Criminals target teenagers in ‘care homes’

THOUSANDS of teenagers in care are being ‘dumped’ in homes that are ‘magnets for paedophiles and drug gangs’, an investigation has found.

More than 5,000 over-16s are currently housed in unregulated homes without sufficient checks or registers – a rise of 70 per cent in a decade.

Local authorities can place 16 and 17year-olds in the facilities for their own safety, but a BBC Newsnight report revealed the homes can be hotbeds of criminal activity and abuse.

One girl told the programme: ‘There was the time when I was hit in the face by one of the staff members. They would call us prostitutes or whores.’

Ann Coffey, who chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on Missing Children and Adults, branded the homes ‘a twilight world’ and ‘magnet for paedophiles and drug gangs’.

Police warned resources were being used to search for children who go missing from the homes – which have no set register and are not subject to the same checks as those regulated by Ofsted.

Jackie Sebire, of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said: ‘I can have 20, 30, 40 other 999 calls not being responded to as quickly as I would want them to be because we are trying to find them.’

Families minister Nadhim Zahawi told the programme, which airs tonight, that ‘local authorities are required to make sure that children in care and care-leavers are given suitable accommodation to meet their needs’.