Thanet hosts millions of holidaymakers and day trippers from London and further afield during the summer holidays, but away from the sandy beaches of Margate and Broadstairs there are fears that these east Kent coastal towns could become the next Rochdale or Rotherham. A group of local headteachers is so concerned about the risk of exposure to gang violence and child sexual exploitation that last month it very publicly told the government that without ministerial direction, it would no longer give school places to looked-after children sent there by other local authorities.

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Out-of-area placements are a particular issue in Kent. There are more than 1,300 looked-after children in Kent who have been sent from another local authority, according to Matt Dunkley, Kent county council’s director for children, young people and education. That’s more than a third of all the children in care in the county. A report for the council’s education cabinet in May found that 234 children had been sent to economically deprived Thanet, nearly half the total number of looked-after children in the district. Nearby Swale had fewer children placed from within Kent than those from elsewhere.

Kent is far from unique in this regard. Placing looked-after children a long way from home is common practice in England, with numbers placed in residential homes outside their local authority area soaring by nearly two-thirds in five years. This is despite the law insisting that it should only be done in exceptional cases and only for reasons that expressly benefit the child.

Just before the end of term, Kate Greig, the headteacher of King Ethelbert secondary school in Thanet, received a typical request for a school place for a girl of 12 who had been put into foster care there by a neighbouring council. “What it’s saying on the form is that this child has been exposed to drugs and sexual exploitation and had been hanging around with kids of the wrong age group,” says Greig. “So to place that child in an area like this, which has a problem with drugs and gangs, how can that be right?”

We give our reasons for not wanting to offer these children a place. Then we're told, 'OK, but take them anyway'

Dan Bennett, the school’s safeguarding lead, says there are children in school at risk of sexual exploitation and gang violence. “Girls have been picked up from doss houses, by police, by social care, by family. A lot of these gangs are even going for primary age children. Befriending and grooming them.”

Children arriving in Kent friendless, destabilised and without any extended family support, often end up in the county’s poorer coastal areas like Thanet and Swale, where people rely on the income they get from fostering, rather than safer, wealthier areas like Sevenoaks, where the number of foster carers is dwindling. These poorer areas are exploited by profit-making companies who buy up big houses on the cheap to turn into residential children’s homes.

In 2015, a risk map produced by the Margate task force, the town’s public sector multi-agency team, revealed a concentration, in parts of east Kent, of drug crime and registered sex offenders close to residential children’s homes. Dunkley acknowledges there’s an increasing threat of gang violence and sexual exploitation in some areas. But he warns against comparing Kent to Rochdale or Rotherham. “In those areas there was a catastrophic failure of children’s services – and while there may be some similarities, you have to have real hard evidence to back that up.”

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He points out that no council has any control over the number of looked-after children placed locally by other councils. “It’s the local authority that puts the child in care that makes the placements. We believe [they] are placing children in areas that aren’t good for them, and that leads to some frustration.”

In around a third of placements, Dunkley says social workers from the placing council are simply not fulfilling the statutory steps required to inform his department before a looked-after child arrives in Kent. It’s clear that his frustration is longstanding and well-rehearsed: at the council’s children and families select committee session in May, it was evident that councillors too were concerned about the impact of vulnerable children arriving in Kent without any notice or planning. “Many members are worried,” said conservative councillor Michael Northey. “We know there are some very dubious people approaching these youngsters and they are particularly vulnerable. Are the authorities that send [looked-after children] to us really aware of the particular vulnerabilities of such places as Thanet, where these children might be in great danger of not being helped, to put it mildly?”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘No matter how many referrals our school makes to Kent county council, none of them get recorded.’ Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

A meeting is now being planned with four or five of the worst offending councils to try to improve the situation. London boroughs have always placed large numbers of children in their care in poorer parts of the south-east, a trend that has escalated as housing prices in the capital have soared. This is partly the result of outsourcing residential foster care to private companies. It makes no financial sense for a profit-making business – which is what children’s homes are now – to buy big houses in London when they cost so much less in places like Margate. Simple maths dictates that residential children’s homes run by private companies are primarily located in poorer areas: not just coastal Kent, but also the north west of England and disadvantaged parts of Wales.

So while councils try to avoid a looked-after child losing their friends, their school community and the opportunity to regularly see their parents and siblings, if there are no local foster places or children’s homes, then they have to be sent away – sometimes hundreds of miles from where they’ve grown up.

“Nobody is taking proper responsibility for ensuring we have enough care of the right type around the country,” says Kathy Evans, chief executive of the charity Children England. She has been lobbying for a nationally procured and funded system of care places which would create better nationwide distribution of places to meet children’s needs.

Jonathan Stanley, chief executive of the Independent Children’s Homes Association, told the Guardian that in June, “at a safeguarding meeting established by Thanet heads, Kent police and Kent county council, no child from a residential care home was on the list of those considered to be at risk – or was even close to meeting the threshold [for a child protection investigation].”

But three Kent headteachers have all told the Guardian that the bar is set too high – and when they ring children’s services with urgent concerns, for looked after-children or not, often no record is made and no action taken. “We’re told these conversations are called ‘consultations’ and aren’t recorded by social services as a referral,” says Andrew Fowler, head of Dane Court grammar school in Thanet. “So we say that we’re making high levels of referrals and Kent county council is saying ‘no you’re not’. No matter the number of referrals we make, none of them get recorded.”

But Dunkley insists that any phone call that duty social workers classify as an urgent child protection concern would lead to an investigation.

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Nonetheless, in Swale headteachers are “on the brink” of following Thanet’s lead. “There are people in high places who see the whole Thanet thing as bloody irritating and as a lack of care for children, but it is the complete opposite of that,” says Alan Brookes, who chairs the east area board of the Kent Association of Headteachers. “There is a moral obligation on schools to say that people need to look at this. We see Thanet as the canary in the coalmine.”

Rachel Dickinson, vice president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, says that criminal and sexual exploitation issues “are not limited to a particular geography, they are national problems and should be recognised as such. The government has a role to play in addressing the weaknesses in our systems, particularly around notifications and information sharing.

“We’re not blaming children’s services or foster parents,” says Greig. “But it’s becoming very difficult to speak out without people getting angry.” One London borough which places children in Kent sent her “a stinking email” and called her “immoral” she says. “We write down our reasons for not wanting to offer them a place, and it’s heartbreaking. Then we go to the Department for Education and they just say, ‘OK, but just take them anyway’. Nobody will listen. But we need to have a system where these children are protected. It can’t be necessary to move them out of [their own] area as often as they are doing.”

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A DfE spokeswoman says: “This government is committed to reducing out-of-area placements for children in care and councils have a legal duty to make sure their decisions, including on location, are in a young person’s best interests. We are working closely with directors of children’s services who must approve any decision to move a child out of their home area. The DfE is working with leaders in Kent to look at issues of care placements and schools admissions, and we are supporting London councils so fewer children are placed in homes beyond their areas, backed by part of a £200m programme [to test new ways of commissioning services].”

“Stability is key to improving these young people’s outcomes and our Serious Violence Strategy includes £11m to help steer them away from crime and reduce the risk of sexual, gang exploitation or peer abuse.”