HC Deb 11 July 1963 vol 680 c169W
61. Mr. Gardner

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what investigations have been made into the allegation that a 16-year-old girl had been placed in solitary confinement for nine weeks at an approved school; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Brooke

The girl in question was at the time not in an approved school but in a children's home run by a religious order, where she had been placed by the managers of an approved school after she had absconded and other efforts to settle her had failed. Her behaviour in the home was having a bad effect on other girls, and the staff of the home found it necessary to ask for her to be moved elsewhere and to segregate her from the other girls while this was arranged. She was not placed in solitary confinement, and was not locked in; she was forbidden to mix with other girls, but she mixed and worked with members of the staff.