ettings which we monitor carefully and progress activity, including weekly reporting to Ofsted. (DCS, Unitary, North East Region) As described throughout this section, a key area of concern across the DCS interviews and survey responses was the ‘materially higher profits’ being made by private providers than would be expected if the market ‘were functioning effectively’ (Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), 2022). In April 2024, the DfE launched the Market Interventions Advisory Group, led by former DCS and previous ADCS President Steve Crocker, to explore the profiteering of private companies from children’s social care. Keeping children safe, helping families thrive (DfE, 2024d) outlines plans to address profiteering through legislation which will ‘improve competition, regulation and commissioning’, increase visibility of the costs of placements and level of profit, with the introduction of a backstop power to cap profits if required in the future. The paper also outlines plans for further capital investment to increase placement sufficiency and to amend primary legislation in order to create a statutory framework to provide children ‘with the right place to live, which offers the right level of care, and that can truly meet their needs and keep them safe’. The intention is to ‘enable the system to deliver specialist care and accommodation for children who have complex needs, 70 which has the potential to reduce both local authority reliance on costly unregistered placements and immediate and lifetime costs to the health and justice systems’. 5.6 Developing residential provision Two-thirds of those responding to the survey had either started developing their own children’s homes or had increased existing provision, and there are initiatives underway across the cou