The Landscape
Let’s start with the context: every day across Liverpool City Region, a child is placed in residential care. Like any child, they need a safe and happy place to call home where they can enjoy their childhood.
The National Story
There are currently 83,840 Children Looked After in England. Children are typically taken into care because they are experiencing abuse, neglect, family breakdown or because of a parent or child's illness or disability.
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Far too many children in England have a poor experience when they become looked after. Rather than receiving the love and support they need, many children are sent away from their communities, placed in care environments that can't meet their needs and suffer further relationship breakdowns. We are working to address this problem in the Liverpool City Region by creating high-quality children’s residential homes that will allow children to stay close to their local area, their communities and schools.
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​Feedback from care-experienced children and adults has highlighted that the quality and number of loving relationships every child has, whilst in care and when leaving care, should be the primary measure used to determine the success of the care system. That is why our care model places its biggest emphasis on building strong, loving relationships – between our team, our children, our partners and our community.
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The Challenges
Focus on
profits
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The 20 largest operators of independent children’s residential care providers have an aggregate fee income of £1.63 billion in 2023, an increase of 6.5% over the previous year. 19% of this was recorded as profit.
Increasing
distance
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21% of children in care were moved 20+ miles away from home. This number has increased by 62% in a decade since 2013.
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Children who are placed closer to home are less likely to experience emotional difficulties, and have higher wellbeing than those who are placed more than 20 miles from home.
LGA, 2023
Become Charity, 2023
Co-designed and developed with Liverpool City Region Commissioners and care experienced young people, We are Juno CIC is a not-for-profit organisation set up to help address sufficiency challenges in the area, ensuring that more young people grow up in high-quality care placements in their local community.
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Supported by Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, Wirral MBC and a network of socially-minded grant funders and investors, our first two homes opened in 2023 and 2024. Over the next five years, we will open a further 8+ homes, working in partnership with local authority leaders who share our vision for change.