Davidson Lynch-Shyllon and Miriam Ekhator have been fined £92,400 in Ofsted’s first successful prosecution for running illegal children’s homes in Kent.
Lynch-Shyllon, a 44-year-old Afrofusion music producer who claims to have worked with Rita Ora and Damian Marley, ran Catalyst Care with his 47-year-old business partner Ekhator. The pair pleaded guilty to running illicit facilities and were barred from operating homes, while also being ordered to pay £2,960 in victim surcharges.
Catalyst Care operated three unregistered homes in Kent, including a two-story redbrick property converted from a former pub alongside two neighbouring properties. Household goods including beds and a mattress were piled outside next to an overflowing bin, and a neighbour reported seeing only adults rather than children at the site. A visit to the converted pub revealed it was being renovated to create another children's home, where an unidentified man who answered the door said Ofsted was aware and that everything was by the book.
Finances of Catalyst Care
Kent County Council and Medway Council paid Catalyst Care almost £1.8 million over three years to look after nine children in care. The fees averaged nearly £200,000 per head despite the homes being illegal.
The firm’s annual turnover grew fivefold in three years to almost £1 million. While court hearings established that officials were mystified over how this funding was spent, the two owners took £386,000 in dividends during the period.
Medway Council stated that less than five young people were placed with Catalyst Care and that it stopped using the firm four years ago, noting that illegal homes represent a national problem. Kent County Council said placing children with unregistered providers was a last resort, adding that children received social worker oversight and that the council is building four council-run homes.
Conditions in unregistered children's homes
Across the country, hundreds of children with complex conditions or trauma are placed in illegal homes at an average weekly cost to taxpayers of £10,500. Some placements cost up to £40,000 a week, contributing to an estimated £353 million spent annually by councils on unregistered settings.
Unregistered placements include caravans, holiday rentals, hotels, houseboats, and houses of multiple occupancy in run-down areas. Together Trust, a Stockport disability charity, told MPs about a 15-year-old girl who spent over 12 weeks alone in a caravan without attending school or having contact with trusted adults.
There are 83,000 children and young people currently in state care. Anela Anwar, chief executive of Become, welcomed the prosecution, stating: "It’s not just the poor-quality care that children in illegal homes have to endure - they also experience criminal exploitation operating in plain sight. They need to get the safe, supportive and loving homes that all children need."
Cases of abuse and criminal exploitation
In South Wales, a 15-year-old girl placed in a three-bedroom unregistered home near Durham was raped by two male carers. The men, who were former soldiers in their forties with criminal records, gave her alcohol and cocaine until her nose bled before assaulting her.
The teenager escaped the next day, was picked up by police, and later attempted suicide. In a victim statement, she said: "I was in care to be looked after, taken care of and protected from harm. These men have done the exact opposite to that. They have sexually abused me for hours and have caused me so much pain and destruction."
The two men received prison sentences of 11 and 9 years for offences including sexual activity with a child, intentional strangulation, and supplying a class A drug. They were employed by MAP Adventures, a firm established by a former Royal Army Physical Training Corps sergeant that claimed to offer crisis intervention and adventure therapy.
Impact on children and testimonies
Social workers have reported placing children as young as five in illegal settings, while Isle of Wight Council spent £500,000 housing a 10-year-old boy in an illicit home for four months. A judge described that care as wholly inadequate after hearing about social isolation and frequent staff restraint.
Another young woman stated she was pinned down hundreds of times by up to four adults, leaving her with debilitating pain. Meanwhile, 17-year-old Sienna from Essex described spending 14 months in an illicit home with broken windows, flooded rooms, fake fire alarms, and a knife left in her bedroom, while carers from Nigeria on special visas called her chubby.
Sienna, who missed key exams while isolated without schooling, said: "I was isolated in the middle of nowhere with people I could not communicate with. I just sat depressed all day in my bedroom doing nothing." She added: "It is made out to the public that we are evil children - but we’re just hurting children that need some love. Yet the system puts us in these terrible places that make things worse."
National data and council spending
A Public Accounts Committee report showed 800 young people were sent to illegal homes last year for an average of six months. England spends two-thirds more on care than it did a decade ago, even though the number of looked-after children has increased by only 16 per cent.
Sir Martyn Oliver, chief inspector of Ofsted, noted that England has 4,800 registered homes providing 15,000 places for 10,000 children needing care. He said: "The problem is not with overall supply. We have a real issue with having the right homes in the right places and ensuring that registered providers are offering places for children who most need their care and support."
In Blackpool, where parliamentary constituencies host up to 60 children's homes, the council has introduced a rule requiring new facilities to be placed at least 400 metres apart. Campaigner Martin Barrow said: "Illegal homes are used as a last resort in the hope a better solution can be found quickly. But days become weeks, weeks become months - and children grow more traumatised, which makes it even harder to find a place in a regulated home."
Gangs and organised crime infiltration
A study by Anglia Ruskin University revealed that an unregistered home was infiltrated by an organised crime group, with one member working inside as a counsellor. Interviewees compared some properties to trap houses where children went missing for days.
A charity worker in Cardiff reported that gangs routinely target care children on social media and offer trainers to lure them into trafficking drugs. More than one in four people in prison have spent time in care as children, compared to about one in 25 children in the general population.
Roismi, 20, who had 17 placements in mostly unregulated homes after entering care at 14, said: "The whole time I was in care random men would contact me, text me, offering me money, places to stay, a sense of safety and belonging." She added: "If you received the care needed, disgusting predators would not be able to access you. I’m lucky I survived."
Statements from officials and councils
Dame Rachel de Souza, Children’s Commissioner for England, stated: "Every night across England vulnerable children are going to sleep in unsafe, illegal settings - cared for by unqualified people, in places that were never designed for children, often cramped together without privacy. We have seen too many cases of vulnerable children and young people falling through gaps in social care, leaving them at risk of exploitation, such as those who are preyed on by dangerous gangs."
She welcomed the Ofsted prosecution, saying: "I hope it represents the beginning of the end for the scandal of illegal providers who put profit above the safety of vulnerable children."
