Can Denmark show England a way out of its children's homes crisis?

In a quiet suburb on the outskirts of Copenhagen, a large white house sits set back from the road behind a purple-leaved plum tree, indistinguishable from its neighbours. Yet this is Josephine Schneider's House, regarded as one of the best children's homes in the world, and it is now being studied by the British government as it searches for a route out of the crisis gripping residential care in England.

The scale of that crisis is stark. Last year 669 children were living in illegal, unregistered children's homes across England, with councils paying more than £125m of taxpayers' money to keep them there. Overall spending on children's homes soared 96% in five years to over £3.1bn in 2023-24, while standards have dropped, private equity firms have cashed in and a growing number of children have been sent to homes hundreds of miles away.

Josh MacAlister, the children's minister, admits the situation is dire. 'We now have this shadow system of unregistered, illegal homes, which is certainly not providing therapeutic support and the costs are huge,' he said. 'We need big changes, a major shake up.' He visited Denmark this week as part of a Department for Education review into how the sector can be improved.

The 140-year-old Josephine Schneider's House, home to 12 children and young adults aged six to 23, differs sharply from most British equivalents. At its centre is a spacious kitchen run by Rasmus, a head chef who cooks the children's meals, lunch boxes and after-school snacks, with pizza rolls a particular favourite, and who involves the children in cooking and grocery shopping. The rest of the staff are degree-level professionals in social pedagogy, a discipline focused on psychology, child development and ethics, who strive to recreate a traditional family home by cooking, eating and socialising with the children.

'We don't have an in-house therapist but everything we do is therapeutic,' said Mads Sørensen, the home's deputy director. One member of staff sleeps in the house at night and wakes the children at 7am each day. 'We ask them how they like to be woken up, to help them feel safe and create that predictability, make their nervous system calm a bit,' Sørensen said.

Many of the children have suffered physical, emotional and social neglect, and issues such as self-harm, insomnia and eating disorders are common. Unlike in England, where many children report being isolated and cut off from family and friends, children here are encouraged to have friends stay at weekends and during holidays, and regular parents' evenings include a Christmas banquet. Each child also has a team of two or three staff members working with them on their education and wellbeing.

Older residents, aged 17 and above, live in a semi-independent top-floor flat with its own living area and kitchen, buying their own food and doing their own chores under staff guidance as they prepare for adulthood. They are allowed to stay until the age of 23 and encouraged to return for regular visits beyond that. In England, by contrast, teenagers must leave children's homes as soon as they turn 18, part of a cliff-edge loss of support that is causing the early deaths of care leavers. MacAlister indicated that could change: 'I hear of children being forced to move when they turn 18, even if they're in the middle of sitting their A-levels. We have to move away from that.'

He also wants to import some of the culture from Danish children's homes, particularly their focus on personal growth and maintaining family relationships. 'A lot of residential care in England is actually about adults containing their own anxiety and concerns about teenagers, and that's a really poor model,' MacAlister said. 'The first question is always how do we protect ourselves from risk, which is not what we should be asking first. It's very different here in Denmark.'

Staffing is central to the review, which is being led by Emmanuel Akpan-Inwang, director of the Lighthouse Pedagogy Trust, which runs a children's home in Sutton based on pedagogy principles. 'What's interesting about Denmark is working in a children's home is a career that people really want to do,' he said, though he cautioned that 'we can't simply lift and shift the system to England,' noting the Danes have spent more than 40 years developing it. Many staff at Josephine Schneider's House have been there 10 years or longer; in the UK, about 53% of children's home staff have worked in the sector for three years or less.

The funding models also differ fundamentally. In Denmark a third of homes are publicly owned, 42% are not-for-profit and 27% are run for private profit. In England, 83% of children's home places are now privately run, with some operators recording profit margins of more than 20%. The government has passed laws giving itself the power to cap profits but has yet to use it, with MacAlister saying a new market oversight body must first provide full transparency. Wales will ban all for-profit providers in children's social care by 2030, but MacAlister said England's far bigger numbers make that harder to replicate. 'We need to massively boost local authorities so they can take back control of the whole purchasing process,' he said, 'and shape a system on our terms, not one that is driven by profit.'