Urgent improvement notice issued over isolation of children at Rainsbrook STC

Ofsted, HM Inspectorate of Prisons, and Care Quality Commission has issued a rare urgent notification (UN) to the Secretary of State for Justice due to continued poor care and leadership at the MTC-run centre near Rugby. 

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Robert Buckland now has 28 days to set out how these concerns will be addressed after a joint report by inspectors found that, due to Covid-19 restrictions, newly admitted children – some as young as 15 – were being locked in cells for 14 days for as long as 23.5 hours per day.

A further monitoring visit in December found that little progress has been made, inspectors said.

The letter to the Secretary of State says that inspectors uncovered a “bleak picture” of a “spartan regime” where children were given little encouragement to get up in the mornings or have any meaningful engagement with staff. 

Senior management said that they were unaware of the regime being implemented in the centre, which held 45 children.

The inspectorates’ findings include:

• Five recently admitted children independently told inspectors that they had been locked into their bedrooms for substantial periods of time.

• One boy was placed on an “incorrect management plan” due to miscommunications about his medical vulnerabilities. Between 26 November and 10 December, this child had a total of four hours out of his room.

• There were no isolation arrangements for newly admitted girls as there are for boys. As a result, one girl was placed separately on a mainstream girls’ residential unit with other children who were no longer isolating. This child had no time out of her room on two days and only very brief periods of less than 40 minutes on three subsequent days. 

• Although education work packs were issued to children confined to their rooms, record-keeping is poor and there is no evidence that children’s education entitlement is being met. 

Since 2015, every inspection of Rainsbrook has judged the centre as “requires improvement to be good”. 

The effectiveness of leaders and managers has been judged inadequate twice. 

The UN letter states that the findings “provide little confidence in the centre’s capacity to improve the care, well-being and safety of children.”

Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s chief inspector, said: “Rainsbrook was warned that its treatment of newly admitted children was unacceptable, yet these concerns have been ignored. Some of the most vulnerable children are being locked up for days on end, with little thought about their safety or well-being. Leaders and government must act now to address this.”

Charlie Taylor, chief inspector of prisons, added: “It is astonishing that in spite of our original findings, the Youth Custody Service and the centre had continued to allow children to be held in what amounted to solitary confinement, particularly after we had been assured that this was no longer the case.”