Trigger Warning: Discussion of suicide and self-harm
A landmark new study has found that teenagers in care are four times more likely to attempt suicide than those without care experience. Likewise, the research showed that 26% of teenagers in care have attempted suicide, compared to 7% of their counterparts.
The study analysed data gathered by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS) as part of its millennium cohort study (MCS). The CLS website explains that:
The Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) is a UK longitudinal birth study. It is following the lives of around 19,000 young people born across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2000-02.
It has tracked measures such as physical, socio-emotional, cognitive and behavioural development, economic circumstances, parenting, relationships and family life across the life course.
Whilst the MCS tracks an incredibly broad range of metrics, the study in question was much more focused. It addressed how out-of-home care — i.e. residential, foster and kinship care — affected the participants both socially and mentally.
Notably, it marks the first time that research has addressed the increased suicide risk of teenagers who’ve been in care.
‘Urgent need for systematic change’ in care sector
Along with its startling findings on suicide, the study also found that 39% of teens who’d been through foster care reported high levels of depression. For contrast, the level for those who hadn’t been fostered was around 16%.
Likewise, 56% of fostered teens had self-harmed at some point in the past. Those without foster experience were less than half as likely to have self-harmed, at 24%.
The UCL Social Research Institute’s Dr Ingrid Schoon co-authored the study. She spoke about her results demonstrating a desperate need for change in the care sector:
These realities call for a family-focused approach, ensuring support remains available throughout a young person’s life course. The current ‘cliff edge’ where support abruptly ends must be removed. While it may seem obvious that early adversity can have long-term effects, our study provides hard evidence of how deeply this disadvantage persists – not just for individuals with care experience, but for their children too. This underscores the urgent need for systemic change.
Likewise, a Department for Education spokesperson stated that:
This research is deeply troubling, and the scale of harm faced by care-experienced young people is not acceptable. We are committed to understanding and addressing the shockingly high number of early deaths among care-experienced young people.
That’s why change has to come earlier. As part of our Plan for Change, the government is taking action to help children in care access mental health support sooner, bringing together social workers and NHS professionals to provide joined-up support when it is needed most.
‘Private for-profit provision’
While better access to mental health support is a good first step, it treats a symptom rather than a root cause of the failures of children’s social care.
Back in 2024 — just as Labour came to power — research from the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at Oxford University showed that decades of profit-driven privatisation in residential care has had a massive negative impact on the children who went through it.
Likewise, it demonstrated that such privatisation was also increasing, despite its failures:
Dramatic increase in outsourcing: Over the past two decades, the outsourcing of residential care services to private providers has surged. […] more than 80% of children’s homes are now run by for-profit companies, a rise of over 20 percentage points since 2010.
Quality concerns: Despite the growth of private for-profit provision, public and third-sector providers consistently outperform for-profit providers on quality measures by industry regulators. Public and third-sector adult care homes and children’s homes show higher regulatory inspections ratings. At the same time, for-profit operators experience more frequent involuntary closures and cancellations by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and Ofsted.
Likewise, an article from the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) also pointed out that private providers are more likely to locate their residences in low-cost areas. For example, just 6% of children’s care homes are in London, while over 25% are in the North East of England.
This means that a third of children end up being relocated more than 20 miles from where they grew up when they enter care. As BASW explained:
Research shows this worsens outcomes for children, placements are more unstable and children more vulnerable with family, friendships and educational connections severed.
Profit motives
In November 2024, the then-new Labour government laid out its plans for the broken children’s care sector in the policy document ‘Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive’. It talked about a “crackdown” on private providers.
However, the form that this took was introducing financial oversight and regulating the market for private residential homes, aiming to tackle profiteering. Significantly, these are market-focused solutions to a problem that is caused by privatisation in the first place.
Along the same lines, education secretary Bridget Phillipson said:
Our care system has suffered from years of drift and neglect. It’s bankrupting councils, letting families down, and above all, leaving too many children feeling forgotten, powerless and invisible.
We will crack down on care providers making excessive profit, tackle unregistered and unsafe provision and ensure earlier intervention to keep families together and help children to thrive.
Again, focusing on profiteering means that the government may pay less for private care. However, it doesn’t necessarily improve matters for the vulnerable children who should be at the center of the issue.
Wales bans private care providers
By contrast, recognising that profit should never have become a factor in children’s care, Wales enacted legislation to ban private profit-driven providers altogether in 2025. In practice, this means that:
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From 1 April 2026: new entrants [care providers] must prove they are not-for-profit to be registered with CIW.
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From April 2027: existing for-profit providers will face restrictions unless they restructure.
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By April 2030: Welsh local authorities will no longer be able to make new placements with for-profit providers, except under limited exceptions.
As the new study on care outcomes has shown, the UK care system is in dire need of change. As a place to start, England must look to Wales’ example and move to ban private, profit-driven providers. The data clearly shows that private care provision is worse for the children relegated to its clutches.
The very least we can do for children in the care system is to show them that they’re more than a number in the profit margin of a ledger.
Featured image via Johns Hopkins Medicine
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