Britain’s social care system appears to be in a real mess following years of neglect and underfunding. Let’s hope this government will be able to fix at least some of the sins of the previous few administrations.

Today’s abhorrent story concerns children who are subjected to Deprivation of Liberty orders.

DoLs fall under the Mental Capacity Act. In theory they should only be used when taking away someone’s freedom is essential to prevent them being harmed.

Mind provides an example use-case:

Jon lives in a care home. He has memory problems that have become worse over time. His condition means that he’s less aware of danger than others. He’s unable to cross a busy road on his own and doesn’t understand that it’s dangerous to cross a nearby railway line.

Jon needs constant supervision. He has to be stopped from going out on his own. This usually involves keeping him in a locked room and physically stopping him if he tries to go out on his own. To keep him safe, this has to be done on a regular basis.

However the number of DoLs being used on children has doubled, to at least 1000 per year, since 2021.

The government’s guidance says that these children ‘will likely be placed in a children’s home or a care home service’. But in reality at least half - we apparently don’t have an accurate count - of these very vulnerable children are being placed in entirely unsuitable, unregistered, dangerous and illegal accommodation run by profiteering comercial firms, sometimes supervised only by a security guard.

This is, of course, due to a lack of state facilities and personnel, leading to a reliance on the private sector. When does that ever go well?

From the Guardian:

“Caravans, Airbnbs. We found a child in such bad accommodation with disabilities that there were rats eating through their feeding tubes every night,” De Souza said. “We’ve had children in tents. It’s absolutely shocking.”

To compound the horror, often they’re stuck behind locked doors 100s of miles away from their family and receiving very little in the way of education.

Yet another issue that should be a top priority for this government to try and fix. Apparently we can expect an announcement this week.