Councils with a greater proportion of looked-after children placed in profit-making children’s homes tend to receive worse Ofsted ratings, research has found.
For every additional percentage point of for-profit children’s home provision, a council had 4.7% lower odds of being rated outstanding, good or requires improvement, as opposed to inadequate, from 2016-21, said researchers.
Echoing the findings of Ofsted’s annual social care data returns, the study, by Oxford University academics, also found that council-run homes tended to receive better overall ratings than for-profit ones, from 2014-21.
Across the period studied, profit-making homes had 33.7% lower odds of being rated outstanding, good or requires improvement, as opposed to inadequate, than council-run homes.
They also tended to be rated worse than council-run homes in relation to leadership and how well children were helped and protected, and had 1.44 times the odds of being found to have violated a legal requirement than council-run homes, found the study.