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Stockport MP calls for league tables on children’s homes

by our chief reporter Peter Devine
30/ 4/2008

STOCKPORT MP Ann Coffey has stepped up her campaign to improve unruly children’s homes in Stockport with a call for league tables.

The move comes after some homes failed to pass on details of criminal activity to government inspectors.

Ms Coffey wants to see children’s homes, which provide what she claims is inadequate care, exposed and forced to change or close.

She made the call after reading Ofsted inspection reports on ten homes in Stockport, where there had been high levels of children going missing, assaults and criminal damage, and that none of the reports mentioned these incidents.

One care home had even failed to inform an Ofsted inspection that one youngster had been responsible for 89 offences.

Last November it was revealed in the Stockport Express that as many as 225 children from other areas were ‘exported’ into the borough’s children’s homes. The figure represented 53 percent of the total, when the national average was just 35 percent. At the time Ms Coffey accused care home owners of being attracted by price tags of up to £4,250 a week by advertising to take in persistent youth offenders from outside the borough.

Last week Ms Coffey  held a Commons adjournment debate to press for more stringent inspections of children’s homes and for the reports to be published on the Ofsted website.

She told the Commons: "This anti-social behaviour was causing problems for local residents who live near the children's homes.

"It cannot be right that one inspection report into a Stockport home failed to mention that one young person had run away 89 times. Another one did not mention there had been 69 missing cases, six assaults and 31 incidents of criminal damage.

"In the case of one young person, who was already electronically tagged, there were more than 35 incidents over nine months. The incidents ranged from assault, burglary, missing from home, criminal damage, punching and biting care workers, throwing a knife at another resident and stealing a car. Another young person had 15 similar incidents. The relevant Ofsted inspection report did not reflect any of this behaviour."

During last week’s debate Kevin Brennan, the children’s minister said the National Minimum Standards for children’s homes were being revised and the government would also be looking at the existing guidance of children missing from care. He said Ofsted was consulting on putting children’s homes reports on its website.