The Trowler Review: A thoughtful and detailed report with much to welcome

Last week the Chief Social Worker for England, Isabelle Trowler, published a thoughtful and detailed report following a rapid review of safeguarding in the children and young people’s secure estate.

The review was commissioned in response to the report by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, published last year, into the horrific abuse of children and young people at Medomsley Detention Centre in Durham from the 1960s until its closure in the late 1980s. The Howard League shares the Chief Social Worker’s deep respect and gratitude to the survivors of Medomsley, whose strength and determination have ensured that the treatment of children currently detained by the state remains closely scrutinised.

The Chief Social Worker made 34 recommendations, all of which have been accepted by the government in principle, and many of them are aimed at overhauling and strengthening safeguarding practices and procedures. They focus on introducing more robust recruitment processes, ensuring that those with key safeguarding roles have sufficient knowledge and training, improving joined up working and sharing best practice, and ensuring clearer external oversight and scrutiny of how children in prison are treated.

The report also includes a number of important recommendations that will directly affect the rights of children and young people.

Looked after status for all children in custody

We welcome the Chief Social Worker’s recommendation that all children in custody are “looked after children”.

For more than 20 years, our legal team has advised, advocated for and represented children in custody who have not received the social care support to which they were legally entitled. We have heard over and over again from children whose files were closed by their social worker on the day that they were sentenced. Some were left to face years in prison without this support. Others had got in touch because they were being released and had nowhere to live; they had to start over, often with a new social worker, rather than benefiting from continuity and careful release planning throughout their sentence.

This recommendation would mean that all children in custody, regardless of whether they are on remand or sentenced, would be entitled as a matter of law to practical and financial support from their home local authority. Importantly, this support would continue as they make the transition from childhood into young adulthood, whether in the community or in custody.

It would also mean that all children in custody would have an independent person, with statutory responsibilities as a corporate parent, who can challenge and offer scrutiny when decisions are about them – for example, if they are segregated, or when force is used improperly against them, or if they raise concerns about their treatment. Our legal team has seen on many occasions how powerful an intervention can be when an invested and caring professional in the community is the one raising concerns. 

However, as the Chief Social Worker notes, this change in legal status is not enough to generate the change that is needed.  Our legal team receives calls and emails every week about failures by local authorities to support children even when legal duties are owed: children in custody who don’t have enough money to keep in touch with family; children who are days, and sometimes hours, away from being released and still don’t know where they will be living; children who are being encouraged not to go into the local authority’s care when they are released, without being told this reduces their right to support in the longer term.

The government recognises in its response that this recommendation has practical and financial implications. There is also a need, however, to encourage a change of culture and practice so that children in custody are seen by all professionals as worthy of being supported, curious about and believed.

Complaints on behalf of children

We welcome the Chief Social Worker’s recommendation that trusted adults can raise formal complaints on behalf of children. The government has accepted this recommendation, but it needs to go further.

Every week our legal team talks to children and young people who have been treated improperly or unfairly and have cause for complaint. Often they can’t complain, however, because they struggle to read or write, or don’t want to complain because they don’t think they will receive a meaningful response or are scared that it will make things worse.

When we make a complaint, and particularly when it concerns a young adult, we are told that our complaint falls outside the policy, and that the prison has up to four weeks, rather than one week, to respond.

We welcome the government’s commitment to amend its policy in respect of children, but it must go further to allow trusted adults to make formal complaints on behalf of young adults and other vulnerable people in prison.

The use of pain

Although there is much to welcome in the report, it is striking that it does not comment on the appropriateness of using force against children or the ethical concerns about pain-inducing techniques. The report recommends that there are robust arrangements in place for independent and expert scrutiny of restraint, but it does not grapple with 2019 findings of the Independent Inquiry into Sexual Abuse that the use of pain compliance techniques should be seen as a form of child abuse, and that they are likely to contribute to a culture of violence, which may increase the risk of child sexual abuse.

Instead, since then, the government has authorised the use of PAVA spray against children in custody. We continue to ask questions about the use of PAVA against children ahead of a review of its use later this year. It is not credible for the government to say that it will ensure that all possible lessons are learnt from Medomsley, while it continues to inflict pain on children deliberately.

As the Chief Social Worker notes, it is incumbent upon the government and, in turn, HM Prison and Probation Service in partnership with local authority children’s services, to make change happen. Too much time and public money is spent repeating the same messages of systemic failure. Without adequate investment and support for radical reform and its implementation, even the best ideas will founder.

A ’Youth Custody Transformation Plan’ is to be published in the autumn, setting out plans for the future of the children’s custodial estate. We will wait to see whether the government takes this advice.

Sinead MacCann
Managing Solicitor 

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