course but a child, not an adult.

Send him to Camp Green lake! (Those that have read 'Holes' by Louis Sachar will get this!)

Years ago local councils had outdoor centres and care staff from the local children’s homes would take them. Apparently, this cost too much so the answer was to sell them off and farm out care to private, for profit companies. This costs everyone a lot more for the same care.

Privatisation of care services was always going to be an uncontrollable money pit, but it fitted the political dogma of the time. Each for him/her self with no sense of community.

It feels like a false economy to outsource to the private sector - what’s to stop them putting up the price to whatever they like? This is what worries me about privatising the NHS.

This sort of thing (excessive spending) happens ALL the time in public sector OP. Waste everywhere. I cannot see it stopping though.

The cost of anything to do with SEN is ridiculously high. The councils pay ridiculous amounts to taxi firms just to take them to school, to the point where here a taxi driver is earning nearly double what a graduate is likely to earn.
Schools for SEN are £150k a year per pupil IIRC from a previous paper. These are kids who the gov has ignored time and time again with high needs. If your kid isn't classified as high needs there is a huge gap and the gov have now penalised families who try to get their SEN kids educated through the private sector due to the inability of the State sector to accommodate them. No, it didn't start with Labour, but they've financially hit SEN families who have tried to keep their kids in education without changing the system behind it pushing families to use private schools.

At least they are getting refugee families out of those hotel chains the Tories set up, costing us billions and lining the pockets of some Tory Peer no doubt.

It’s everything not just vulnerable dc, care for older adults, cost of stuff for schools and hospitals, and a big one is the lack of social housing so money goes to landlords instead.

This is why it really annoys me that so much blame for the costs of providing for SEND needs is put on supposedly greedy parents without anyone looking at more sensible and cost-efficient ways of providing support. If we had more good state-maintained special schools, NHS therapeutic placement, council-owned children's homes etc, they could keep control of costs and they wouldn't reach these ridiculous figures. Likewise they blame parents for the costs of transport, yet if councils arranged school transport in-house, banding together for the purpose, they could save a fortune compared with what they are currently spending on private taxi companies.

Also dislike when teenagers of.a certain age are referred to a children. He is 14 and not a child.

Of course 14 year olds are children. Ridiculous thing to say.

The councils pay ridiculous amounts to taxi firms just to take them to school, to the point where here a taxi driver is earning nearly double what a graduate is likely to earn.

I know a black cab driver who does this, he doesn’t really bother working evenings and weekends now as the school trip is so profitable. I live near a special school and it’s a line up of cabs dropping off, why not a school bus?

@Ratafia agree with you, no investment and all short term thinking

Yes, the school near us is always packed with taxis outside waiting like vultures.