Monday 29 January 2024
A year ago today, a girl – then aged 12 – with severe emotional and behavioural difficulties was put into a locked hospital room under a court order for her own protection. For the past 12 months, most human contact has been through a hatch in the door of her room.
“Becky” is a victim of a UK-wide scarcity of regulated secure accommodation for children.
Just 128 welfare beds in 13 secure children’s homes in England are available to local authorities, which hold the statutory duty to care for and protect children who require this type of specialist therapeutic care.
A severe shortfall in supply means that family judges are regularly told that between 30 and 70-plus children in urgent need are chasing one or two places.
Many end up placed with unregulated private providers costing thousands of pounds per week, or, as in Becky’s case, find that no one is willing to take them.
For highly vulnerable and traumatised children who pose a risk to themselves and others, a placement in a secure therapeutic setting is their best – sometimes only – chance of healing and reintegration into society.
Tortoise has been following Becky’s plight since she was deprived of her liberty last January.
In a hearing last week, her court-appointed guardian told the country’s most senior family judge that she was “very worried” that the girl had been “warehoused” over the last year.
The girl’s incarceration, which began when she was aged 12, has, the guardian said, “danced on the boundary” of breaching her human right not to be arbitrarily detained.
Becky has attempted suicide on a number of occasions while locked away.
The seriousness of the failure to provide her with safe and therapeutic care was underscored last October when the case was transferred to Sir Andrew McFarlane, the president of the family division of the high court.
In a statement submitted last week, Becky’s guardian said the child’s experience over the past 12 months had been “appalling”. She continued: “Her every waking moment and interaction has been watched; her physical health and fitness has declined; her education, for a girl of some promise, has stuttered.”
In multiple hearings over the past 12 months, every state agency involved in Becky’s care has agreed that being locked up alone in a bare room is actively causing her harm. But: despite the risks to Becky’s life, no regulated secure children’s home has been willing to take her, and nor has any unregistered provider.
One private children’s home, Olive Tree Residential Childcare, initially agreed to provide a bespoke placement for Becky, but pulled out with a few days’ notice.
The judge described that decision as “a disaster”; on hearing the news Becky became distraught and seriously self-harmed.
Becky’s mother has repeatedly urged that her child should be allowed home with specialist staff on hand – but the family home is not believed to be suitable for the necessary support staff on site.
Since the autumn, Becky has been permitted very occasional home visits: her first, in September, caused Becky to “cry with happiness”, her mother said.
“She lay on her bed looking at her things, had her first bath in nine months… We made chicken dinner, listened to music, had a dance and watched War Horse together. We got back on transport and Becky walked into the [hospital] without any issues,” she said.
Further brief visits home have, according to Becky’s mother, gone well. She says Becky has had five social workers since 2022, with staff sickness meaning no social worker was allocated to her case for several months. Her current social worker only has Becky on her caseload due to the complexity of her case.
What’s more. After 51 weeks of searching for secure accommodation, Staffordshire council told the court last week that they now intend to create a bespoke placement of their own.
This will involve renting several properties exclusively for Becky and her family to live in, with five-to-one staffing on-site. At the same time, the council is renting and adapting a second fall-back property in case problems arise with the first.
The next hearing is on 16 February. If Becky has not moved by then, she will have been locked away from her family and society for 383 days, and counting.
Olive Tree Residential is a company set up in May 2021 and owned by Skippers Haulage, a trucking and aggregates business based on a farm in Staffordshire. One of Olive Tree’s company directors, Zia Zamir, says he was summarily removed as a director on 4 July 2023 for reasons he does not understand. Becky’s placement was cancelled by Olive Tree in a letter dated 11 July. Mr Zamir says “the placement should never have been pulled.”
A check on Companies House confirms that Olive Tree Residential Childcare still exists. Tortoise Media visited Skippers Haulage to ask for an interview but owner Ronald Skipper was unwilling to speak on the record for “legal reasons”.
Last week, Skipper’s wife told Tortoise that the company was no longer trading and all monies received from Staffordshire council for Becky’s placement have been repaid. Meanwhile, in the midst of suing Skippers Haulage in a dispute about his dismissal as director, Zia Zamir has set up another residential care company, Bayleaf Care Ltd, which intends to provide placements for children, its website says, “who have experienced severe trauma”.
Bayleaf Care is currently going through the registration process with Ofsted.