Buzzfeed investigation:
www.buzzfeed.com/richholmes/care-price?utm_term=.hdmG7jLMWK#.oynLlAZO3a
Danger And Despair Inside Cambian Group, Britain's Largest Private Child Care Home Provider
Big rewards for investors and executives, “chaos” and “unhygienic” conditions for children.
But while Cambian has reaped the benefits of its corporate recovery, young people in its care have endured decrepit conditions and even suffered violent assaults, a BuzzFeed News investigation has found. Documents and interviews show vulnerable kids forced to share close quarters with dangerous peers, rooms marred by vomit spatter and broken furniture, and homes spiralling out of control under the watch of poorly trained staff.
And
A BuzzFeed News investigation has found severe failings across Britain’s children’s care sector, which has become dominated by for-profit companies. Private providers charge taxpayers millions, yet their facilities are rated subpar more often than homes run by nonprofits or local governments, according to a BuzzFeed News analysis of the latest available regulator data.
And
In one home a 10- or 11-year-old girl was sent to live with “16-year-old lads” who were “all going out, smoking, doing drugs”, said Daniel Huszar, a former “team leader” at Cambian homes in Greater Manchester. “That to me was like, no, you don’t put a little girl through that.”
And
In another home, a 10-year-old autistic boy was sent to live with two teens known to bully people, who then abused him, according to Samaira Azim, a staff member at the home.
And
When Azim raised concerns, managers became “furious” with her, telling her it was “none of your business”, she told BuzzFeed News. Inside the home, the two older children quickly began intimidating and bullying the younger boy, Azim said. In retaliation, the boy started assaulting staff and making allegations against them when they restrained him.
“They could have avoided that. They could have put these two kids somewhere else,” Azim told BuzzFeed News. “But all they were interested in was filling beds.”
And
At another home in Doncaster, a teenage boy started bringing in knives and other weapons. Staff confiscated what they could but weren’t able to keep up, a former employee told BuzzFeed News. The employee said she pleaded with management to remove the child from the home before he hurt someone, but the child remained.
One day the boy attacked one of the others in the home with a baseball bat, said the former employee, who declined to be named in fear of retribution from Cambian directors. The victim survived the attack but was now terrified to be in the home. The former employee said she reported the incident up to Cambian management, expecting that the violent boy would be removed before he could hurt his peer again.
Cambian did nothing, the employee said. The boy remained in the same house.
Cambian told BuzzFeed News that the assault did happen, but “no baseball bat was used”. The two boys “settled their difference”, Cambian said, and remained in the home together until, nearly a year later, they both left.
And
Ricky Watson told BuzzFeed News he was “pressured” by his manager into working 32 consecutive hours at an understaffed home in Bedfordshire. Staff shortages grew from the director’s reluctance to pay contract workers in order to fill gaps at the homes, depending instead on overworked full-time staff, Watson said. “I knew people who did a few days in a row without going home,” he said. “You couldn’t go until they got somebody to replace you.”
And
Poor staff training created other dangerous problems elsewhere. At another home, in Halton, Cheshire, children were abusing drugs. Yet the staff had not been given any recent relevant training, an inspection report found, meaning they “had limited knowledge on this subject”. What’s more, staff were not given “realistic strategies to prevent potential harm”. Inspectors at a home in Warwickshire found a lack of training in radicalisation and extremism of children, which left staff “without the knowledge to safeguard young people”, the inspector wrote.
The whole article is utterly appalling.
And there's moves to lessen safeguarding?!