Outrageous! We have to do better.

[pickledandpuzzled]

This article has shocked me on several levels. Surely it wouldn’t cost much to set up special provision for girls, given how few of them there are? How can traumatised girls be managed in among the masses of boys?
Sorry for the apple link. I don’t know how to get to it without it.

https://apple.news/AWMv7P_PXTO-jznJdi8mpOg

The link worked fine for my android tablet, it took me to the report (most read at the time of posting) on the BBC news site.

I'm genuinely shocked. I'm assuming it's a natal female.

Costs a fortune to confine these children there, I suspect the bulk of the money is not being spent directly on the kids or on the staff who interact with them on a daily basis. There does seem to be a bit of bloat in the management level. As it appears to be so poorly run, you have to wonder what we're paying them for.

It’s tragic. And counter productive. Those girls have no chance of recovery after that.

I mean, I’m not thrilled about the boys, but effectively the system is designed around them because of the numbers. The girls are effectively collateral damage.

Appalling, surely there should be a specialist unit for girls rather than housed with boys. I thought there were international laws on mixed prisons

I don’t blame the men involved- though obviously any boundary blurring like this is open to abuse.
And a child that’s trying to make ligatures from their clothes should be in a mental health facility, I would have thought.

How distressing to know this is how our society is treating its most vulnerable wrongdoers. A suicidal female child held down and stripped by adult men.

It’s chilling to read. Everyone seems at breaking point.

But as it’s on this board I have to also point out that the BBC are supposedly using the right sex descriptors and I hope the BBC see why it is important. The most vulnerable are the ones that get hurt the most.

The disconnect between the shock of this happening to these girls but then there’s policemen being able to call themselves policewomen and do the same. And it’s supposed to be ok.

I just cannot fathom how they think a girl in this position is ever going to feel better? There can't be that many girls held in such secure units. How are they not spending some of that quarter of a million it apparently costs per child to hire the very best female staff?

Yes and as it's this board, it also bears remembering that children in the care of the state have really poor outcomes. Yet trans activists would see more children in the care system, if their parents didn't agree to affirm their gender IDs (I know this is not foster care but I'm willing to bet the traumatic life experiences behind kids in secure units and kids in care are often similar).

The Self ID issue for people with responsibility for children would just add another layer of abuse and trauma from the gas lighting.

It’s important though, that this is not acceptable in its own right without that extra layer of trauma and abuse added.

In Scotland women prisoners were housed in YOIs while the new women's prison was built. It just isn't good enough to treat girls like this.

I think this is more common than the report makes out, and if you add in women and girls in mental health institutions, an almost everyday occurance.

A couple of legal judgements that show the current state of secure accommodation and services for girls. Neither are pleasant reading.
https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2023/2494.html&query=(%22Secure+accommodation%22)
https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2023/2667.html&query=(%22Secure+accommodation%22)

"There are seven girls imprisoned in England and Wales. When Wetherby was inspected in late 2023, three were held there - a small fraction of the institution's 165 inmates.
Wetherby saw almost 900 incidents of self-harm in the space of a year - the highest of any prison in England and Wales - and more than half were accounted for by the three girls."

This is shocking

I have to say I'm not surprised. I have a SEN child with violent and challenging behaviour and have made connections with many parents of kids with similar behaviours. Our kids are just constantly restrained and locked in small rooms. Many have come home with bruises or complaints of sprain like injury from being restrained. There is no attempt to understand why the behaviour is happening (unmet SEN needs) it's strait to punishment and when they then meltdown it's restrain them and lock them up. Kids who soil being pinned down and forcefully changed. This is happening is special schools that are there specifically for these kids. I views one recently with 36 kids on roll with 3 isolation rooms they use multiple times a day. So I know terrible treatment happens to our diagnosed vulnerable SEN kids it then follows that 'criminal' children would be getting it even worse as their parents can't pull them out to protect them. Heart breaking.

Some on this thread might be interested in this https://howardleague.org/move-girls-out-of-wetherby-prison/