The last of three blogs about Secure Training Centres (STCs) to mark 30
years since they were first announced in March 1993.
30 years
after Kenneth Clarke announced to MPs that new Secure Training Centres for
child offenders would be “different
from anything ever provided before”, we now await the “revolutionary
first secure school,” ironically on the site of the first STC at Medway.
After a
series of delays, the 49 place Secure School is due to open early next year, ten
years after the Coalition government launched and then thankfully scrapped its own
plans to “transform” youth custody through a 320 place Secure College in the
East Midlands.
While dreaming
up better ways of locking up children looks increasingly like the triumph of
hope over experience, is there anything to be learned from the history of STCs which
might give Secure Schools a fighting chance of success? There are six main
areas where things will be done differently.
First the
provider. Oasis
Restore, part of the Oasis Charitable Trust
is a much more values driven organisation than the security companies
and prison providers that have run the STC’s. Its status has been controversial,
with legislation
needed to ensure that operating a Secure School can be a charitable
activity at all. The parent charity’s first objective is “the
advancement of Christianity”, which has raised eyebrows too. But its ethos,
and its experience in running academies, housing and community projects make it
well suited both to run a therapeutic establishment which integrates
education, health, and care and to reintegrate young people afterwards.
But, and it’s
a big but, it has no experience of having done this in a closed setting. As they
admitted when they
bid to run the school back in 2018, “none of the Oasis component
charities…. have been involved in leading secure provision. We have much to
learn.”
Second the building.
Almost £40 million is being spent at Medway to create a “beautiful
physical environment for staff and students”: This will comprise 12 flats
with up to six bedrooms, a laundry room, living area, small kitchen dining room
and staff room, mostly open plan. Each flat will have garden. Careful thought has
reportedly gone into the design, furniture, colour schemes, branding, and
landscaping.
Much bigger
windows than before will let in lots of natural light and students will be able
open and close their own bedroom windows through a secure panel, giving a small
but important element of control.
When I was a
member of the Youth Justice Board efforts were made to soften the harsh environment
in the custodial estate, but to limited effect. It's so much better to get it
right from the off, so while the costs of remodelling the STC may have rocketed,
they should pay dividends.
Third, the operating model. The bid to run the Secure School submitted in 2018
outlines a detailed multidisciplinary approach and busy daily timetable supervised
largely by residential “coaches”. Much of
it looks highly promising if at times ambitious- for example the idea of enabling
students to practice newly acquired vocational skills in outlets at the school open
to the public as customers.
STCs often struggled
with much more basic problems such as finding ways to cope with challenging behaviour.
While Oasis founder Steve Chalke has promised “no
guards, no uniforms, no clanging keys”, the 2018 bid envisages a role for
security officers who will be trained in restraint. The bid outlines a token
economy with each student receiving a pay cheque on a Friday reflecting how
they have behaved. This can be cashed in for “Oasis Dollars” to buy privileges
and to be forfeited in cases of poor behaviour. Similar incentive schemes have
had a mixed record in youth custody. In cases where a young person needs to be
removed from a classroom or house for their own safety, they will be taken to a
Reflection Room, with a coach. How different will this be to the use of
separation in STCs?
No doubt
the operating model will have developed since 2018, in negotiation with government,
following the appointment of the senior management team last year and a
public consultation (although no outcome of that appears to have been
published). It’s encouraging that Oasis has employed three young people
with experience of custody, as “Co-Creation Workers” to help design the regime.
As a backstop, the Secure School must accommodate, educate, and care for the children
to the standards required by law of a 16 to 19 Academy and a Secure Children’s Home.
Fourth, the children. Asked what had gone wrong with STCs, Ministry of Justice
bosses told MPs last year that nowadays the children they took were older and “more
difficult to manage” than in the past and had committed far more serious
offences. It’s true that the STCs were originally designed for 12-14 year olds but
the age range was extended many years ago- as was their role in holding
children charged with or convicted of the most serious offences. Of course the
welcome fall in the numbers of under 18’s in custody, from 2000 in 2010 to just 450 at the end of March has heightened the concentration of these most
challenging children in individual establishments, but they’ve always been
there.
The Secure School
will take up to 49 children aged 12-18, male and female, on remand and serving
sentences. The draft
funding agreement says it “shall use its best endeavours” to accept all of
those referred to it by the Youth Custody Service. But as with other Secure Children’s
Homes, the Secure School will not be required to accept everyone referred to it.
This may provide some essential flexibility in respect of its clientele,
particularly in its early weeks and months. Particular attention will need to
be given to the very small number of girls likely to be there.
Fifth, the
staff: In 2016, Charlie
Taylor’s youth justice review found that many staff working in STCs (and
Young Offender Institutions) “do not have the skills and experience to manage
the most vulnerable and challenging young people in their care, nor have they
had sufficient training to fulfil these difficult roles”. Once it became clear STCs
were not a growth area, it’s been harder still to attract and retain highly
skilled people to work in them. Short term initiatives to increase the
knowledge and skills of staff have had mixed results.
The 2018 Oasis
bid sets out a range of initiatives to recruit and retain high quality staff,
including impressive looking training and professional development
opportunities. The challenge is likely to be much greater in the post Brexit,
post Covid world, but it’s the one which will probably determine the success of
the programme. Recruitment is underway now, with the site available to staff
from the Autumn. There should be indications by then as to whether the Secure
School has the people it needs.
Finally
there is the relationship with government. One of Charlie Taylor’s criticisms
of STCs was that “operators
can become slaves to the myriad terms of their contract”. The draft funding
agreement seems much less prescriptive for the Secure School than for STCs and all the better for it.
On the
other hand, Secure Schools will be accountable to both the Ministry of Justice
and the Department for Education (and within the DfE to the two divisions responsible
for Academy Trusts and Secure Childrens Homes). Inspection it seems will be by Ofsted alone
rather than jointly with the Prison Inspectorate as was the case with STCs.
Time will
tell whether these arrangements prove beneficial. The Oasis Restore website says that “in most
instances, Ofsted will not select new schools for a first inspection
until they are in their third year of operation”. This seems much too long
to me.
While it is
important to allow any new institution to overcome inevitable teething problems,
it will be important to form a view about whether the fine words and intentions
expressed by the provider are being translated into good practice. I hope they will
be.
However, in the light of history, it has to be a case of “Trust but Verify”.