A Secure Children’s Home accommodates children aged 10 to 17 that have been deprived of their liberty by a court order. Some children are placed in a secure children’s home because they have been remanded or sentenced by a criminal court and others because a family court has decided it is necessary for their welfare. There are 13 Secure Children’s Homes in England, accommodating some of the most vulnerable children who continue with their education in a safe environment, with support for their health and wellbeing, monitored by the courts.
This business year the Children’s Commissioner’s office (CCo) is visiting every Secure Cchildren’s Homes in England to better understand the experiences of children placed there. The Commissioner’s support service, Help at Hand, has been leading these visits, using the Commissioner’s statutory power to enter any accommodation where children are living (other than a private dwelling), and making sure the children living there are given advice, representation and advocacy. In Secure Children’s Homes that might involve speaking to their social care team or their solicitor about a specific issue they have since arriving in the home or about when they are leaving to return to the community.
Since March, the CCo team has visited three Secure Children’s Homes and spoken to around 40 children between the ages of 13 and 16 to hear their experiences. These are some of the emerging themes they have shared:
- Placement breakdown: Before coming to the Secure Children’s Home, children experienced many ’placements’ that had broken down. They had been told they were ‘too complex’ or ‘high risk’. These children told Help at Hand the most important thing for them was having a stable home to go to when they were released, and a long transition into that home to get them ready for the change.
- Nowhere else to go: Children told the team they were worried that they would be kept in secure accommodation not because they needed to be there, but because children’s social care could not find an appropriate home for them to go to.
- Unexpected changes: Some of the children said that the way they were moved to the Secure Children’s Home was sudden and unexplained. They were not told that they were going until the last minute and felt this was unfair.
More optimistically, some of the children the team have spoken to have shared positive views about the secure accommodation they were placed in and the staff looking after them.
Following the visits, the Children’s Commissioner will use the stories and experiences shared by these children to shape her work over the next 18 months to improve the quality and availability of children’s social care and to advocate for children living in care and away from home. The information gathered on these visits will help ensure that where children are placed in secure care, the conditions are caring and familial, reflecting the best practice being seen in some homes.
Case study: hotel accommodation instead of appropriate care
The Help at Hand team is regularly contacted on its helpline by children and their advocates about having no home to go to when they are ready to leave a secure children’s home – a theme which has been reflected during visits. This happened following one of the most recent visits, with one child having to stay in a hotel with secure home staff when his order came to an end, because the local authority had not been able to find him a home or put in a transition plan for him – despite knowing his order was due to end. To support, the Help at Hand team made representations to the senior management of the local authority.
Children in care, living away from home, with a social worker or care leavers under 25 in need of advice or assistance can contact Help at Hand on 0800 528 0731, by emailing [email protected] or via the CCo website: Home – Help at Hand (childrenscommissioner.gov.uk).
