“I feel like a parcel
getting moved around all the time, getting opened up and sent back and moved on
to somewhere else.” – Teenage girl in
care, over 100 miles from ‘home’
Anne Longfield, Children’s Commissioner for England, is today (Tuesday December
24th) publishing a report revealing thousands of children in the care system
are living many miles away from family and friends. The report, ‘Pass the parcel: children posted around the care system’,
shines a light on the experiences of children in care who are moved ‘out of
area’ – away from their home boroughs where family and friends live.
The report shows that at 31st March 2018, four in ten children in care in England were living ‘out of area’, with over 11,000 children living more than 20 miles from their home postcode. There were over 2,000 children living 100 miles away from their home postcode and almost a thousand children living over 150 miles away from the area they would call home.
It also reveals there has been a 13% rise in the number of children in care living ‘out of area’ over the last four years, meaning an increasing number of the most vulnerable children in England are living in places disconnected from their support networks of family and friends. Often these moves are being made without advance warning or preparation. The children most likely to live ‘out of area’ are aged 13 or over.