Children and Their Education in Secure Accommodation

Interdisciplinary Perspectives of Education, Health and Youth Justice

Diahann Gallard, Katharine Evans, James Millington

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781315528199
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This highly topical book integrates theory and practice about children and their education provision in secure accommodation. Bridging the fields of education, health, and youth justice, it provides a unique interdisciplinary perspective outlining the importance of taking a holistic approach to the education and rehabilitation of children who are 'locked up'.

The book has brought together contributors from across the UK and beyond to share their academic research, practical knowledge, and experiences working with children and young people. Shedding light on the intricacies and realities of working in the context of secure settings, the book is divided into the following five parts:

• 
  
  

• Contextualising the field
• Practice insights
• Case examples and models of practice
• Inclusion and voice
• Recommendations from research

Children and Their Education in Secure Accommodation unravels the complexity of the topic and offers 'whole-system' perspectives, as well as a child-centred view, on the issue of educating and rehabilitating children and the needs and rights of children in such settings. With unique and valuable insights from those involved in policy or provision, this book will be an essential text for researchers, practitioners, and students in this interdisciplinary field.

PART I

Contextualising the field

1

Troubled and Troublesome Children

Education, participation, and restoration

Ben Byrne

In this chapter there is a consideration of the importance of education and participation as a central platform for efforts to reform secure care and in supporting children in the community so that they do not need to be deprived of their liberty. Nobody wants to lock children up. Yet that is what we do to thousands of children each year. It results from either acute welfare concerns because they meet the threshold for secure mental health care, or as a response to offending.

There are two underpinning arguments in this chapter: that we unhelpfully differentiate between children by too rigidly separating them along these distinct pathways and that a more holistic and integrated approach to our most troubled and troublesome children is likely to be more effective. It is proposed that such alternative approaches can lead to less reliance upon a secure response and in doing so support improved experiences and outcomes for our society’s most vulnerable children. Firstly, there is an overview of the ‘three pathways’ into secure environments for children, the degree to which adverse childhood experiences and acute disadvantage are common to the children who enter secure care and custody, before then considering the divergent environments they can expect to encounter dependent upon the pathway which is chosen for them. Then, there is a consideration of the policy developments which increasingly identify a set of approaches which are relevant to children in all three pathways. Here we capture the principles for systems and service transformation which are common to policy developments, although they are typically pursued separately in each of the three pathways. When drawn together these principles have the potential to reduce the need to use secure options and can improve the experience and outcomes for children at risk of entering (or re-entering) secure settings. Finally, there is a look at Surrey’s attempt to develop a whole system approach which provides more integrated and holistic responses to children entering the mental health, social care, and justice pathways. From this example we draw on evidence of improving outcomes but also recognise the distance still to be travelled to provide the services which troubled children require.

Which children do we place in secure settings?

Children whose needs have not been adequately met see the world as comfortless and unpredictable and they respond by either shrinking from it or doing battle with it

(Bowlby, 1973: 208)

There are in the region of 1800 beds (when at 100% capacity; note that there is currently significant unused capacity within the youth justice secure estate) for children in secure settings in England and Wales (Hales, 2017), approximately 70% of which are in the youth justice secure estate. The number of children placed in secure settings on criminal grounds has reduced markedly in recent years from an average of a little under 3000 children (at any one time) for the period 2000–2008 to below 1000 since 2016. This significant reduction points to the importance of system changes which have facilitated a move away from reliance upon custody towards greater use of community responses, underpinned by a range of informal disposals that have reduced the total number of children entering the formal justice system (Bateman, 2016). The potential for similar systems management approaches to be used in relation to the mental health and welfare secure routes is something to which we return later in the chapter.

Research into the characteristics of children who reach the apex of the youth justice system has consistently identified that these children have overwhelmingly experienced acutely difficult and damaging childhoods (Jacobson et al., 2008; Department of Health, 2009). These environmental factors co-exist with a high level of special educational needs and disabilities (Harrington et al., 2005) and contribute to high levels of mental health problems (Chitsabesan et al., 2006; Youth Justice Board, 2005; Bateman, 2015). These characteristics mean that these children will typically have had contact (of varying types and intensity) with children’s social care and mental health services but that it is specifically as a response to their offending behaviour that they are detained rather than as a response to their underlying health and welfare needs. Black and minority ethnic children and young people are significantly over-represented in the youth justice secure estate (Bateman, 2016) reflecting systemic and institutional discrimination within and beyond the criminal justice system (Lammy, 2017).

