A county council has spent millions on improving homes for vulnerable teenagers after being jolted into action by a regional daily’s exposé.
The Eastern Daily Press revealed in 2017 home young people leaving the care of Norfolk County Council were living in “dreadful conditions” in accommodation paid for with taxpayer cash.
Pictures published by the EDP showed damaged rooms full of broken furniture, a door with a large hole in it, mould around windows, a badly damaged garden fence and a trashed bathroom, as well as pile after pile of rubbish.
As a result of the probe, the council suspended all new placements with the firm running the homes and has now spent £5m on opening new accommodation for young people leaving care.
How the EDP first reported the story
Stuart Dark, chairman of Norfolk County Council children’s services, told the EDP: “You held us to account. You held a light up to something that wasn’t right. And we have shown that we have listened.”
Tom Bristow, investigations editor at EDP owner Archant, told HTFP: “When we first revealed the appalling conditions in some of the homes care leavers were being placed in the council pushed back hard.
“They claimed there was no issue with the homes or the conditions. I remember one press officer telling me his garden looked very similar to the one pictured.
“Thankfully, after much more reporting on this issue, the council did take action and admitted there was a problem.
“It is rewarding to see that vulnerable teenagers will in the future get better living conditions thanks to the actions of the council sparked by our initial investigation.”
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Credit where it’s due, good work on this important issue, hopefully there’ll be a follow up piece on the individuals who tried to brush this off as being acceptable, that’s a story in itself.
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This must be a really irritating story for some on this site to read, since there is very little room to make sweeping derogatory remarks about how much better things were when the rose-tinted brigade were in charge.
One feature I would love to see from HTFP is some analysis of the newspapers these people put out when they had zero competition and a monopoly of local advertising revenues.
There were some very grim efforts. I know, because I helped produce a lot of them at the EDP.
I am truly fed up of the barrage of criticism our successors get from people who had endless resource and no challenge at all in the market. Can’t they go off and play bowls a bit more like the rest of us?
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Congratulations to the EDP on good, old-fashioned investigative journalism which has actually produced a material improvement to young people’s lives when they need it most. Everyone involved should be rightly proud of what they have achieved.
Shows what can be done even with diminishing resources.
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