Resettlement of Children: Key policy developments

The number of children held in custodial establishments has declined sharply in recent years – in 2021/22, the average under-18 population was 447, compared with 939 in 2015/16.

Most of those in youth custody are boys aged 17, young people from ethnic minorities are overrepresented and a significant proportion are care experienced or being looked after by a local authority.

Research shows that children in custodial establishments have experienced adverse childhood experiences which has resulted in trauma, including extra familial harm that often results in exploitation.

Children in custody are held in one of three settings: secure training centres (STCs), young offender institutions (YOIs) or secure children's homes (SCHs).

As well as those held on youth justice grounds, SCHs can also house those detained for welfare reasons under Section 25 of the Children Act. Girls can be held in SCHs, Wetherby YOI or Oakhill STC.

Maintaining links

Continuing relationships with family and key people in their community is important for children in custody as this helps to maintain their sense of identity. All children sentenced or remanded to secure custody are entitled to regular visits from friends and family members, in recognition of the important role that family contact and support play in children's mental health, wellbeing and resettlement outcomes.

Latest figures from the Youth Custody Service (YCS) show that some children are placed too far from home, away from their friends and family – 15 per cent of the children are placed more than 100 miles away from their home.

In May 2022, the government requested the children's commissioner for England to undertake an Independent Review of Family Life. Part two of the review examined family life through the lens of children in custody. It found that almost half of all children in custody did not receive an in-person visit between October and November 2022 and during the same period, 83 per cent did not receive a video call.

Maintaining community links for children in care is often more problematic, with social workers finding it difficult to visit due to the distance of a placement and their workload pressures.

The commissioner found that there were inconsistencies in the information available for children and families on how and when they can have contact, and for some children there was a considerable cost to making calls.

Families also faced financial burdens making it difficult to travel, particularly when their child was placed far from home. Additionally, children reported that visits were frequently cancelled, often due to staffing shortages.

There is some evidence of good practice in supporting family relationships for children in custody which include special family days in custodial establishments, video calls and dedicated resettlement practitioners and leads.

Constructive Resettlement

In 2018, the Youth Justice Board (YJB) introduced Constructive Resettlement, a practice approach that supports the concept that children need to shift from a pro-offending identity to a pro-social one.

Constructive Resettlement was incorporated into a set of National Standards in 2019 which placed expectations on youth justice services to ensure that tailored and structural support was provided to all children to shift to a pro-social identity.

Inspectorates began to assess youth justice services against these standards and, according to an HM Inspectorate of Probation report in 2022, almost all youth justice services inspected had in place, or were developing, a policy that promoted a high-quality, constructive, and personalised resettlement service for all children.

Despite this, two-thirds of children leaving custody reoffend within the first 12 months, a level that has remained consistent over the past decade (see infographic).

Some of the most difficult barriers to successful resettlement for children is the availability of secure and safe accommodation on release and the suitability of an education offer.

YCS data for 2021/22 shows that children in custody are now more likely to be there on remand than any other legal basis. Yet almost three-quarters of children on remand do not go on to receive a custodial sentence and of those almost half are acquitted, or their case is dismissed.

This can result in children being released from custody with no support – often after a considerable amount of time spent on remand.

Where there are established resettlement consortiums and resettlement partnerships – groups of organisations that work collaboratively to improve the resettlement journey for children – there is good evidence of multi-agency partnerships working together to develop strategies to overcome these barriers for children, which include custody and community practitioners working closer together to develop robust resettlement plans and alternatives to remand.

Child First

The youth justice system has adopted the Child First approach which recognises that children are different from adults and should be treated according to their age and development.

This ensures there is a focus on the child's abilities and addressing their unmet needs through active participation.

Inspections of custodial establishments in 2022 found many children reported that they did not understand their plan.

However, where youth justice services have adopted the Child First principles well and integrated this into Constructive Resettlement, there is evidence that this is translating into a service that is focused on the needs of the child.

Adopting a Child First approach requires a language shift across the whole system that focuses on seeing children in custody as vulnerable and with unmet needs.

There are published documents and reports that use the terms “assailant” or “perpetrator”, while “young people” is sometimes used when describing children which can detract from the legal definition of being a child. Similarly, phrases such as “hard to engage” or “did not attend”. This runs contrary to the preferred Child First principle that it is the adults in the life of the child that have yet to find the correct way to engage the child or support them to attend.

While there is more to do to fully embed Child First approaches, there are good examples across the sector that include the use of active participation, spaces that help children feel safe when attending appointments, information for children that is presented in a way they understand and strategic leaders who champion the approach (see practice examples).

Young adults

Operation Safeguard was put in place in November 2022 to manage the demands on the adult prison population. This meant that children turning 18 in the youth estate would not automatically transfer to the adult estate, with the caveat that they would not stay beyond their 19th birthday.

In July, the Alliance for Youth Justice (AYJ) wrote to the government expressing concerns that the number of young people aged 18 or over had increased by 140 per cent since the announcement of Operation Safeguard.

As of 31 May 2023, the reported figures from the YCS was a total population of 594, of whom 141 were 18-years-old.

Given the reported levels of peer-on-peer violence within custodial establishments, there will inevitably be instances in which those who are 18 are assaulting under-18s. The Association of Directors of Children's Services (ADCS) has also raised its concerns with the YCS (see ADCS view, below).

The ADCS and the AYJ are concerned about the impact on the youth estate to be able to cope with the increasing population when it is already suffering staffing shortages that will impact on the support given to children and those transitioning into the adult estate.

The YCS has responded to the concerns raised by organisations and stakeholders, and is committed to undertaking a review to understand the impact of Operation Safeguard, with the results being shared across the sector.

