This is not how competition works, no, really, it isn't

Certain examples of childcare cost vast fortunes:

More than 20 councils in England and Wales have paid the equivalent of £1m a year or more to place a single child in a private children’s home as the cost of specialised care soars, data released to the Guardian shows.

The reason?

The most costly placements were to look after some of society’s most vulnerable children, often at very short notice. Some were as young as 12 and needed four staff watching them 24 hours a day. Many had issues of serious self-harm and of hurting their carers, and in some cases a judge had authorised for them to be locked up in a secure home.

These children, deemed a risk to themselves and others, qualify for places in secure children’s homes, all run by the state or voluntary sector. But there are now only 14 of these specialist therapeutic institutions in England and Wales, not nearly enough to match the need. On any given day, approximately 50 children are waiting for a place, according to Ofsted, the inspectorate.

Children who cannot find a place in a secure children’s home are usually detained elsewhere, often in flats or other accommodation with large teams of agency staff.

Vast resources of labour and time are dedicated to caring for these very children. That’s why it all costs so much. But what is being blamed for these costs?

However, profiteering is a growing concern for us

Well, no, that’s something that needs to be proven, not something that is to be assumed. Show that having state owned, state run - perhaps council owned, council run - facilities at the margin are cheaper. At the margin because this is the margin. These costs are paid for those who could or possibly should be in those voluntary or state run homes but are not given a lack of capacity. When capacity becomes available they are moved into them.

This is all about the edge cases - the margin.

All of which being exactly the sort of information we don’t think we’re going to get. For on this same subject The Guardian has another piece in which we are told:

“But I think part of the competition in this market has meant that basically a provider can charge what they want and it may or may not relate to the cost of caring for the child.”

No, really, that’s not how competition works. That’s the effect of not enough competition. not of the existence of it. And if the people totting up the costs are going to get things so badly wrong then what weight would we put on anything else they say about costs or institutional structures?

What we need to know is what is going to be the cost of expanding those not-for profit homes some capacity of which - this is talking about the margin, recall - will go unused at times? Is this more expensive, to have fully staffed and funded capacity sometimes to often unused, than paying hiring fees on the outside market sometimes?

For if we don’t ask the right question we’ll never get the right answer, will we?