A child living in an illegal care home is being used by an organised crime gang. He may be moving drugs around the country, transporting weapons or laundering money through his bank account.
He reaches out for help but the home he’s living in has been infiltrated by the same gang. They refer him to a counsellor – who feeds their conversation back to the criminals controlling his life.
This is one of the nightmarish stories in a new report into the exploitation of children placed in illegal homes in England and Wales.
The report cites interviews with 12 child protection professionals, including specialist police officers, council staff and frontline charity workers. Their testimonies paint an alarming picture of the dangers that can await vulnerable children who have been placed, by their local authority, in a home not registered with Ofsted or Care Inspectorate Wales. Running such a home is a criminal offence – yet councils send hundreds of kids to these places every year.
Compiled by two academics based at Anglia Ruskin University, Paul Nelson and Sarah Colley, the report features various disturbing incidents including the sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl and a deadly overdose. We have uncovered similarly harrowing episodes. In April we revealed that a 15-year-old had been sexually abused by two soldiers-turned-careworkers at an illegal home in Durham.
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According to Nelson and Colley’s research, care homes are often invisible to authorities because councils that arrange illegal placements outside their areas rarely inform local professionals or police. “You’ve got children placed here from London, Birmingham, Manchester – and we’re not even told until they go missing,” one frontline worker told the academics.
The data collected for the report indicates many councils know next to nothing about the scale of the issue. Only 53 of the 205 councils surveyed in England, Scotland and Wales were able to state the number of illegal homes operating in their areas, with the others either denying there were any or claiming they didn’t hold the information.
Some of these placements have more in common with trap houses than care settings
It’s a different story for organised crime groups. Gang members quickly find care homes in their neighbourhoods, according to the report.
“Word got around and at one point it was a home full of all the same risk-level young people, no checks were being made, but these young people were being picked up immediately after leaving the residence and being found with weapons on them,” said a frontline worker.
For criminal gangs, unregulated homes offer the perfect recruiting ground. There are no annual inspections or monthly monitoring visits. And they’re often staffed by inexperienced agency workers, unable to spot signs of abuse or properly monitor comings and goings.
Some cease to function as care homes altogether: “Some of these placements have more in common with trap houses than care settings,” said a specialist. “You’ve got people coming and going, children going missing for days.”
The absence of supervision can be shocking. In one home, untrained care workers failed to stop the assault of a 12-year-old girl because “[they] thought she was his friend and that she was 16”. In another, a child, who had been placed in a halfway house for adult offenders reintegrating into society, became suicidal, took an overdose and died.
Why are children placed in illegal homes? Councils have been left with little choice. There are rising numbers of older, traumatised children entering the care system but a chronic shortage of spaces in Ofsted-registered homes that can cater for their needs. So councils are turning to unregulated facilities run by small private companies – or drafting in agencies to staff Airbnbs or properties rented by commissioning teams.
Underlying this deepening crisis is a broken privatised care market. Numerous reports have found there are not enough legal care homes in the areas they are most needed. Yet care remains a very profitable industry. Analysis published last week by Revolution Consulting reveals that payments by councils to the 20 biggest private providers of children’s residential care and fostering in England and Wales had hit £3.8bn in 2024-25. That figure had grown by more than a third since two years earlier. Interestingly, the consultants note that income growth slowed last year – so smaller or unregistered providers may be taking up a growing share of the market.
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The expansion of illegal provision tells you a lot about government priorities over the past half century. Support services from youth clubs to mental health treatment have been stripped of investment, while drivers of family breakup such as poverty have risen. At the same time, local authorities have been encouraged to close their own residential homes and commission services from the private sector.
It would be naive to suggest that children in registered homes are entirely safe from criminal and sexual exploitation. There have been many cases of abuse in the past. Likewise, there are unregistered children’s homes providing good care. But Nelson and Colley’s work makes a compelling case that unregistered homes present a bigger threat: children with greatest needs are being sent to the places with least oversight.
Two professionals interviewed for the report describe the various risks in unregistered homes as a “perfect storm”. This is what attracts crime gangs in need of recruits. As one interviewee put it: “Exploiters put themselves where they can exploit. The vulnerabilities, the location, the lack of care … and then you’ve got exploitation to take advantage of all those gaps.”
Deputy Editor & UK News
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