Bristol boy placed in caravan 200 miles away as Bristol City Council ignored complaints
A 13-year old boy was placed in a caravan 200 miles from his home in Bristol after being told to leave a privately run children’s home. His grandmother complained about this illegal practice but Bristol City Council acted only after the story was published in the Mirror, a national newspaper.
The boy’s grandmother told the Mirror that “he was crying and crying and I couldn’t even cuddle him. It was just terrible, absolutely terrible. He was so distressed. We both were.”
Since 2021, it has been illegal for social services to house under-16s anywhere but a registered care home. The council, which is legally responsible for the boy, called the housing move a “short respite arrangement” implying it was a holiday. He was only removed after the Mirror reported on the situation, and has been staying with his gran since then.
The council’s complicity
Did the council know of the illegal arrangement? In the June 2023 corporate risk register and July’s Cabinet and Audit papers, a new entry was added, at the highest possible risk rating, for children placed in unregistered provision.
This was cited as a critical threat in a paper to Cabinet: “an escalated threat risk from Children Services”. The comment accompanying it in Cabinet and Audit was: “We are still exploring the insurance position, waiting for feedback from Zurich Municipal Underwriting Services.”
According to the Mirror, the boy was sent to a static caravan part, and was apparently supervised by agency carers who slept on a sofa bed in the trailer. The agency to which his care was outsourced is Bare Care Services, which uses two houses, two barges, two narrowboats and eight caravans to accommodate children. The company had a £1million turnover in its first year and cares for 12 children.
In 2021, then cabinet member for education and children, Helen Godwin was lamenting the incredible sums paid out to private providers for social care. She has now gone to work at PWC, the consultants who were paid £370k for the Children’s Transformation programme in August 2023.
There was no comment from the current cabinet member for education and children in the article.
The Council’s direct responsibility
Bristol City Council have been busy spying on parents of children with SEND, have no executive director for children’s services after the last one only stayed for seven months, and still have no in-date school-place planning document on their website. The last one was commissioned by the first mayor, George Ferguson, and has been out of date since 2019. Cllr Anna Keen, cabinet member in Marvin Rees’ first administration said: “I can’t plan for imaginary future students’ as she presided over shutting three schools.
She was also the cabinet member in charge when the Council tried to cut £5m in SEND funding and had the decision reversed at judicial review.
Bristol City Council’s education planning has faced criticism for years. Instead of using schools they’ve shut down, to provide SEND support, they’ve given them over to academies. St George Primary in Bristol is a prime example. The 150 year-old school, located on Queens Parade where houses are sold for £700k and £800k, was left underfunded for years. This was then used as an excuse to shut it down. It is now being funded and has reopened as part of the Cathedral School academy. This is the same academy to which the council gave £900k for infrastructure from the pupil allocation budget while denying support for St George at a fraction of that amount.
As Cllr Christine Townsend told Bristol247: “Within months of this local school being closed forever, we hear that the Cathedral Primary had been handed the keys and contractors appeared on-site to carry out long recognised structural repairs and reconfiguration – required investment that local children attending St George Primary never experienced despite the known issues.”
Investment in children in Bristol only seems to happen when it serves the affluent. That’s a why a boy was placed in a caravan 200 miles from home. The administration failed to plan and they failed to care, as is their legal duty.