The State Of It

by Chris Wild

Can we fix how we look after children in care?

Government cuts, unregulated care homes, inadequate staff training - campaigner and care home manager has seen it all. The low standards and frequent abuse of children in care has long been a focal point of his loud message: we are failing our young people and something need to change.

Urgent and critical, The State Of It will be the most important book you read this year.

292 pages, Hardcover

Published March 1, 2021

Reviews

[Domhnall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chris Wild spent some time as a child in the care system, when he witnessed shocking abuse and neglect. He returned to work in care homes as an adult and uses his experience to campaign for improvements. In this book, he uses anecdotes of particular children who passed through his care to illustrate the types of problem requiring attention, from the recruitment of vulnerable children in the county lines system for drug dealing to the terrible experiences and special needs of refugee children seeking asylum. He deals mostly with boys, but the references to girls are sufficient to suggest that their treatment in care can be even worse. He discusses the increasing role of the private sector in the care system and the ways in which the profit motive utterly wrecks the quality of care. Of a Department for Education report on the needs of children leaving care he writes: "In a sector strangled by austerity and poisoned by the greed of private companies, it was barely worth the paper it was written on." (p251) "The state is failing in its duty as corporate parents, pleading poverty when the private landlords it has outsourced its responsibility to are stacking up the cash that comes in every week from local authorities, never spending a penny on the young people it is intended to support." (275). His book demonstrates in many ways that the suffering and neglect of children in Britain's care system is the product of a positive choice, justified when need be by demonising the children brought into this abusive system through no fault or choice of their own. He also demonstrates that these children are often capable of building good lives, if only given the support they need; the support system is instead capable of crushing the most motivated and promising of them.

Interesting to encounter this in the Financial Times:
https://www.ft.com/content/51473bbf-6...

"Children’s special needs schools are a real focus for infrastructure investors at the moment as there is a real shortage of supply and the returns are red hot,” said Julian Evans, head of healthcare at Knight Frank.

Witherslack almost doubled pre-tax profits to £14m last year, a period when it received £75m from local authorities to provide care.