Britain’s largest care home provider was in a tailspin — missed profit targets, ballooning debts, cratering stock price. So executives at Cambian Group plc, which bills taxpayers millions to look after disadvantaged children, came up with a plan: Cut spending and fill beds.

Consultants came in to review Cambian’s “cost management”. A “turnaround specialist” renowned for slashing expenses at corporate giants joined the board. Executives pushed staff to tighten their budgets and to hit occupancy targets in order to, as one memo put it, become “more efficient and agile” and “remain attractive to investors”.

The plan worked. In the past two years Cambian’s stock has tripled, and it cleared more than £192 million in revenue last year.

But while Cambian has reaped the benefits of its corporate recovery, young people in its care have endured decrepit conditions and even suffered violent assaults, a BuzzFeed News investigation has found. Documents and interviews show vulnerable kids forced to share close quarters with dangerous peers, rooms marred by vomit spatter and broken furniture, and homes spiralling out of control under the watch of poorly trained staff.

Some former Cambian employees say they had to claw and fight for even the most basic necessities for the children they looked after. Leigh Barton worked at a “volatile” home in Doncaster that was often run on skeleton staffing, where he said that front-line employees were “always brushed aside” when they asked for more resources. Then, at monthly meetings, management grilled them about their expenditures and ways they could cut back. “It was just ‘money, money, money, money, money,’” Barton said.

Cambian was pulling in thousands of taxpayer pounds each month for the children in the home — yet sent staff only a £45 weekly allowance per child for day-to-day needs, Barton said. He was left with a burning question: “Where the hell is the money going?”

Cambian said in a statement that Barton “is incorrect” about the weekly allowance for each child. His figure excludes “additional budget allocated for clothing, toiletries, holidays, savings, birthdays, religious celebrations and personalization”, and the true total is £159 per week, the company said. Monthly meetings "are not focused solely" on money, and the home Barton worked at has consistently been rated “good” or "outstanding" by government inspectors.



A BuzzFeed News investigation has found severe failings across Britain’s children’s care sector, which has become dominated by for-profit companies. Private providers charge taxpayers millions, yet their facilities are rated subpar more often than homes run by nonprofits or local governments, according to a BuzzFeed News analysis of the latest available regulator data.

Today we raise serious questions about whether the publicly traded, private equity–backed Cambian shortchanged children during its relentless quest to please investors. We obtained a cache of internal company documents, scoured government inspection reports, and interviewed 15 former Cambian employees. Our investigation can reveal:

Young people in Cambian homes have been attacked, threatened with death, and arrested. They have endured environments featuring weapons, drugs, and “chaos”. One felt “petrified and scared” to be in a Cambian home.

They stayed in homes with bathrooms lacking toilet paper and soap, with cupboards lacking food, with broken furniture or unhygienic rooms, with offensive graffiti etched on the window. Inspectors have described homes as “cold”, “sparsely furnished”, and “unwelcoming and bare”. One home failed to treat children “with the dignity and respect that they deserve”, an inspector wrote.

Beleaguered staff members have resorted to excessive “physical restraints” to keep children under control at some homes. One told BuzzFeed News that he used “illegal” restraints multiple times because he was too “outnumbered” to cope with difficult situations.

One quarter of Cambian homes in England have been graded as “inadequate” or “requires improvement” by the regulator Ofsted, a rate higher than homes run by local authorities, nonprofits, or the rest of the private sector.

Cambian strongly rejected many of these allegations. A Cambian spokesperson, Richard Campbell, told BuzzFeed News that the company’s “overriding priority” is “the wellbeing and safety” of the children it looks after. “We take our responsibilities to these children very seriously and do our utmost to ensure that they receive a standard of care and education that allows them to reach their personal best.”

The company said it spends millions on repairs, pays its staff well, and ensures employees receive the training they need to keep children safe and to prevent the use of unnecessary restraints. Many of its homes quickly improved after government inspectors identified problems, Campbell said. “Where our own high standards have fallen short, we have an excellent track record of reacting with agility and resource to take appropriate corrective action.”

In lengthy written statements delivered through a lawyer, Jonathan Coad, the company said all its cost-cutting has come from corporate inefficiencies, not the care that children receive. Cambian shelters “some of the most damaged and disturbed children in the country”, the statement said. “It is inevitable that some of those children will express themselves violently on occasion.” The company doesn’t “just fill beds”, but instead does “all that we can” to ensure children are not placed in harmful environments. As for the former employees BuzzFeed News spoke with, the company dismissed them as “malcontents” who make up what “appears to be a minute fraction” of the workforce.

Coad initially offered to set up an interview with Cambian’s chief operating officer, Anne Marie Carrie, but then withdrew it because she “has better things to do tomorrow than assist in a journalistic exercise which is devoid of legitimacy”.

Care homes serve as a last resort in Britain’s child protection system. The children they take in have often suffered serious abuse or other trauma and have washed out of the foster care system, usually because their needs are too complex and their behaviour too challenging.

Cambian and other for-profit providers rose to prominence in the past two decades after cash-strapped local governments started outsourcing this difficult task, with the hope that it would drive down costs while improving care.

There is little evidence that either has happened. Local governments often have few viable options and need to place a child in a home quickly. As a result, the process can amount to an auction of sorts: The council asks for bids, and whichever company comes in with the best offer wins. It “was like a cattle market for children”, said a former Cambian manager who declined to be named because she still works in the sector.

In theory, this is supposed to be cost-efficient. But in practice, companies can take advantage of the fact that the children have nowhere else to go, and push for extra services that drive up the costs. “Believe you me,” the former manager told BuzzFeed News, “on a Friday afternoon if you’ve got a social worker that wants to place a kid by 5 o’clock they will give you whatever you want.”

Cambian vigorously disagreed with this assessment. “Placement of children in any form of care services is not an auction of any sort,” the company said. Home managers have “one key responsibility”, and that is to “meet the needs of a child”. Social workers don’t have the “authority” to place children, the company said, and fees are “pre-set through legal framework agreements and cannot be altered on a whim”.