Vulnerable Children Still Barred From Celebrity-Run Children’s Care Home After Scathing Tribunal Judgment

Vulnerable children continue to be barred from living at a care home owned by glamour model and reality TV star Ampika Pickston, after a judge ruled that it had a “very serious history of failure in a very short time” – during which all four of its juvenile girl residents had been removed for their own safety.

AP Care Homes Ltd opened its sole home less than a year ago in July 2023, funded via a £1.2 million loan from Pickston’s billionaire fiancé, David Sullivan, the co-owner of West Ham United, who made his fortune in the adult industry.

The facility has twice been restricted by regulator Ofsted from caring for children due to “serious” safeguarding failures and has been effectively shut for the past six months.

Its latest effective closure on 30 January followed the admittance of a girl with extremely high needs, identified only as ‘Child A’ during a Care Standards Tribunal on 4 and 5 June.

She was removed for her own safety within a week after she threatened employees, self-harmed, caused significant damage to the property, and received hospital treatment. AP Care Homes Ltd’s current interim manager, Leigh Brooks, rejected claims that Pickston had overruled staff advice not to take the child.

The facility has been barred from taking in children ever since and will remain so for the foreseeable future, after an external consultant employed by AP Care Homes Ltd gave evidence to the hearing that the company had overseen “an extremely high level of lack of compliance and concerns”.

In a judgement released on 10 June, Judge Melanie Lewis dismissed the firm’s appeal to allow children to again live at the facility, stating: “Having found that there is still a reasonable risk that a child may be at risk of harm if we allowed further admissions to the home, we conclude it is wholly proportionate and necessary for the restriction to remain in force in the light of [its] history.

“In the light of that history, this is [a] home that can expect to come under the most careful scrutiny from Ofsted and placing authorities. A member of the public knowing these facts would expect nothing less.”

While AP Care Homes Ltd’s first home, Moss Farm in Styal, Cheshire, was paid for in its entirety through a loan provided by Sullivan, Pickston – who did not give evidence during the two-day hearing – was noted by the tribunal to be AP Care Homes Ltd’s sole director.

Pickston had originally applied to run the home, despite having no experience in the social or child care sector, the tribunal heard.

While acting as the home’s de facto manager last year, she was heard to have “blurred” professional boundaries by taking a girl back to her home, and asking another girl to go back there three weeks later.

The main concerns raised by Judge Lewis in the decision not to allow AP Care Homes Ltd to reopen were that two managers who worked at the home during the “chaotic” period when Child A was admitted remain employed there by Pickston.

Lewis accepted that there had been “some evidence of progress” in the home’s ability to care for children, and that the management team had “clearly spent time updating policies and procedures, particularly around safeguarding”. 

But she said that it was worrying that the home’s ‘responsible individual’ Daren Roberts and Leigh Brooks – both of whom had been sacked from previous jobs – were still to be vetted by Ofsted, despite having worked for AP Care Homes Ltd since the start of the year.

“We note that that restriction could be reviewed once Ms Brooks has supplied the necessary references and attended any ‘fit person’ interview required by Ofsted and once Mr Roberts has attended a ‘fit person’ interview,” Lewis said.

The home is also facing a cancellation notice by Ofsted – charged with assessing children’s care homes as well as schools and colleges – which the judgment noted that AP Care Homes Ltd plans to appeal.

Byline Times reported in March how up to £530 million a year of taxpayers’ money is being used to house vulnerable children in unsafe homes, with 85% of them run by profit-making companies in what has been described as a “dysfunctional” system.

There is no suggestion that 75-year-old Sullivan – who has an estimated £1.2 billion fortune and who owns a 38.8% majority stake in West Ham – has any involvement with AP Care Homes Ltd beyond the provision of financing.

In response to this newspaper’s article of 10 June, reporting the tribunal proceedings, Brabners sent a legal letter to Byline Times claiming that it had made a series of “false, defamatory and harmful statements” against its clients Pickston and AP Care Homes Ltd, including that the business was “losing money”. 

This was despite Iain Simkin KC for AP Care Homes Ltd saying on several occasions during the tribunal that the home was not generating income as it was barred from taking in child residents, while accruing costs.

The hearing also heard that the company – which is understood to have been paid up to £14,000 per week, per child, from the public purse – continues to employ at least five permanent staff and has mounting legal costs in its case against Ofsted.

These points were highlighted to Brabners – the Liverpool-based firm which found prominence representing Coleen Rooney in her victorious ‘Wagatha Christie’ libel trial against Rebekah Vardy – in a legal response sent by this newspaper on 13 June.

While noting that the proceedings were covered by qualified privilege, Brabners was asked to elaborate on how a company not generating income while employing staff and accruing legal fees was not losing money. 

It declined to provide an answer in a follow-up letter on 14 June. On 24 June, the company’s legal director Matthew Coles told Byline Times that both Brabners and Mr Simkin had ceased to represent AP Care Homes Ltd or Ampika Pickston as of 13 June. 

Mr Coles did not expand on why this was the case, and declined to say who was now representing them.