Wales to remove profit from children's care welcomed by BASW Cymru
Under the Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill, new placements in for-profit children’s homes, secure accommodation or foster placements, by Welsh or English councils, will be banned, other than in exceptional circumstances, in April 2030.
If children are taken into care, councils can commission private residential or foster carers to look after them. Currently, the private sector provides 87% of children’s home and 35% of fostering placements in Wales.
Councils have largely supported the idea but said they did not have enough resources to make the vision a reality in current circumstances.
BASW Cymru National Director, Prof Sam Baron, said:
“This is a progressive and ambitious piece of legislation which, is simply the right thing to do. Whilst full implementation will take several years, this move will rightly return public money into the public care system, increasing available resources and, by implication, release public money to address the issues of quality variations and low salaries.
“However, frontline voices and concerns must be listened to and addressed, by ensuring an already stretched public system receives the desperate investment it already needs to avoid even greater pressures being felt further down the line.”
Speaking in the Senedd, the Minister for Children & Social Care, Dawn Bowden MS, said the legislation was a direct response to young people saying that “they did not want to be the means of someone making a profit out of the challenges that they and their families faced”.
She added:
“I want to be very, very clear that the 2030 date for the ending of new placements by Welsh local authorities in existing for-profit services is not a target date, it is the absolute end date.
“And I expect substantial progress to be made before then in ending placements of existing for-profit children’s homes and fostering services prior to 2030 in areas that have sufficiency for that not-for-profit provision, and I will be making sure that we get to that place as quickly as we possibly can.”
