Young people in secure accommodation lose out on chances of rehabilitation

Some children and young people in secure care are being placed as far away as 200 miles from their families, damaging their chances of receiving coordinated support, according to a report published by Ofsted, the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills.

The report Admission and discharge from secure accommodation evaluates the quality of admission, assessment, care planning and service delivery in secure establishments and the effectiveness of arrangements for discharging and resettling young people into the community. The evidence was drawn from visits between July 2009 and January 2010 to 16 secure children's homes and four secure training centres, and responses to interviews and questionnaires by managers, specialist staff, young people and their families. A total of 407 people contributed to the survey, including 175 young people.

The report concludes that generally young people receive good emotional support within secure establishments. However it highlights how the limited number and range of secure establishments undermines efforts to support them when they are admitted and discharged from a secure placement. Many young people are placed a long distance from home, depriving them of valuable family support and making it more difficult for agencies to plan and assist them as they prepare to return to life in the community.

The key findings of the report are as follows:

• The extent to which organisations such as youth offending teams, schools and colleges could work successfully with young people in secure settings was severely limited by the insufficient number and range of appropriate secure placements.
• Work between professionals and the families of young people who were sentenced or remanded by a court was very limited until the placement had been made.
• All the secure establishments visited engaged themselves with other agencies very quickly and effectively once a young person was admitted.
• Many young people were placed a long distance from their home, and some parents had to make journeys of hundreds of miles to visit their children.
• These young people were unlikely to have the same level of support as those who were placed locally, on either admission or discharge from the secure setting. This adversely affected plans for successful transfer and reintegration into the community.
• Secure establishments used assessment, planning and review effectively, which included involving other organisations as well as the young people and their families.
• Young people generally received good emotional support, and the relationships between young people, their families and staff within the secure establishments were very positive.
• It was common for agreed discharge arrangements for young people not to be in place until the last days of the placement.
• Social workers and workers from youth offending teams did not participate sufficiently in planning for young people to move back into the community.
• Staff in secure placements were usually unable to make significant continuing contributions to planning or services for young people after they were discharged.