Care system "failing the most vulnerable and damaged children One youth offending team supervisor managing an 11-year-old girl taken into care after being sexually abused and a teenager accused of several sex attacks agreed with a care provider that they should not be placed in the same home - but they were put together anyway. In another case, a 15-year-old boy was found having sex in a children's home with a 13-year-old girl who had been taken into care due to sexual exploitation. He also had sexual videos of her on his mobile phone. And one 16-year-old had been given 31 placements since being taken into care aged three, including one which lasted less than 24 hours. Asked if the state was only claiming to care for these children, when the reality was that it was failing, Ms Calderbank said: "Yes, that is what we are saying and that is one of the things that shocked us from this report, that those kinds of basic checks didn't seem to be happening." Other local authorities sent children to establishments in other boroughs "which had been deemed unsuitable by the local authority in which the home was located," the report found. One in four children were placed in care more than 100 miles away from their family, with two in three placed more than 50 miles away, an analysis of 60 cases found. A total of 10 local authorities, including Hackney, Bath and North East Somerset and Westminster, had no children homes in their area at all, while others had up to 93. Each care home place costs about £140,000 for each child each year, figures for 2010 showed. Asked for the core reason behind the "depressing" problems, Ms Calderbank said: "It's the short term saving against the long term costs. What we're seeing at the moment is provision that's grown up in a very ad hoc fashion, that's being dictated by the economics of the situation as much as by the (needs of the) children who are being placed there. Assessments from staff in both children's services and youth offending teams also failed to understand the impact of a child's experiences on their behaviour, with inspectors blaming "desensitisation," but also a "lack of qualifications, lack of experience, and a lack of management oversight." Ms Calderbank added: "The fear of all this, of course, is the majority will leave care ill-equipped to lead happy, law-abiding lives and will end up, as we know, all too often, in our prison system or the mental health services." Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said: "Let down by families and local authorities alike, with a trail of failed placements and further and further from home, far too many children find themselves on the dreary, damaging route from care to custody. Too often the state proves to be a poor parent as the tiny minority of children in care become the substantial number behind bars. A Department for Education spokesman said: "Children placed far from their homes are extremely vulnerable. It is essential that local authorities responsible for them provide the vital support they need to keep them safe and well and to encourage their potential. Where children are offenders, this will include working with Youth Offending services to prevent any re-offending. Plans to improve the care provided by children's homes will be published in the new year, he added. John Drew, chief executive of the Youth Justice Board, added it was revising "the protocol for case management responsibility" and working to ensure the needs of children in care were taken into account in the youth justice system.