Child from private care home “drugged and sexually assaulted” in hotel - and nobody noticed

A company's failings had dire impact on vulnerable children in their care

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I've read a lot of school, hospital and care home inspection reports over the years from regulators - some full of celebratory joy, many highlighting room for improvement, some mind blowingly awful.

But what Ofsted inspectors found when they visited three small private children's homes in Sandwell, Coventry and Telford was especially dire.

In the worst reported incident, two children went missing overnight, visited nightclubs in Birmingham and Coventry, and one of them later disclosed they had been taken to a hotel by adult males and sexually assaulted, and possibly drugged’.

There were many more incidents.

Young people, already broken by goodness knows what experiences, had been sent to live in these three homes to be looked after, nurtured and supported to thrive, supposedly with specialist care.

But what Ofsted found was a total breakdown of safeguarding, with staff unable to cope and most not qualified to provide the care these vulnerable young people so desperately needed. Living conditions were poor, staff were untrained and poorly supported, and worst of all the young people faced clear risks to their wellbeing.

Inspectors immediately suspended the registration of one home; they ordered that no more children could live at another.

It was a far cry from the promise of Dimensions Care Ltd to ‘change lives, one child at a time’.

I wrote about the key findings at the premises in Sandwell and Coventry in this earlier article: Exposed - chaotic private children's homes where kids 'go missing overnight' and 'exploited'

Other worrying findings included:

* A child with a well known interest in knives and gangs and deemed 'at risk' was taken by home staff to meet up with 'friends' on numerous occasions, without staff showing curiosity about the 'friends'. They ended up in youth offending.

* A child disappeared in the night 'for several hours' and staff did not realise until the child told them the next day.

* There was no evidence at one home that 'children even lived there'. "There are no toys, games, photos or their belongings on display."

* Police were called by staff after two children 'broke in' to their own kitchen in the night because it was kept locked to prevent them getting food.

* A child who had moved in four weeks earlier had not unpacked the few belongings they arrived with, while their 'precious possessions' had still not been collected from their previous home.

* One teenager, in the middle of GCSEs, was allowed to stay in bed all day despite having an exam. "There was no support, encouragement or routine in place."

* One child told inspectors: "We have no rules and boundaries. We run rings around them and do what we want. Even when I went missing last night, returned intoxicated and fell asleep on the stairs, no one has addressed this with me, and they never will."

Since those reports emerged, a THIRD run by the same organisation, this time in Telford, has also received a damning Ofsted report. We understand a fourth has also been downgraded to inadequate.

The Telford findings, published this week, include: “Weak leadership and management of the home means that children are not safe. There are immediate risks to the safety and well-being of the children living at the home.”

They found kids were moved in without ‘considering how children who already live at the home can live safely with new children who move in. As a result, some children have faced unplanned moves out of the house and significant police involvement.’

Then there’s this observation: “Serious incidents have resulted in harm to some children.”

Two children left the home at night ‘to meet with unknown males which put them at significant risk of harm.’ Staff supported the children to return home safely ‘but support for the children following this incident was poor. Staff did not act to reduce risk for these children.’

They also found ‘four children have experienced frequent and serious episodes of going missing from the home, during which they have been at significant risk of harm.’

If this all sounds familiar, it’s because it is precisely scenarios like this that Baroness Louise Casey flagged in her landmark review of group-based child exploitation earlier this year as she called for a complete overhaul of the care sector.

In it she confirmed that victims of exploitation were often 'adolescents in care with frequent missing episodes', particularly girls.

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Dimensions Care Ltd is a relatively small, £1m a year turnover company, with five premises, all of them small and ‘home like’, according to its website.

Its owners include directors of a much bigger company, Tristone Group, previously Tristone Capital, which recorded revenue of £26.5 million for the year ending March 2024, and reported an operating profit of £2.4 million, which was 60% up on the year before. Most of its revenue is from providing specialist adult and child residential care.

My initial inquiries were handled by the director of safeguarding at Tristone, Dawn Lundegran. After the publication of the Telford findings, company director and co-owner Rob Finney answered for the companies.

This is what he had to say.

“Until very recently, all five children’s homes operated by Dimension Care were rated as ‘Good’ by Ofsted, consecutively over a number of years.

"They consistently delivered the levels of quality and care required and expected by the inspector, and this changed in a matter of months. During a short period of structural change, previous standards were not met.

"This should not have happened and our focus is on addressing Ofsted requirements and making improvements. As a result, we have removed the senior operational team at Dimensions Care, with independent and nationally leading experts being brought in.

