Children: Secure Children’s Homes

Baroness Linklater of Butterstone Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Lords Chamber

Tabled By

[Baroness Linklater of Butterstone]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of budget cuts on the work of secure children’s homes in reducing children’s reoffending rates.

[Baroness Linklater of Butterstone]

My Lords, I am grateful for this opportunity to raise once again the issues that relate to those children in the country today who are the most difficult and challenging, the most damaged and needy. They are the children between the ages of 12 and 16 and sometimes as young as 10 and as old as 17, whose offending behaviour has resulted in them being detained in either a secure children's home, which I will refer to as a SCH, or a secure training centre or STC, which means that they are also the most expensive to provide for. Older ones, from 16 to 18, will normally be in a YOI.

Decisions on the care of these children fall to the Youth Justice Board and now inevitably are part of the focus of the range of spending cuts being made around the country. Consultations are therefore being held to develop a strategy for the next few years which will determine the need, the cost and above all the type of provision for these children. It will also, coincidentally, reveal how far we are prepared to honour our duty of care to our most vulnerable children, despite all the challenges that they present. Failure to respond effectively today will result inevitably in continued reoffending and far greater and far more expensive long-term problems tomorrow.

The most immediate evidence of the problem comes in the figures from the MoJ that the reoffending rate of this group of children is 72 per cent within a year of release. It is the highest figure for all offenders being released from custody, thus demonstrating the relative ineffectiveness of the penal approach to this group. Their experience of life is light years away from that of the majority of our children and can be encapsulated in the telling phrase, “a disproportionate experience of loss”—meaning loss of family life, love and security.

For those 12 to 18 year-olds who end up in custody, the figures illustrate that 71 per cent have been involved with, or in the care of, social services; 75 per cent have lived with someone other than a parent at some time—this compares with 1.5 per cent of the population; a quarter have experienced violence at home; 40 per cent have been homeless—we are talking here about the 21st century; and 90 per cent have been excluded from school. These are children for whom violence at home is often the norm. Some of them start their nursery schooling not even knowing what their name is, such is the absence of a loving family life. Of those who end up in custody, up to 81 per cent have mental health problems. Those figures may be enough to give a flavour of the extreme and shocking difficulties in many of these children’s lives.

I pay tribute to the Youth Justice Board for its work over the past four to five years, in particular for the way in which it has succeeded in bringing down the numbers of 10 to 14 year-olds going into custody by a remarkable 51 per cent since 2006-07. The reasons for that are complex and varied, but it demonstrates not only the courts’ overuse of custody in the past but the creative work that the YJB has developed with the YOTs and other agencies in the community in prevention, diversion and treatment, all of which is greatly to be welcomed.

Of course, such a reduction leaves spare capacity and, therefore, considerable savings—hence the current consultation. The decisions to be made for the future offer a rare opportunity to reconfigure provision to meet better these young people’s needs and intractable problems, but it is not clear in what direction things will go. The response of the MoJ and YJB to these savings, alongside the demands for funding cuts, may be to take this as an opportunity to develop more welfare-oriented, child-centred approaches. Alternatively, there may be a threat to best practice through the merging or combining of facilities, driven by the need for cuts, which would be unlikely to reduce reoffending and would be a tragic lost opportunity.

There are several reasons for my concern. First, there has been a drop of a third in the number of children placed in secure children’s homes by the YJB, while its use of STCs has risen by 19 per cent. Real concern about this trend has been expressed by virtually every specialist agency working with these children. The views of such agencies are represented by the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, which states unequivocally that the predominantly welfare-centred ethos of the secure children’s homes is absolutely vital not only for the future chances and well-being of these children but for reducing reoffending. There should be no further reduction in the numbers of those beds. The suspected motive is to achieve short-term cost savings, which is simply counterproductive. By contrast, the STCs are part of the prison estate with all that that implies—they are essentially places of punishment—and are not an appropriate answer, greatly improved though I acknowledge they have become. It is also absolutely clear that more research is needed into a needs analysis of these children.

A policy starting point recommended by the Standing Committee for Youth Justice is the raising of the remand and custody thresholds, which would guarantee a reduction in the number of those remanded or sentenced to custody and contribute to cutting costs at the same time. That is a wise recommendation. Very worrying is the evidence that the overarching assumption that should inform the sentencing of children—namely, that custody should be used as a very last resort and for the shortest period of time—is not being adhered to. Evidence from Barnardo’s shows that 35 per cent of 12 to 14 year-olds in custody did not appear to meet the custody thresholds defined in the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000. The evidence also suggests that 50 per cent of children remanded in custody in 2009 were subsequently acquitted or given a community sentence.

In my experience in Scotland as a member for nine years of the children’s panel, which is the Scottish equivalent to the youth court, our guiding principle was, and still is, that the child’s needs should be addressed as a priority, for it is only in understanding his or her needs that you can begin to understand and deal appropriately with the deeds that have led to the hearing. I am quite clear that there are times, especially for the most difficult, when secure accommodation is indeed absolutely necessary because security is what is really needed and the child is at serious risk in the community, whether from family, lifestyle or contacts. Indeed, sometimes the community may be at risk from a child’s chaotic or violent behaviour, but this is usually for a brief period. However, any placement should be very frequently reviewed so that proper assessments are made. I believe that that is the right model.

The recent development, within prisons in England, of what are called “enhanced units” for children and young people is interesting but also worrying. For example, the Keppel unit at Wetherby YOI and the Willow unit at Hindley YOI have recently been developed. I have visited the Keppel unit and seen evidence there of very good work, of which the YJB is justly proud. However, imprisoning children with adult provision being adapted to them rather than being designed around their needs is simply not right. It raises the question of whether such provision is becoming the alternative in the MoJ’s planning for secure children’s homes provision. That would be a real mistake. There is no question of the need for specialist provision, but it must be properly geared to meet the needs of this group of children in a specialist environment.

Cost is a very real issue for the YJB. For example, the cost per bed night in one of the four STCs, such as Oakhill, can be £861.40. There has always been a perception that secure children’s homes were more expensive, but the Prison Reform Trust has demonstrated that this is no longer the case. It quotes one children’s home at a mere £599 per night. This is important because it seems that there is more scope for negotiating price. The figures for residential provision, although absolutely mouth-watering, reflect the needs of the most vulnerable children, to whom our duty of care must be honoured.

These are just some of the issues that the Government must take into account. False economies are not what these children, or the country, need. I look forward to hearing reassuring words on the future of current best professional practice in secure children’s homes from the Minister.