In England there are approximately 100 welfare beds in Secure Children’s Homes (SCH). Children entering SCH provision under welfare grounds do so as a result of an order under s.25 Children Act 1989 which requires a family court to determine that the child must be secured in order to ensure their safety. As with the juvenile justice estate, demand for welfare beds fluctuates significantly but does so over shorter cycles (Abrams, 2015). With a smaller number of beds in welfare settings than in justice and with less headroom when demand increases, the SCH provision frequently experiences acute bed pressures (Timpson, 2016). There is limited available research describing the characteristics of children entering secure environments through the welfare route but what is available indicates that these are typically children who frequently have attachment disorders and have suffered significant childhood trauma and abuse, as well presenting with additional learning needs including autistic spectrum disorders (Bailey, 2004; Hart and La Valle, 2016). Evidence of the characteristics of this cohort of children also comes from the description of conditions catered for by SCH (Secure Accommodation Network, 2016).

Secure mental health care is currently provided for up to 396 children in England (21 high dependency, 147 psychiatric intensive care, 138 low secure, and 90 medium secure) (Hales, 2017). Available evidence suggests that many of the children entering mental health secure facilities will have similar backgrounds to those in welfare secure and the youth justice secure estate. This is particularly the case for children who have reached the secure forensic tier of provision (also described as medium secure facilities) which is reserved for those whose risk to themselves and to others is greatest (Bailey, 2004; O’Herlihy, 2007; NHS England, 2018). Children in secure mental health settings will typically differ from peers in the community who suffer the more common adolescent emotional and mental health disorders with their conditions more often being identified earlier, more acute and enduring, and more frequently linked to childhood environmental adversity (Dolan and Smith, 2001; DoH, 2014).

It should be acknowledged that not all children requiring secure mental health treatment will have experienced specific environmental childhood adversity. Adolescent mental health conditions reflect an interplay between genetics, neurobiological development, and environment, which is complex, yet to be fully understood, and will differ from person to person (Rutter, 2004). That said, attachment disorders, experience of abuse and neglect, and other childhood trauma and adversities are prevalent and are particularly clustered in those children who require treatment in a forensic setting:

their social backgrounds are often characterised by socio-economic deprivation, multiple losses and traumas, adverse life events, family discord, poor scholastic achievements, learning difficulties, substance misuse and criminality. In addition, some young people are involved with multiple agencies in complex legislative frameworks

(NHS England, 2013)

In this respect, children who enter medium secure mental health facilities (recognising that those who experience forensic settings will also often step up from or step down to lower security mental health provision) have more in common with those children who enter secure settings through welfare and justice routes than they do with the other, significantly larger number of children and young people who experience less severe emotional and mental health problems.

It is not within the scope of this chapter to provide a detailed taxonomy of the characteristics of the population of children who enter the three types of secure care but, even in this brief review, it is evident that there are significant overlaps in the life histories of these children. What is concerning, considering these common adverse childhood experiences, is the contrasting responses a child can expect depending on which of the secure pathways they find themselves on and this is what we will turn to next.

Secure responses

Custodial detention for children

Custodial detention for children is heavily shaped by the punishment paradigm. Although English and Welsh legislation does not include punishment as a principle in sentencing children, the regimes to which they are subject are typically imbued with the same philosophy of containment and control which dominates the adult custodial system (Bateman, 2016). Predominantly run by the Prison Service, staffed by prison officers, and with high child to adult ratios (1:10), young offender institutions cater for over 70% of children in custody (607 under-18s at the end of January 2018: Youth Justice Board, 2018) and are routinely described by inspectors as dangerous and damaging environments where violence, self-harm, and pain-inflicting physical restraint are common and increasing (HMIP, 2016; Ministry of Justice, 2016). Younger and/or more vulnerable children are placed in secure training centres (165 children as of January 2018: Youth Justice Board, 2018). These are privately run establishments (although Medway has been taken ‘in-house’ and is currently run by the National Offender Management Service) which have a lower staff to child ratio (3:8) but suffer from many of the same problems as young offender institutions. STCs have failed to demonstrate good levels of care in any recent inspections and the Medway Secure Training Centre Improvement Board Report variously described conditions as ‘over-controlling and degrading’ and ‘dehumanising’. In the same report, one young person summed up his feelings about his care by saying ‘they treat you like an animal and it’s when you need real help’ (HMI Prisons, 2016). Again, it should be noted that it is Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) children and young people who are recognised to disproportionately experience the most punitive of the secure environments.

