Children's care homes

The Guardian: "The heartbreaking case of Niamh Lafferty and Georgia Rowe, who died in a double suicide in 2009, was avoidable, according to an inquiry. If the care home in which the girls both lived had more staff on duty at the time they absconded perhaps someone would have noticed them leaving through the unalarmed fire exit door.

But the additional tragedy of this story is that it is not uncommon for "looked-after children" to end up dead prematurely. Care leavers are significantly over-represented among some of society's most disadvantaged groups. A third of rough sleepers have been in care as children; one fifth are homeless within two years of leaving care; half of prisoners under the age of 25 are care leavers; and 22% are unemployed shortly after leaving school – three times the national average. Many end up in street prostitution, and a mere 6% attend university compared with more than a third of the general population.

Most children in care have suffered appalling abuse, neglect and loss in early life, which is why we should be doing everything we can to place them in loving homes rather than institutions where many of the staff are not experts in dealing with the range of complex problems these youngsters inevitably face. ...

My research and campaigning on prostitution and the sex industry has also brought me into contact with many young women who had previously been in care. One told me that the effects of rape by her father that led to her being removed from the family home were compounded by sexual abuse by a care worker. She said that by the time she was 18 and living alone she had been through a "boot camp" for prostitution. ...

Of course not all care home staff have this attitude, and abuse, while still prevalent, has been flagged up as a serious concern since the major inquiries into the problem back in the 1970s and 80s. Many of those who work with looked-after children do a brilliant job in extremely difficult circumstances. But for the 89,000 looked-after children, the care system is simply not good enough."

Sadly, this is not the only case.  There have been cases in Jersey, Ireland, the US and Canada and, I daresay, elsewhere.  Some involved Catholic priests and nuns.


So, once again, the Law of Unintended Consequences strikes. By bringing together lots of vulnerable children, care homes become a magnet to the perverse who see it as an easy collection of their targets.