One in five children in care being placed over 20 miles from local area: report

A charity has warned that one in five children in care are being placed “more than 20 miles from their local area”, and that it has seen cases of children being placed 500 miles away.

Research and analysis conducted by Become found that both the number and proportion of children in the care system placed more than 20 miles away from home has increased each year between 2012 and 2021.

It also found that children who are moved more than 20 miles away from home are "more likely to have lower wellbeing and to experience emotional difficulties" than children who are placed closer to home.

840 children under the care of English local authorities were placed outside of the country, including 540 in Wales and 270 in Scotland, the study found.

The charity is calling for a "national commitment" to stop children being placed miles from their home area when it is “not in their best interests”.

It notes that despite the Government's proposed reforms in "Stable Homes, Built on Love", there remains "no national commitment or strategy to reduce the number of children in care who are placed far from their home areas simply due to the lack of appropriate homes closer.”

Speaking to the BBC, a Local Government Association spokesperson said: "The welfare of children in care is paramount to councils, and that includes identifying the best possible home to meet their needs."

It added: "too many children are placed further from home than we would like", but councils could not fix the problem alone.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Every child deserves to live in a safe and stable home and local authorities have a responsibility to place children in an environment that is in their best interests, usually within 20 miles of their home. 

 “We are investing £259 million to create more placements for children in high-quality and safe homes, while developing a new model for care placements to keep more children close to home networks.”

The Department for Education added that local authorities have a “statutory duty” to ensure that there is sufficient provision for their looked after children within their boundary, adding that some children may be moved “well away from their home to safeguard their welfare”, which can extend to “outlier distances”.

Lottie Winson