The secure school must get better quickly – before a child is seriously hurt

The Howard League for Penal Reform has today (Friday 11 September) responded to Ofsted’s report of a monitoring visit to the Oasis Restore secure school for children and young people aged 12 to 18, which identified serious shortfalls relating to the use of physical restraint.

Inspectors visited the secure school, in Kent, for two days in July – to address specific concerns that Ofsted had received. The secure school is designed to hold up to 49 children and young people, but only six were living there at the time of the inspection. It had only recently reopened after being closed for a year while about 180 faulty internal doors were replaced.

The report states that, on one occasion, a child was restrained over a prolonged period following a medical concern. The legal criteria for the use of restraint were not met when the physical restraint was initiated or at any point as it continued. Staff and managers failed to challenge decision-making or review practice throughout the incident to ensure that the steps taken were proportionate and necessary, nor did they ensure that the child had access to the right health support at the right time.

On another occasion, a child was subjected to a physical restraint that was not necessary or proportionate to the situation, and staff continued to physically restrain the child when the legal criteria for the use of restraint were no longer met. Afterwards, the secure school failed to have a conversation with the child in a timely manner and its record of the incident did not provide an accurate description of the physical restraint techniques that were used.

External agencies, including Ofsted and a child’s local authority social worker, received inaccurate reports from the secure school because of shortcomings in the way that the incidents were recorded.

The secure school is now subject to two compliance notices from Ofsted – legal notices that require it to take action to address failures.

Gemma Abbott, Legal Director at the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: “When secure schools were first proposed by David Cameron’s coalition government more than a decade ago, the Howard League opposed them. We were concerned that, in trying to create a new form of custody for children, ministers were at risk of repeating past mistakes – such as the abject failure of the secure training centres, where two boys died after being physically restrained in separate incidents in 2004.

“The Oasis Restore secure school may occupy the site of the failed former Medway secure training centre, but when it opened we were told by the government that it would be different, with education and healthcare at its heart. Its founder promised that children would be shown ‘relentless love’. It is hard to reconcile these bold claims with the alarming findings of this Ofsted report.

“Prison is no place for a child. The secure school must be better, and it must get better quickly – before a child is seriously hurt.”

Notes to editors

1. The Howard League for Penal Reform is the oldest penal reform charity in the world. It is a national charity working for less crime, safer communities and fewer people in prison.
2. The monitoring report, and reports of all other inspections carried out at the Oasis Restore secure school, can be found on the Ofsted website.

Contact

Rob Preece
Head of Communications
Tel: +44 (0)7714 604955
Email: [email protected]