Instead of counting empty beds (Millions wasted on empty secure children’s home beds in England and Wales, says Labour, 27 January), we need to be counting children and asking ourselves why we are depriving so many of our vulnerable young people of their liberty in the first place.
While the number of children held in custody has indeed declined over the past decade, the numbers being held for their own welfare have been rising. A growing body of evidence shows that these two groups are largely the same children. We know that up to half of children in custody have been in care at some point in their lives. Children placed in secure settings – whether through youth custody or because of risks to their safety – have had similar experiences of trauma and disadvantage from early childhood and therefore have similar needs.
Hidden in these figures are the most vulnerable children of all who, in dramatically rising numbers, cannot be found a place in a secure children’s home because of a lack of available beds or because they are deemed too “challenging”. These children simply disappear from view. They don’t appear in published data. We don’t know how many there are, or where they are placed.
We need to rethink how we improve the lives of the most vulnerable children in our society and be clear about the purpose of depriving young people of their liberty – is it care or incarceration?
Lisa Harker
Director, Nuffield Family Justice Observatory