Children's care and justice – possible changes to the law: consultation - easy read

Placing a child in secure care

There are lots of ways a child can be placed in secure care. This might involve the children's hearings system, police, criminal justice system or social work.

These can be complicated. This is mainly for 16/17 year olds. They sometimes have to go to a Young Offenders Institution as they have not been to the children's hearings system before.

When a child is going to be placed in secure care, the council or the Scottish Government will arrange this. Different areas have different ways of deciding when a child is to be placed in secure care.

There are five secure care centres in Scotland. Their managers decide if they can offer a bed to meet a child's needs. This means across Scotland we do not know how many children are being considered for secure care. We do not know about children's experiences of secure care.

There are times when a child needs to be placed in secure care but there are no beds available. We want to make sure that the children who are placed in secure care are those who need it the most.

We are wondering if there should be a joined up way of deciding which children should be placed in secure care.

There is a Secure Welfare Coordination Unit in England and Wales that all councils use to arrange secure care placements.

In Northern Ireland there is a panel of professionals who are involved in making decisions about placing children in secure care across the whole country.