Baroness Linklater: 'Sad time' as secure children's homes close

Baroness Linklater of Butterstone writes for ePolitix.com about the closure of secure children's homes.

The closure of four secure children's homes (SCHs) just announced by the Youth Justice Board - Kyloe House in Northumberland, Sutton Place in Hull, Orchard Lodge in London, and Atkinson Unit in Exeter - has now more than halved the numbers of secure children's homes in England in the last 10 years, from 30 to nine.

These have provided for the most vulnerable, damaged and difficult children in the youth justice system and whose work was informed by a fundamentally welfare-centred approach to children's management and their needs.

Over the same period we have seen the birth and growth of four secure training centres (STCs), which now provide for more children who have offended than the secure children's homes, some who are as young as 12. We are the only country in western Europe who imprison such young children and have attracted highly critical comments by international and regional human rights bodies in the process.

STC's have a more punitive ethos than the SCH's, and from the outset have been characterised by being staffed by proportionately fewer, less well-trained staff which has resulted in an over reliance on restraint and which include 'good order and discipline' as a criterion. This, in one tragic case, resulted in the death of a child.

Two of the four have also been severely criticised by the Care Commission and HM Inspectorate at some time, notably Medway which was the first, and most recently, Oakhill which has only just had a rectification notice lifted in the last few weeks. Reoffending is also the highest in the criminal justice system.

In the case of Orchard Lodge, a SCH in London, its closure means that London no longer has a single resource of this kind left. The children who have to be relocated by July 1 are being sent to Oakhill STC which is about 70 miles away, contrary to the YJB's own requirement, and which will be providing a very different regime.

In the future, the nearest SCH for children who live in London will be miles away in Southampton, which has disastrous implications for family contact, for working with the whole family and for working towards a successful resettlement for the children.

It is a very sad time for those children who, of all the children in the system, really need the best humane, loving and professional care we can possibly provide.