HC Deb 10 March 1993 vol 220 cc610-1W
Mr. Blunkett

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the oral statement by the Home Secretary of 2 March,Official Report, columns 139–42, if she will list the measures to be taken within her Department in relation to secure accommodation, care and control.

Mr. Yeo

We are proposing to implement a range of measures to strengthen existing policies. These will include

  • issuing guidance on measures of control in secure and other forms of children's residential accommodation;
  • ensuring that social services departments, working with others, take a consistent approach towards the control of juvenile offenders;
  • reinforcing the social services inspectorate's role in upholding rigorous standards in all forms of secure accommodation, including the new secure training centres;
  • amending regulations to enable private and voluntary providers to provide secure accommodation;
  • charging the Central Council for the Education and Training of Social Workers with ensuring that issues of control and standards of supervision of offenders are properly addressed in the training of social workers.

We will implement our commitment that local authorities provide an additional 60 to 65 secure places by 1995–96 for juvenile remands.

Mr. Cousins

To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will place in the Library copies of the correspondence between her Department and the city of Newcastle upon Tyne director of social services about the provision of additional local authority secure unit accommodation.

Mr. Yeo

There has been no such correspondence.

Mr. Cousins

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what were the numbers and occupancy rate of local authority secure unit places in each region over the last five years; how many children were in such accommodation each year; and what was the cause of their admission.

Mr. Yeo

Information held centrally about local authority secure units is published in "Children accommodated in secure units during the year ending 31 March 1991, England". The information published includes numbers accommodated in each secure unit at 31 March in total and by the legal status on admission, the number of places at 31 March in each unit and occupancy levels. The number of children accommodated in each former social services inspectorate region is also published.

Information is not collected about the circumstances of admission, other than the legal status.

Copies of the publication are held in the Library.