“Totally unacceptable” safeguarding failings and a sharp increase in violence has seen Oakhill Secure Training Centre (STC) issued with an urgent plan to improve by the government.
The Milton Keynes facility, run by private contractor G4S, has seen its rating drop from “requires improvement” in April 2019 to “inadequate” following a joint visit from Ofsted, HM Inspectorate of Prisons and the Care Quality Commission.
“Serious failings” including the “unjustifiable and in some cases unlawful” levels of force on vulnerable children led to an urgent notification to improve being issued to Oakhill by inspectors last month.
As part of an improvement plan for Oakhill (see box), Justice Secretary Dominic Raab notes that G4S will be introducing a revised behaviour management strategy aimed at de-escalating situations and that an urgent review of the use of force is also being undertaken with the Youth Custody Service (YCS).
Questions over plan
The latest damning report for Oakhill, combined with the closure of Medway STC in 2020 and the removal of children from Rainsbrook STC earlier this year, has led youth justice experts to question whether the implementation of an improvement plan is enough for G4S to turn around conditions.
Carolyne Willow, director of children’s rights charity Article 39, argues that the plan “continues the long history of the government giving G4S unlimited chances to fulfil basic obligations”.
Shadow youth justice minister, Anna McMorrin, Labour MP for Cardiff North, describes it as “weak”, saying it will “do nothing to tackle the large-scale crisis across private youth custody”.
G4S is currently contracted to run Oakhill until 2029, however, the latest failings has seen campaigners reiterate calls for the company to be stripped of its responsibilities with control of the facility handed back to the YCS.
Willow highlights serious issues which emerged at Rainsbrook STC before G4S was stripped of its contract to run the facility in 2015, including the death there of Gareth Myatt in 2004.
“The action plan told G4S to take urgent action to ensure its employees obey the law when using force on children. This is a remarkable recommendation on its own terms: if public funds are to be handed to multinationals for the care and deprivation of liberty of children, the very least they can be expected to do is run law-abiding institutions.
“We may ask ourselves: if G4S was a family, rather than a private company, would the state be sending vulnerable children to its care? I think not,” she says.
However, Andrew Neilson, director of campaigns at the Howard League for Penal Reform, says moving responsibility for the STC to public sector hands will not solve the problem.
He says: “We saw that with Medway, which has closed because outcomes were not dramatically improved and it is now earmarked for the new secure school.”
Neilson says the problem is “not particular to Oakhill, to G4S, to secure training centres”, but instead points to a broader problem in the youth secure estate.
Noting ongoing problems at Rainsbrook as well as a recent report that shows violence has increased by 70 per cent in a year at Cookham Wood Young Offender Institution, he describes youth custody settings as “violent, chaotic and failing”.
Detention and training orders
Neilson insists that the answer to improving STCs starts with reforming legislation on the detention of children.
“The problem with STCs is that they were designed to hold children handed detention and training orders which are typically shorter sentences for less serious crimes,” he says, describing such sentences as “damaging, ineffectual and a failure from the off”.
“STCs are failed institutions that should be closed, the sentence that sends children to them should be reformed and even that is only part of the puzzle because there are wider questions around the youth justice system and youth custody as a whole,” he concludes.
Neilson is not the only one calling for system reform. McMorrin argues for an independent inquiry while Willow is pushing for a judicial inquiry into failings at Oakhill.
Scepticism hangs over hopes the improvement plan will spark dramatic change at the facility, without reform of the entire youth justice system including the closure of STCs, which have been widely described as “doing more harm than good”.
KEY MEASURES IN OAKHILL STC IMPROVEMENT PLAN
“Serious failings” by managers to identify child protection concerns, the use of frequent violence and “unjustifiable and in some cases unlawful” levels of force on vulnerable children living in “dilapidated” conditions led to an improvement plan being issued to Oakhill Secure Training Centre by the government.
The plan states that G4S will introduce a revised behaviour management strategy aimed at de-escalating situations. A review of the use of force is also being undertaken with the Youth Custody Service.
A backlog of safeguarding cases has already been cleared, according to the plan, and the safeguarding team at the STC has been expanded with staff undertaking refresher training.
An experienced prison governor will oversee and monitor safeguarding improvements while a new permanent director of the STC will take up post later this month (December).
Routine referrals to Oakhill have been paused and additional staff brought in by G4S to allow higher staff-to-child ratios.
Children are receiving more time out of their cells and education has been increased to 25 hours a week, according to the plan.
A G4S spokesperson told CYP Now: “We are focused on delivering the action plan.”
