A Secure Future? STCs and Secure Schools

 

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”.