Courts have no choice but to ‘lock up’ vulnerable children in ‘unregulated’ and ‘highly inappropriate’ accommodations, according to England’s top family judge. Sir James Munby laments the lack of safe and supportive care plans as ‘a shocking moral failure.’
The number of applications for ‘deprivation of liberty’ (DoL) orders is on the rise. In 2017-18, local authorities made 102 applications to impose a DoL order. By 2023-24, this figure had risen to 1,234, with cases involving children as young as 7 being placed an average of 55 miles away from their original home.
The crisis, described as having all the ‘elements of a tragedy’, is exacerbated by the ‘chronic shortage’ of secure local council units to safely accommodate children. Around 50% of DoL applications in 2022-23 led to children being separated from their families and subjected to constant surveillance in remote, unregulated properties such as holiday homes, Premier Inns, and in some appalling cases, canal boats. This isolating experience, branded as ‘traumatising and depressing’ by Dame Rachel de Souza, Children’s Commissioner for England, severely impacts young people’s education and life chances.
Advocacy on this issue has been fervent, so no one can claim that this ‘scandal’ is a hidden one. In 2021, Lady Black of the supreme court criticised the DoL framework as an ‘imperfect stop gap’, lacking any real ‘long term solution’ for the complex needs of vulnerable children. Sir Andrew McFarlane, Munby’s successor as President of the High Court’s family division, accused Education Secretary Gillian Keeghan of ‘complacency bordering on cynicism’ for the inadequate planning and provision of accommodations for at-risk children.
