‘Providers can charge what they want’: how Merseyside council paid £50k a week to house vulnerable child

Head of children's services says cash-strapped authority had no choice but to pay up to provide care

• Council pay 1m a year to house child in private care home

Margaret Harvey, the cabinet member for children's services in Knowsley, Merseyside, said she reacted with absolute horror" when told the local authority was going to have to pay almost 50,000 a week for one child's placement earlier this year.

But the council had no choice, she insisted. It had a statutory duty to find that teenager a safe place to live after a judge made them subject to a deprivation of liberty order" (DOL).