Culture Society, Identity and Belonging
It is a “national scandal” that a distressed and volatile 13 year-old girl has been locked in a hospital room for nine months because there is no placement anywhere in the country that will take her, a high court judge said yesterday.
Mrs Justice Lieven deplored the conditions of solitary confinement in which Becky (not her real name) has been held since January, and said the state was “inflicting serious psychological harm” on her “every day”.
Referring to potential breaches of Becky’s human rights – which were raised by her court-appointed guardian at a previous hearing – the judge said: “We can’t go on like this. I wish somebody would take this case to [the European Court of Human Rights] and we can see what Strasberg thinks about confining a 13 year-old girl in solitary confinement when she has committed no crime.”
At an earlier hearing, the same judge said that despite Becky having done nothing wrong, the state was “treating her worse than we would a murderer.”
Becky has severe behavioural and psychological difficulties. She is currently accommodated on her own in a locked room in a mental health facility. She has no contact with other children and little access to the outdoors. All professionals agree this is not just unsuitable but is actively causing her harm.
Her story featured in the Tortoise investigation Children Locked Away: Britain’s Modern Bedlam which was published in May. Tortoise has continued to follow her story, observing numerous private family court hearings at which dozens of professionals from Staffordshire children’s services, North Staffordshire NHS Trust and her court-appointed guardian have struggled to find any safe solution for Becky, while her emotional and physical states have progressively, and sometimes catastrophically, deteriorated.
In yesterday’s court hearing, the judge said she was “despairing of the system” which cannot offer Becky a placement in a regulated therapeutic setting anywhere in England. In all the months the child has been deprived of her liberty by court order, no unregulated setting has proved able to accommodate her either.
An emergency court hearing was called in July, six months into Becky’s incarceration. A specialist provider, Olive Tree Residential Childcare, which had agreed to create a bespoke placement so Becky could leave the locked seclusion room, had just sent a letter to the council cancelling her bed a matter of days before she was due to move in.
The reason was an inability to provide the level of expert care required, despite assurances having been given to Staffordshire council when approached for a placement. In fact, members of Olive Tree staff had already met up with Becky to help her build trusting relationships that would ease her transfer to her new placement.
The withdrawal of the Olive Tree bed was, the judge said, “a disaster” for Becky, who exhibited severe distress including self-harm when informed. The local authority acknowledged it was “a devastating outcome”.
According to the CEO, Olive Tree Residential Childcare is no longer offering placements to children and the company’s Ofsted registration had been surrendered.
Becky’s mother has consistently advocated for her daughter to come home, with support from specialist staff to help her manage any dysregulated behaviours. Court documents show that Becky’s presentation has generally been calmer while in her mother’s care.
All professionals have been reluctant to consider this solution, despite the judge noting at the July hearing how “the strong organisations have already been asked and refused (to take Becky) so we are now looking at the on-the-edge, managerially precarious providers, whereas we have somebody on screen (Becky’s mother) who is terribly committed to Becky. Surely we should all be doing the most we can to help her look after her own child?”
Nine months on from Becky first being locked into a room on her own, with no placement anywhere in the country available or willing to take her, Mrs Justice Lieven yesterday decided that Becky was suffering greater risk of harm in the care of the state than she would face in a trial return to her mother.
“I’m going to decide,” the judge said. “I will take the risk. Becky is going home.”