Secure children’s homes

The other form of custody experienced by children in the youth justice system is the secure children’s homes (SCH). SCH provision tends to be reserved for the youngest children (especially those serving long sentences) or those who are assessed as the most vulnerable. Youth justice reformers have typically seen SCH provision as the preferred option (where there is no realistic alternative to custody) because of their role as an extension of the care system and an explicitly care orientated philosophical base (NAYJ, 2015). With only two children to each adult, SCHs should be better equipped to meet the needs of children detained in the youth justice system than the rest of the juvenile custodial estate. There are currently in the region of 100 youth justice beds in SCHs, about half of the total SCH bed provision.

The SCH is unique in English and Welsh secure provision in that a number of establishments provide for both children who have been placed as a result of welfare orders and those requiring a secure environment because of offending. This conjunction of ‘welfare’ and ‘justice’ placements does present its own problems, particularly as a result of the high rates of self-harm, which it has been argued leads to distinctive identities (often reinforcing and exacerbating the welfare and justice labels a child has when placed in secure care) and also significant problems with managing children presenting with diverse needs and behaviours (Andow 2018). Notwithstanding this challenge, when only a secure setting is appropriate, the SCH model is still widely extolled as currently the best method of responding to the acute welfare needs common to many children in the justice system and for those who come through the family court (Children’s Commissioner, 2015).

Secure mental health facilities

Secure mental health facilities for children are sub-divided into those which provide for high dependency needs and intensive care, medium and low secure environments, and in total offer beds to up to 400 children at any one time. These children will (almost without exception) have been sectioned under the Mental Health Act and therefore are involuntarily detained. The mix of secure children’s mental health provision includes a further sub-division of settings including those which specialise in the care of children with eating disorders, learning disabilities and those for younger children (under the age of thirteen). The intake of forensic settings, for children who pose the greatest risk to others and often themselves, is in many respects similar to SCH and young offender institutions (DOH, 2014).

The range of secure mental health facilities contrasts with the limited diversity across provision for those presenting with justice and welfare needs who require a secure setting. To a degree this reflects the heterogeneity of children requiring mental health treatment, but also indicates the limited nature of the offer to children in the welfare and justice systems where there is little difference in levels of security and limited access to different types of care. The defining philosophy of the mental health secure system is one of treatment (detention is only possible for assessment or treatment) within hospital settings predominantly staffed by medical practitioners.

This brief review of the child population in secure settings suggests there is a high degree of commonality of life experiences frequently reflecting acute attachment and trauma issues, which underpin the behaviours that typically lead to children meeting the criteria for a form of secure detention. These shared adverse childhood experiences contrast with the diverse responses within and between the justice, welfare and mental health settings in how (and if) they respond to the therapeutic needs of children, shaped as each setting is by differing justice, welfare and treatment philosophies. This suggests there is a need for a more coherent and integrated response from justice, health and welfare systems to the needs of children who have experienced the most damaging childhood experiences.

This is particularly likely to be the case for those children who inhabit the boundaries of each of these systems, moving between the pathways and experiencing any one or all of these forms of secure care/custody (although empirical evidence on the movement between the three secure pathways is limited; see Hales, 2017). Evidence from young people who have experienced these systems demonstrates their ineffectiveness in supporting the most disadvantaged:

Those with multiple needs struggle to navigate systems designed for education, mental health, social care or youth justice. A proportion rapidly drop out of view without receiving any assessment. Many fall between the cracks of the multiple referral pathways. Other bounce between systems for many years before support rapidly evaporates at the boundary of adulthood

(Little et al., 2015).

Depending on the assigned pathway, and sometimes depending on the presentation and behaviour on a given day, a child with acute emotional and behavioural difficulties may find themselves subject to grossly different responses and levels of care between the differing settings. This response is arbitrary for many children and young people (Little et al., 2015; Khan, 2016) and many professionals (Children’s Commissioner, 2015) and reflects organisational and system needs rather than those of individuals.

New pathways and integrated ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• List of contributors
• PART I: Contextualising the field
• PART II: Practice insights
• PART III: Case examples and models of practice
• PART IV: Inclusion and voice
• PART V: Recommendations from research
• 16. Re-engaging young offenders with education in the secure custodial setting
• 17. ‘The banter levels are good’: Developing social and human capital through education
• 18. ‘Where are we going?’: Context and directions for policy and practice in children’s education and learning in secure accommodation
• Index