Thanks to Dottie for alerting me to this.
From Socialist Worker yesterday, the above and:
Macie was 14 when she was sent to a children’s home. She was allowed outside for only 15 minutes a day—or more if she did jobs such as cleaning. Macie, now 18, explained, “People can just go buy a house, make a company, copy and paste off Google some safeguarding procedures and stuff.” And “then social services just pay them to put children in there”, she told the Financial Times newspaper.
Macie is right. Vulnerable children are now treated as nothing more than investment opportunities. Each year the [UK] government spends £3 billion, and rising, on homes for children who do not have a family or foster parents to look after them. Providers charge the state an average of £384,020 per child per year, a huge rise from a decade ago. That is multiple times the cost of the country’s most prestigious boarding schools such as Eton College.
This money should pay professionals trained to support children with complex emotional and physical needs. But unqualified providers are flooding into the sector, fleecing local councils and providing terrible care for children.
“At times it feels like a gold rush, with anyone looking for quick cash jumping on the care home sector,” said Ben Ward, a councillor in Preston, Lancashire.
The gold diggers are rushing to places where property is cheap. Lancashire has 17 times more children’s places than local children needing care. Four London boroughs have no children’s homes at all.
Source: https://socialistworker.co.uk/news/children-abandoned-as-private-firms-cash-in-on-care-crisis/
Is this, could this, be happening in Scotland?
Unregistered/illegal children’s homes or carers (as in the English crisis) are highly unlikely in Scotland—effectively near-zero on a systemic scale—due to mandatory registration and active enforcement.
All children’s residential care (homes) and fostering services in Scotland must be registered with the Care Inspectorate. Operating without registration is illegal, and the regulator has powers to investigate, issue improvement notices, and cancel registrations (with strengthened enforcement via recent legislation like the Care Reform (Scotland) Act). gov.scot
Unregulated placements for under-16s are not permitted (unlike aspects of England’s system). Cross-border placements (e.g., English children in Scottish homes) are monitored with additional requirements.
Searches for Scottish equivalents turn up no comparable reports of hundreds of children in illegal settings. This issue is overwhelmingly documented as an England/Ofsted problem driven by severe placement shortages. https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/127/public-accounts-committee/news/211346/hundreds-of-vulnerable-children-placed-in-illegal-homes-for-months-by-care-system/
Finally rip-off prices?
Scotland: £28,000 operating profit per child per year.Across GB (England, Scotland, Wales): £44,000 average.
Difference: Scotland was about £16,000 lower per child (roughly 36% lower). https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/62287a2e8fa8f526d6df251f/Scotland_summary_.pdf
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk
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Talking-up Scotland 
In Scotland there are kinship payments to reduce the number of children in care. Not many. They get educational grants, affordable accommodation. They can stay in foster care for longer. Pay no council tax.
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