"Together, we have worked collaboratively with Ofsted. The Coventry and Sandwell homes have already been revisited by Ofsted, who are satisfied that all compliance requirements have now been met.

“We continue to work with Ofsted to address requirements at two further Dimensions Care homes. Following initial findings, the homes have been rated as inadequate and every effort is being made to improve standards as soon as possible.”

Note that the responses don’t mention children once. The company seems to care a lot about meeting Ofsted’s requirements - after all, it relies on a good or outstanding rating to secure contracts - and doesn’t seem remotely embarrassed about failing children. That’s worrying.

Among the councils that use Dimensions Care is Birmingham Children’s Trust, the children’s arm of Birmingham City Council. It recently confirmed it is still placing children with the firm.

Cllr Adam Higgs (Con, Highters Heath), Birmingham City Council’s shadow cabinet member for Children, Young People and Families, said he was alarmed at the reports.

"Poorly run homes such as these not only fail those vulnerable children involved - the care of which should be among society's most important duties - they inadvertently play a role in the ongoing grooming scandal which continues to be uncovered across the country,” he said.

"Once again we see a disturbing connection to Birmingham in stories of abuse." He said local Conservatives had pressed for the council and Ofsted to work more closely on the issue earlier this year.

"We’re now asking the council to report any findings of poorly run homes which put children's safety and well being at risk to us, and inform of the measures being taken to protect those children.

"When failings are identified, the council must act immediately to ensure these children are given the safe homes and support they need and deserve. Anything less is simply unacceptable.”

Ed Ruane, a Labour councillor in Coventry, where one of the homes is located, said the reports make harrowing reading and demonstrated concerning issues that needed to be urgently addressed by the local councils where the homes are sited, and those who use them.

"Where was our own oversight? If Ofsted had not gone in and found these issues, would anyone have said or done anything? Did the police alert other agencies after being called out to deal with children breaking into their own home? I have so many questions."

That’s the nub really. Children in all of these homes would have been under the supervision of social workers; police officers were clearly attending to deal with incidents and presumably investigating missing children reports. Did any of them raise the alarm? Or were conditions here not so extraordinary to warrant intervention?

Activist and journalist Martin Barrow, a foster carer who was the first to highlight these troubling examples last month in his regular round-up about children's social care issues, says these are frighteningly commonplace examples.

"Local authorities and the government are now in thrall to private organisations to look after the most complex and vulnerable children. The fact that businesses make a profit out of caring for children removed from their parents is morally repugnant, in my view.

"The care system has become much more adept at making money for investors than it is at supporting children and young people to live fulfilling lives and to achieve their potential," he said.

He said he expected that Dimensions Care would quickly make changes to satisfy the regulators and retain its registrations but it was troubling that conditions so blatant to inspectors had not been alerted by anyone supporting children living there.

More than 100,000 children in the UK are in care. In England, around 19% of those in care are housed in residential accommodation, and the vast majority of these (around 83%) are privately run.

Baroness Lola Young, a former child in care, now 74, echoes Barrow's concerns. Writing in the Big Issue last month, she said: "It drives me nuts that children’s homes are privatised. I cannot, in any world, think of how you would have a system whereby distressed children and young people become a means of making a profit."

What Birmingham City Council said

Birmingham City Council-owned Birmingham Children's Trust does send children to Dimensions Care homes. It said in response to our inquiries: "Birmingham Children’s Trust uses a range of providers for residential care for children and closely monitors children in these homes. This includes regular visits to children by their social workers and quality assurance of the care provided.

"Dimensions Care Ltd is currently providing residential care for Birmingham Children’s Trust at two of its homes, one of which has been judged as inadequate by Ofsted after being rated good for several years, most recently in March 2025. The other home is rated good.

"Where issues are identified with residential homes, we take a child-centered approach to our next steps. This balances the importance of stability for children against the quality of the home and how satisfied we are that the provider is addressing the issues."

What Coventry City Council said

"We take the safety and wellbeing of our children in care extremely seriously. We have robust arrangements in place to ensure provisions, where our children are placed, are regularly monitored, and we respond swiftly to any concerns raised, but there are a number of private homes in Coventry which are not run by the local authority and have children placed in from various authorities.”

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Do you have experience of living, working or visiting children's homes in Birmingham and the West Midlands? It would be great to hear from you - leave a message here or contact me in confidence by email: jane.haynes@reachplc.com in the first instance

All the best til next time.

Jane

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