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Ofsted has secured its first successful prosecution of an unregistered children’s home provider, with a company and its two directors fined a total of £92,400 for operating three illegal children’s homes in Kent.
Catalyst Care Limited and its directors, Davidson Lynch-Shyllon and Miriam Ekathor, pleaded guilty to operating and managing unregistered children’s homes at Croydon Magistrates’ Court in March. On 4 August, they were fined after providing accommodation to nine children between October 2022 and April 2025.
The company and its directors were also ordered to pay victim surcharges totalling £2,960 and costs of £17,250. Lynch-Shyllon and Ekathor were disqualified from carrying on or managing a children’s home, or having a financial interest in one.
Ofsted said the directors had received repeated warnings that they were operating unlawfully but continued to do so. During the period in question, the homes received more than £1.7 million in payments from local authorities.
Children’s homes in England are required to register with Ofsted, and operating or managing a home without registration is a criminal offence. Unregistered provision operates outside independent regulatory oversight, meaning there are no regulatory assurances concerning the suitability of care, staff checks or living conditions.
Ofsted said children placed in illegal homes are often those with particularly complex needs. The growth in unregistered provision has been linked in part to a lack of registered homes in the right locations and a shortage of provision able to meet children’s needs.
The regulator also warned that unregistered providers can charge local authorities high fees, placing additional financial pressure on a children’s social care system already facing significant challenges around placement sufficiency.
Ofsted said criminal investigations into unregistered provision are complex and the threshold for prosecution is high. The prosecution follows hundreds of warnings issued by the regulator concerning the use of unregistered provision.
The regulator has recently received additional powers under the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, including the ability to impose financial penalties on operators of illegal children’s homes. Ofsted is also expanding its Unregistered Social Care team to identify and investigate providers and pursue enforcement action, including prosecution where appropriate.
Separately, Ofsted is consulting on proposed changes to its inspection framework for local authority children’s services. These include proposals relating to local authorities’ use of unregistered children’s homes, with illegal placements potentially becoming a limiting criterion when assessing the impact of local authority leaders.
Ofsted’s Chief Inspector, Sir Martyn Oliver, described the prosecution as an important milestone in tackling illegal provision and said the regulator intended to make greater use of prosecutions against operators acting outside the law.
The case comes amid wider concerns about the availability of suitable placements for looked-after children. Ofsted's recent research has identified a mismatch between the number and location of children’s homes and the needs of children requiring residential care, contributing to increased use of unregistered provision.
For children’s social care and family law practitioners, the prosecution highlights the potential consequences of placing children in provision that has not been subject to Ofsted registration and regulatory oversight, particularly where placements are being made for children with complex needs.
