BRITAIN’S crumbling and underfunded social care system is seeing vulnerable children being discharged straight into the hands of criminal gangs, a new report reveals today.

The independent Commission on Young Lives report found that the children’s care system was taking teenagers into care to safeguard them from “county lines” drug gangs and criminal exploitation, only to put them at risk of more serious harm.

Criminal gangs have even been known to be tipped off from within local authorities when vulnerable teenagers are moved into unregulated accommodation, the report said.

And the report warned that the recent murders of two children “show the tragic consequence of a child protection system stretched to its absolute limit.”

In March, there were 80,850 children in care in England, a 1 per cent rise on the previous year.

The commission was launched in September with the aim of designing a new national system to protect and support vulnerable young people and children.

Its report stated that the age of young children in care was rising, showing a failure in prevention strategies.

Commission chair Anne Longfield, former government children’s commissioner, said: “A children’s social care system that is supposed to protect vulnerable teenagers is frequently putting them in even greater danger.

“Often, we may as well be handing over children directly to ruthless gangs and criminals. It is unfit for purpose.

“We know the number of vulnerable teenagers at risk of exploitation entering the care system is becoming older, with more complex and expensive needs, and growing.

“We also know this is putting an enormous strain on the whole children’s social care system.

“The recent horrific murders of two young children show the tragic consequence of a child protection system stretched to its absolute limit.”

The report found many teenagers in crisis are moved away from their local area and support networks, sometimes to areas with high levels of crime.

It said that excessive reliance on limited numbers of residential places, a failure to identify children at risk of exploitation early enough, a broken children’s home market and cuts to funding for intervention programmes were putting vulnerable young people at risk.