Sir Andrew McFarlane, president of the High Court Division of the Family Court, reiterated judicial concerns over a shortage of secure care placements for children “in extreme crisis” leading to increasing numbers of children being placed under deprivation of liberty orders, often in unregistered settings.
Latest DfE figures show that the number of welfare placements in England and Wales’s 14 secure homes has declined from 105 in 2016 to 82 in 2022.
In a judgment relating to child X, a 15-year-old girl from England who had suffered significant trauma and adversity during her childhood, was assessed as having low IQ and diagnosed with high-functioning autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, who was subject to a deprivation of liberty order and placed in secure settings in Scotland, McFarlane described the lack of secure placements for children as “longstanding and chronic”.
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