Secure schools

Following a 2016 review of the youth justice system, the government committed to piloting secure schools as an alternative to custody.

Oasis Restore was commissioned by the Ministry of Justice and is due to open on the site of the former Medway STC in the spring of 2024. It will have capacity for 49 children, boys and girls aged 12 to 18.

Oasis Restore describes its goal as enabling children to leave the criminal justice system with a good education, life skills, improved social and emotional wellbeing, thus reducing reoffending rates, creating better opportunities to succeed, and cutting the cost of crime.

The secure school presents an opportunity for the whole youth justice sector to innovate and begin to understand what types of provision and intervention can provide better outcomes for resettlement back into communities.

There is good evidence that where youth justice services have a sound resettlement strategy, there are better outcomes for children and the opening of the first secure school is an opportunity for the sector to continue to learn together and to work towards developing a resettlement offer for all children released from custody where they can feel part of their own plan, feel connected to their community and excited about their future.

• Hazel Williamson has 25 years' experience of working with children in the justice system. She was previously chair of the Association of YOT Managers and remains on the executive board, with a keen interest in participation and engagement of children and young people and developing good practice, and has just completed a secondment to the Youth Custody Service.
  
  

ADCS VIEW

System must prioritise reducing use of remand and placement distance

Andy Smith, ADCS vice president 2023/24

Resettlement can be a worrying time for some children and young people, and planning for their release should ideally start as soon as they start their custodial sentence so that the services and support they need are available when and where they need them.

Transitioning young people back into the community is a shared endeavour, so it's important that their needs are met in a joined-up and holistic way while they are in custody and when they leave to enable a full and successful reintegration into society. Where appropriate children and young people should be involved in this process.

Finding suitable accommodations is one of the main difficulties we face in this area due to a national shortage of placements alongside other significant pressures in the youth justice system.

Latest statistics published by the Ministry of Justice outline many of these issues – perhaps most notable is the proportion of children in custody on remand which has now gone up to 45 per cent, the highest on record and almost double the proportion 10 years ago.

For those who end up in custody, better support during their sentence as well as ongoing support to help them settle back into their communities and break the cycle of reoffending is key.

The London Accommodation Pathfinder, currently being trialled, aims to reduce the number of 16- and 17-year-old boys going into custody by providing a more therapeutic, rehabilitation-focused living environment (see practice example).

It is vital that we can learn quickly from the successes of the pathfinder, and we urge the government to roll it out across the country at pace where this is the case.

The secure estate needs to be made more localised, more responsive to children's needs and above all more compassionate. The levels of violence between children, with staff and self-harm in custody are high, and rising, suggesting needs are routinely not being met.

The custodial estate is shrinking, and this has contributed to the growing level of violence within settings, but also means that children are frequently placed some distance from their local community; more than a third of children are placed 25 to 49 miles from home, with 15 per cent placed more than 100 miles from home.

Several factors need to be considered when placing a child, such as the needs and risks associated with the individual child or a limited number of places available. However, we need a far greater focus nationally on keeping children closer to their communities, where appropriate.

Positive family relationships, access to education and training and a sense of connection are all drivers for reducing reoffending rates, so greater physical distance adds additional barriers to resettlement efforts and planning.

We must be more ambitious for these children with a greater focus on their underlying needs, vulnerabilities or capacity for change.

THE 5Cs FOR EFFECTIVE RESETTLEMENT

Beyond Youth Custody – a six-year England-wide learning and awareness programme funded by the Big Lottery Fund – found that five key characteristics of support (now known as the “5Cs”) are associated in research with positive outcomes. These can be used as a checklist for the likely effectiveness of any package of resettlement support:

• Constructive – The work is positively focused on developing the child's pro-social identity, with all interventions considered in relation to that objective. Support is future-focused and strengths-based, rather than focusing on past behaviour in stigmatising ways. Work motivates and empowers the child to make positive choices.

• Co-created – The child's identity is personal to them, so it's crucial they are involved with any planning. This will help ensure that they consider the support as relevant to their needs and future, and so help engagement. Family and friends are important sources of support and should be brought on board where appropriate, with barriers to engaging them addressed as a priority.

• Customised – As every child's resettlement journey is different, service providers need to create an individualised package of wraparound support, rather than merely delivering generic interventions. Support should consider the child's self-identified characteristics (including ethnicity and gender).

• Consistent – As resettlement is a long-term journey for the young person (not just release from custody), any shift in identity requires continuous support, from the very beginning of a sentence (if not before), to beyond the end of it. Support between custody and community should be one seamless programme, which requires all agencies to work together and exchange information and community support established long before release. Temporary release is a vital tool for establishing community placements and to help reduce disorientation after release. Ideally, custody and community agencies should share aims and targets around identity development, and hold each other to account. Trust and engagement are fostered by consistent staff relationships and, in custody, not moving children between institutions.

• Co-ordinated – The complex nature of children's needs means that a wraparound package of support cannot be achieved by one agency, but requires partnership across sectors, including voluntary agencies and private employers. Successful resettlement programmes require service managers to broker the engagement of partners to map and maintain a menu of local support.

Source: Resettlement of children after custody, Professor Neal Hazel, August 2022

www.clinks.org/sites/default/files/2022-08/clinks_el_resettlement-children_0.pdf

FURTHER READING

• Family contact in youth custody, Children's Commissioner for England, March 2023

• Youth justice statistics 2021/22, MoJ, January 2023

• Children in custody, HMI Prisons, January 2023

• Inspection of youth justice services, HMI Probation, 2022
  
  

Read more in CYP Now's Resettlement of Children Special Report