SEND National Crisis

If we are serious about protecting women and girls, then we must also talk about the thousands of vulnerable young girls in our care system who are at risk of violence, criminal exploitation and sexual abuse. Every single day, young girls are being targeted, groomed and exploited by criminal organisations. Some are living in fear in placements that should be protecting them. These are children in our care. Children we have a duty to protect. We need to end the use of illegal, unregistered care settings, introduce stronger vetting and accountability for those running children's homes, and stop private equity firms and investors from putting profit before the safety and wellbeing of vulnerable children. If teachers and frontline professionals must undergo rigorous safeguarding checks, why shouldn't those responsible for running children's homes face equally robust scrutiny? We could act on this now. Protecting women starts with protecting girls. And that includes every girl growing up in our care system.

If a council identifies a pothole, it recognises the problem and takes steps to fix it. But when we identify barriers facing care-experienced young people — homelessness, discrimination, financial hardship and lack of opportunity — why is recognition so often where the action stops? We carry out assessments, publish reports, acknowledge inequalities and discuss the same problems year after year. Yet the barriers remain. And then, when young people leave care and become homeless, when we read reports about premature deaths we scratch our heads and ask, how is this still happening? Year after year, we commission reviews, publish reports and spend millions of pounds of taxpayer's money dealing with the consequences of a system we have failed to fix.