Dr. Maria Corbett:

There are 26 beds in special care, but only about 13 or 14 which can be opened at the moment because the staffing is not in place. There is significant demand for places. The difficulty is that children who are at home, in the community or in foster or residential care are waiting to get into special care but there is no in-between place for them to be sent. A high support unit could fill that gap. That might meet some children's needs and they may never need to move into secure or special care.

The other difficulty is that once a child is in special care, it is not easy to discharge them because there is nowhere for them to go. We need another high support unit on the other side. There are transition units on both sides. Staff face difficulties in terms of the financial element, including salary, but also in terms of their ability to go to work and feel they are making a difference. From the work we have done, we know some children are staying in special care for a very long time, up to two years, because there is nowhere else for them to move on to. In terms of the overall experience of a worker of dealing with a child who is supposed to be in a service for three months, which is the legal order, nine months would be a longer order.

There is no sense of achieving the aim, which is to stabilise the child and move him or her on. That is why high support is so important. It could take some of the children who will never need to get to special care and also give others somewhere to move on to.

On a centre for excellence, the three units are no longer fit for purpose physically. In one of the units where children live for a long period, they cannot open a window to get fresh air into the building. The creation of a new centre for excellence should have a secure unit on the campus and step-down high-support units nearby. In addition to having a deprivation of liberties special care secure unit, these high-support units would allow the child to experience what it is like not to be in a fully secure unit or a lesser unit. That child could then move between the two. That is the model. The models are there across Europe. There are some very good models in the UK. The setting would be looked at. Nature would be brought back into the setting and it would be made to feel like a therapeutic environment. The current units would need a lot to move them up in quality.