More than a third of children placed in Scottish secure placements are from England and Wales, study indicates

The most vulnerable children in England and Wales are being sent to secure children's homes in Scotland, an average of 353 miles away from their homes, when places can't be found for them locally, new research from the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory suggests.

Commenting on the findings, Lisa Harker, director of the NFJO, said the inability to meet the needs of our most vulnerable children closer to home "is becoming an emergency".

The NFJO based their study on two surveys - one conducted in 2018 and another in 2019 - from the Children and Young People's Centre for Justice (CYCJ), which surveyed every child in secure accommodation in Scotland.

Secure children's homes are specialist residential homes that are authorised to restrict children's liberty.

The NFJO found that more than a third of all children placed in secure accommodation in Scotland in 2018 and 2019 were placed there by English and Welsh local authorities.

Of those children placed in secure accommodation, many had experienced numerous other placements beforehand, the study showed. Almost all (95%) of them had experienced a placement breakdown in the year prior to admission, with an average of 2.8 placement moves during that period.

The three most commonly cited reasons for admission to a secure unit were the children's risk to themselves (53%), absconding (49%), and risk to others (34%). Other reasons included child sexual exploitation (23%) and self-harm (21%).

The NFJO said that a "striking" number of the children placed in secure care had experienced 'adverse childhood experiences' such as emotional or physical neglect or abuse, parental mental ill-health, substance abuse, or separation, or exposure to domestic violence at some point in their lives.

"Children in this study had experienced more adverse childhood experiences than children in a comparable study who were living in a secure children's home in England (Martin et al. 2021), suggesting that the most vulnerable children are being sent to Scotland," the NFJO noted.

Harker said: "Many of the children in our study had experienced more adversity in one year than most people experience in a lifetime. Placing them hundreds of miles from home and the support of family or friends is not a long-term solution."

She added: "Our inability to meet the needs of our most vulnerable children closer to home is becoming an emergency."

Children from England and Wales can be placed in a secure children's home under section 25 of the Children Act 1989 and section 119 of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014.

Section 10 of the Children and Social Work Act 2017 authorises local authorities in England and Wales to place children in secure accommodation in Scotland.

However, potential new legislation (the Children's Care and Justice Bill) from the Scottish Government could ban or significantly reduce the number of placements that are available in Scottish secure care homes to children from England and Wales.

The bill ended its consultation phase in June of this year.

Adam Carey

See also: Deprivations of liberty of English children in Scotland: latest developments - Justin Gray considers new deprivation of liberty provisions in relation to English children placed in Scotland. [5 August 2022]