A UK council has spent over £500,000 to house a vulnerable 10-year-old boy in an illegal children’s home for four months, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) can reveal.

Isle of Wight council has been charged £29,000 per week for the placement in a semi-detached house leased by the local authority, at which the boy was the only resident. The home is not registered with Ofsted, the education and care watchdog, which makes operating it a criminal offence.
Remarking on the cost to the public purse, a judge said: “You could send him to Disney[land] Paris for a month and save some money.”
At a high court hearing last month, Mr Justice Keehan called the standard of care at the home “wholly inadequate” after hearing allegations of staff’s frequent use of restraint and the boy’s social isolation.
Social workers took the boy into care last year. He had been traumatised by witnessing domestic violence and deemed beyond parental control, and has since been placed in a series of illegal children’s homes.
The hearing concerned the council’s application to renew permission for staff to closely supervise the boy and restrain him if necessary, known as a Deprivation of Liberty (DoL) order. The use of DoL orders for children as young as 10 is rare.
The boy’s experiences, laid bare in the legal proceedings, highlight the failure of the social care system to provide for vulnerable children requiring high levels of supervision.
The council paid Great Minds Together (GMT), the company that runs the home, 1.2% of its yearly children’s services budget for the 17-week placement.
This budget must cover the council’s child protection investigations, support for more than 1,500 children with disabilities and special educational needs, and accommodation for more than 200 children in care, among other services.

“Great Minds [Together] are charging an eye-watering amount of money to provide accommodation and support for [the boy] that is wholly inadequate,” said Keehan.
In a statement provided to TBIJ, GMT chief executive Emma Mander defended the cost of the placement, claiming that a large portion of the funds were for elements the council would normally fund directly, such as activities and travel.

Chronic shortage
Although it is an offence to run an unregistered children’s home, councils place hundreds of children in illegal accommodation every year because there is a shortage of suitable legal provision. In the past, many of these children would have been sent to secure homes – which care for children who pose a risk to themselves or others, or have been criminally or sexually exploited – but there are not enough beds to meet rising demand.

There are just 14 registered secure children’s homes in England and Wales, totalling 235 beds, and other children’s homes are reluctant to take children with complex needs. With around 50 vulnerable children waiting for one of these places at any given time, judges now routinely allow some of the most vulnerable children in the country to be placed with illegal providers.

Last year, Ofsted investigations revealed the existence of more than 900 mostly single-occupant illegal children’s homes in England, over six times the number it had found three years earlier. However, the true number is likely higher, as local authorities do not have to report when they place a child in an unregistered home.

“Often run by private companies – and at an eye-watering cost to the taxpayer – these placements profit from the shortage of legal homes,” said Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England.
“Every night across England hundreds of children are going to sleep in illegal settings that lack any of the love or stability of a home – and like this little boy are left isolated without appropriate support.”
Mander claimed Isle of Wight council had made inaccurate comments in court, which her business was unable to respond to because it was not involved in the proceedings.
Mander, who according to the company’s website has a background in child psychology, added that children placed with GMT make significant progress and a number have transitioned home positively. She defended the decision not to register the home with the regulator.
“The call for homes to be Ofsted registered needs to be more considered and understood,” she said. “Providers are expected to work within a rigid regulatory framework that does not meet the needs of these complex young people.” She added that unregistered homes still receive weekly visits from the local authority.

Frequent use of force
The high court was reviewing an order allowing GMT staff to physically restrain the boy as a last resort, to prevent him running away, or harming himself or others.
But last month, the judge heard concerns that they had used these powers too frequently, with one incident leaving the boy bruised. Mander told TBIJ the incident had been taken out of context.

The boy told a court-appointed psychologist, Rabhya Dewshi, that the carers hated him and restrained him more than in other children’s homes.
Dewshi reported that GMT’s staff “lacked skills in understanding, de-escalating and regulating [the boy’s] feelings and behaviour”.
Dewshi observed that the boy was bored, lonely and vulnerable. She said the placement was not “sufficiently therapeutic”, which was exacerbating his difficulties, and that she had attempted to raise his poor treatment with GMT management but they were “not very receptive”.
Mander claimed Dewshi had not spoken to GMT or requested reports about the boy’s progress in the home.
Kathryn Blair, a barrister representing the boy’s mother, told the court: “Everyone spat out their tea when they read the amount [GMT] is charging, and offering very little.”
Blair argued that the mother has been left to pick up the slack because GMT is failing to meet the boy’s needs. “She is the one who makes him OK,” Blair said. “She organises most of the activities”.
The court heard that the mother visited the boy several times a week in the placement, sometimes with his siblings and friends.
The council told the court that GMT staff took him to the beach and to the park, where he had the opportunity to see children his own age, but Keehan, the judge, said “actually socialising and interacting” was important, and simply seeing other children was not sufficient. The council did not provide examples of GMT facilitating social contact between the boy and other children.
‘Very substantial dividend’
GMT, which operates one other children’s home, claims it is a not-for-profit organisation. Its 2023 accounts show the company paid dividends to its directors – including Mander – totalling nearly £330,000 that year. GMT told TBIJ these payments were “within legal, ethical and industry norms” and added that the amount covered a three-year period.
Chris Barnes, the barrister for the boy’s father, raised GMT’s “very substantial dividend” in court documents. He said the payouts highlight “the real concern about the impact of costs of private sector provision on local authority budgets”.
He also told the court that the six-month order authorising the use of restraint had led to no “real, obvious sign of progress”.
Keehan warned the council during the proceedings that he would not renew the DoL order, which was first imposed in January, if the boy remained in the care of GMT. “I remain very anxious … about [the boy],” he said.

The boy has lived in two other unregistered homes since being taken into care in November 2024. An order restricting his liberty in the GMT-run home was first authorised by a judge in February this year.
Isle of Wight council told TBIJ the boy had moved to a new home this week, and that this setting is regulated by Ofsted. It said it had been trying to find an appropriate registered home for the child since 2024.
It is an offence under the Care Standards Act 2000 to operate a children’s home without an Ofsted registration. This is intended to prevent unsuitable people from owning, managing or working in homes. But Ofsted rarely takes steps to prosecute.
In 2021 the supreme court ruled that the placement of a child in an illegal home can be authorised by a judge when there is “absolutely no alternative”, though it noted providers could still be prosecuted.
Some illegal operators fail to register because they cannot meet the standards demanded by Ofsted. Others claim they do not have time to register as they are set up quickly to accommodate children with nowhere else to go – or say they are only operating on a temporary basis.

Changes on the way?
The number of children subject to restrictions on their freedom – which can range from locking them inside their accommodation to limiting their communication with people outside the home – has risen around tenfold in the last seven years. Reasons for this include an increase in traumatised children with complex problems and a falling number of child mental health beds in hospitals.
Sixteen secure children’s homes closed in England between 2002 and 2022. The previous government announced plans to build a new secure home in east London – which has been delayed and is still at the proposal stage – and to replace closed homes elsewhere in the country.
Many non-secure children’s homes are reluctant to take children with complex needs or DoL orders, because they do not have the necessary staff or facilities, or are concerned about possible disruption.
However legislation currently going through parliament seeks to create a new type of legal, secure provision to accommodate the growing number of children deprived of their liberty. It also will give Ofsted the power to issue unlimited fines to illegal providers.
“The [new bill] is a vital step forward,” said De Souza, the children’s commissioner. “But I have been clear, we need to go further and faster.”