Children's home shut down after allegations 'staff groomed kids to sell drugs'
A children’s home where allegations of staff grooming kids to sell drugs were exposed by the Mirror has been closed down.
A damning report by Ofsted came after a Daily Mirror investigation in 2020 revealed two employees at the home, run by Care 4 Children, had been arrested on suspicion of targeting the boys to sell drugs.
Both were later released without charge. But children continued to be left unprotected at the home and three had to be moved because of concerns for their safety, there port on an inspection in November 2022 found.
One boy was 13 when he was placed in the unit in 2017, 250 miles from where he lived with his single mum in London. He is now in a psychiatric unit after being diagnosed with psychosis.
His mum said: “When my son went in he was a good boy. They put him in a special school and his whole life has been affected. The boy was removed from the home and went back to his mum in 2019, when whistleblowers raised concerns over staff.
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His mum said: “The whistleblower told me that he had been taken out of the home by staff to places he should not have gone to. He disappeared four times from the home and on one occasion was found in Blackpool after going missing for three days.”
One boy was 13 when he was placed in the unit in 2017, 250 miles from where he lived with his single mum in London (Getty Images/iStockphoto)The Daily Mirror began investigating the Lancashire home, which we are not naming to protect children, in early 2020. We were alerted by whistleblower Steven Fiddler and some of his colleagues.
Concerns were initially raised the year before when drug bags and three phones used by one of the boys were found. They revealed calls and texts from a staff member.
He was suspended before being moved to another home. Five months later a fourth phone was found in the same boy’s room. It showed calls and messages from the same suspect and another colleague.
Mr Fiddler, a gang intervention mentor, said drugs were repeatedly found at the home. Dealers would phone the house asking for the boys, he said.
One of the suspects was accused of taking youngsters to meet drug dealers in Manchester, which care home bosses denied. Ofsted had passed the home as "good” during the period covering the original 2019 allegations.
But the watchdog found the home “required improvement” in 2021 because children “had been harmed due to a lack of professional curiosity from staff ”. Ofsted found the home was "inadequate” following an inspection in November 2022.
It said: “There are serious and widespread failures that mean children and young people are not protected. Staff had failed to take appropriate action when they found boys’ bank accounts received money from unknown sources."
The report states: “On one occasion, staff intercepted illegal substances being posted through the letterbox. This was not notified to appropriate agencies and it is not clear what happened to the substances."
Agreeing to be named, Mr Fiddler, a founding member of Manchester’s infamous Gooch Close Gang, said: “The most demoralising aspect of this story is the fact that care providers continue to be allowed to fail the most vulnerable members of our society with relative impunity.”
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Mr Fiddler said staff had only five days’ training before taking on the complex work.
He said of care home firms: “If all they have to worry about for negligently destroying young people's lives is the closure of home for a few weeks, can you blame them for not trying?”
Care home firm Care 4 Children Holdco Ltd became Your Chapter Holdings Limited last year. After paying out nearly£900,000 in dividends in 2020, the accounts for 2021 show that turnover fell 12 per cent to £16.6million and profits fell 32 per cent to £1.7m.
It said this was as some homes were “strategically repositioned”.
It added: “Our organisational policies, procedures and systems are under constant review.”
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