§ Captain Orrasked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland whether he will make a statement about the new interdenominational 398W remand home and training school for young offenders; and, in particular, what accommodation it is expected to provide.
§ Mr. David HowellThe new remand home and training school will provide two important new facilities for the treatment of young offenders in Northern Ireland.
It will incorporate an assessment unit with a specially trained staff of teachers, social workers, psychologists and visiting psychiatrists. The unit will report, over a four-week period, on boys whom the courts consider might require a lengthy period of residential training. These reports will assist the courts in selecting appropriate forms of treatment, and the treatment agencies in formulating training programmes directed at individual needs.
There will also be a special training unit, with staff qualified to provide intensive training in secure conditions for boys who have proved themselves unsuited to training in the open conditions of ordinary training schools.
The school will receive boys of all religions. Its staff will be drawn from different religious groups and it will be managed by a board drawn from the senior staff and management boards of the four existing schools.
The school will operate in temporary accommodation until purpose-designed buildings are ready. In its temporary phase, the school will provide 40 places, 20 in the assessment unit and 20 in the special training unit. In its permanent form, there will be 70 places: 36 places, of which eight will be for girls, in the assessment unit and 34 places, of which eight will be for girls, in the special unit.