Response to Competition and Markets Authority invitation to comment on children’s social care

” Since 2016 the Howard League has been working on a programme to end the unnecessary criminalisation of children in residential care. We have conducted extensive qualitative research on the subject which has given us a wide-ranging understanding of the children’s residential care sector and the issues affecting the children living within in. Amongst the several hundred people we have spoken to are police, directors of children’s services and other local authority staff, youth offending teams, the owners and staff of private, voluntary and local authority run homes, magistrates, youth justice lawyers, politicians, academics, other third sector organisations and children and young people who are, or who have recently, lived in children’s homes.

“This submission draws on this programme of work and provides brief comment on two of the four themes set out in the Competition and Market Authority’s (CMA) invitation to comment. Links are provided to relevant Howard League publications and the CMA is encouraged to read those briefings in full. All of the Howard League’s publications on the criminalisation of children in residential care can be found on the programme’s web page.”

Read the full response