Recommendation 29

HM Government Accepted

Accept. We recognise that change was required to make improvements in the public sector YOIs and have developed a comprehensive plan to address the concerns raised by the inspectorate over the last decade. Site-specific action plans called roadmaps to effective practice have been developed to drive performance improvements by the Youth Custody Service (YCS) in partnership with NHS England, education providers and psychology services in public sector YOIs. These roadmaps (which are not for the public domain) were implemented in April 2025. Each roadmap is over a three-year period in recognition of building foundations first and taking a trauma-informed approach. The roadmaps focus on critical outcomes, such as safety, time out of room, behaviour management, and education and every public sector YOI has a plan with clear performance metrics to help drive change and improve relationships between children and staff. Since the implementation of the roadmaps, we have seen improvement over many different areas in the public YOIs: • Time out of room: we see positive movement in this an all three public YOIs which is encouraging progress in the sites that were the worst performing. In all sites some children are receiving above 8 hours out of room. • Self-harm: there has been a decrease in the three public sector YOIs for self-harm in the past 12 months (November 2024-October 2025). • Violent incidents: there has been a decrease in assault incidents and decrease of assaults on staff and the rate of use of force also seen a reduction in the last 3 months (August 2025-October 2025). • The use of pain-inducing techniques also reduced in the past 12 months. • The rate of staff absence has reduced over the past 12 months. PAVA is only be used as a last resort in response to an immediate threat of serious harm, not as a behaviour management tool. Any use of PAVA being drawn or deployed are reviewed by Governors, Ministers, an independent review panel, and reported to the Director of Children’s service in the host and home local authority. The policy will be formally reviewed in 12 months, and it is too early to make an assessment on its effectiveness. The outcomes will be made available to the JSC once the review is complete. This is expected for September 2026. The primary method to improve the wellbeing of children and staff within the youth estate is to deliver the Framework for Integrated Care, known as ‘SECURE STAIRS’. This is delivered in partnership with NHS England and includes improvements in areas such as conflict resolution and specialist psychological interventions. It is integral to improving safety within the youth estate. A new Safety framework has been also embedded within sites that underpins the processes and provides direction in the strategical approach in reducing self-harm and violence in the youth estate. Several children in custody have used ROTL for learning, e.g. studying in an academy school, completing driving lessons and completed theory tests for driving. An internal Remand Taskforce chaired by Minister Richards has been established to drive down the remand population in the youth estate and stabilise the population. Partially Accept. We are committed to ensuring that children have the maximum possible time out of their rooms. We will consider introducing a statutory minimum for time out of room in legislation, and will assess whether legislation is the most effective means to achieve this objective. The Youth Custody Service (YCS) already work to an expectation of providing each child with 8-hour time out of room per day, as part of its three-year roadmap to effective practice. Time out of room is monitored centrally on a regular basis and is improving at a steady state across all sites. Balancing a cohort with increasingly violent offences and the need to keep all children safe through complex keep-apart processes, is often the main barrier to meeting this minimum. This 8-hour minimum per day is currently met in Secure Children’s Homes, Oakhill Secure Training Centre and Parc YOI. Although Feltham, Werrington and Wetherby are not achieving this as an average, they do have children who are out of their rooms for 8 hours or more.