Kids run wild in offenders' home

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It could be the room of any 14-year-old girl. The bright yellow duvet has been thrown onto the bed, a towel dries over the chair and there are posters of Craig David, the latest pop sensation, on the walls. There are photographs of her family, while her clothes - a white sweat shirt, track suit trousers and a turquoise patterned top - are neatly folded. It's the sort of outfit girls wear out at the weekend. But she won't be going anywhere.

Her room is part of Stamford House, one of the most notorious secure institutions for young offenders in the country. She is there because she is alleged to have been involved in a brutal attack, and around her are children who have committed rapes, murders and other violent acts.

Security at the home, in Shepherd's Bush, is designed to be so tight that even the supply of paper clips is strictly monitored - such is the occupants' propensity to harm themselves and others.

There are another nine identical rooms for girls, and 16 at the opposite end of the building for the boys. All of the cell-like spaces are lockable from the outside and have intercoms so staff can speak to residents. It's dangerous work. Staff are ordered that on no account should they enter the rooms of the youngsters alone.

Stamford House was designed to be at the sharp end of a revolution in the way we deal with dangerous, violent and disturbed young people under 15 years of age. Costing £7 million, it opened last year on the site of a previous secure institution of the same name.

But the hopes of those behind the project, especially the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham - which runs it - have been dashed.

Last week the Evening Standard revealed how Government officials conducting the first full inspection of the new site found youngsters smoked drugs before retiring to their rooms to watch X-rated shows on cable, sometimes until 1am. Some of those given such free reign were as young as 12.

Teenagers arrived late for lessons in the education centre - some did not show up at all - and, when they did, the level of classroom discipline left much to be desired. Inspectors heard that, on one occasion, a girl performed a sexual act on a youth during a supervised lesson.

However, perhaps the most worrying discovery during January's inspection was that the secure unit was anything but secure. The block reserved for particularly vulnerable teenagers was condemned as "not fit to safely house anyone".

These findings were humiliating for Hammersmith and Fulham but they were also a devastating blow to care professionals around the country. They had been led to believe that the new Stamford House would be vastly different from its predecessor, which had a reputation for appalling management and wretched security.

One expert told the Evening Standard: "The unit has had a poor reputation for some time among social workers. It is difficult work but the damning fact has been that there are two large local authority secure units in London - Stamford and Orchard Lodge, run by Southwark - but Orchard always had a better reputation. When the new unit was built, the underlying rationale was that there had been an enduring cultural problem and that one way of overcoming that was to start from scratch. But the same reputation has begun to surface again."

This has serious implications, not just for Stamford House but also for the young people it seeks to cater for. It has emerged that some social services chiefs privately consider Stamford House to be such poor value for money that they would rather see young offenders go to prisons like the young offenders institution in Feltham, Middlesex.

One source said: "A social services director told me that he had a 15-year-old who was uncontrollable but that sending him to Stamford would cost his borough more than £2,500 a week. He had realised that if the kid was just left to the court, he would go to Feltham and that wouldn't cost the borough anything. He is a social worker and instinctively wouldn't want to do that. But he also has a responsibility in terms of the budget. He also took the view that things at Stamford House were such that the kid wouldn't be much worse off in prison."

The key to Stamford's problems is staffing. For the past three years Stamford House has had no permanent director. With a lack of any permanent senior managers, staff morale has plummeted. Workers have frequently been late and absenteeism has soared - with the result that youngsters have been left unsupervised for long periods of time. The unit has leaned heavily on agency staff. Indeed, some initially considered unsuitable have inadvertently been re-employed at a later date.

Government inspectors also noted more serious consequences, such as the lack of medical, specialist psychiatric and psychological input. They were worried that there was no female doctor for the young women.

So why can't Stamford attract enough of the right staff? Essentially because it is blighted by its own reputation. Since the new building's inception, managers have been trying to lay the ghosts of the unit's inglorious past. But they have found there is almost too much to live down. One police officer, who dealt with the old Stamford House in the Seventies and Eighties, said: "We called it the 'hard-core Butlins'. Some custody officers used to say it was not secure accommodation at all."

Officials still talk about one senior staff member who wore a flak jacket. The problems were so serious that, at one stage, staff refused all admissions for 24 hours after complaining that violence had erupted "on a tremendous scale". One employee said he had been attacked 13 times in a single day.

Youngsters had to be moved from the main residential block to other parts of the complex, such as the recreation centre, and it was while such a transfer was taking place that 16-year-old murderer Eyjolfur Andrews escaped after a struggle with staff in 1993.

That year there were five escapes in four months, prompting the then Tory leader Gerald Wombwell to say: "It appears that it is a sort of bed-and-breakfast, where you can just pop in and out as you please. It isn't a sieve, it's a colander."

However, the air of shambles goes back further. In 1963, 155 boys absconded. A year later the chairman of the South East London Juvenile Court criticised the home after hearing how one boy had escaped four times. In 1966, it emerged that Michael Webber, a junior master employed to supervise boys at meal times, was himself a borstal boy on the run from the law. Such a long-term propensity for scandal has made social workers and high-calibre managers wary of setting foot in Stamford House. In the face of such an intractable problem, managers from Orchard Lodge, the similar unit with a superior reputation, were drafted into Stamford House in April, and they say the running of the centre has improved significantly.

But some responsible for monitoring arrangements believe the bulk of the work is still to be done. Adronie Alford, Hammersmith and Fulham Tory group social services spokesman, said: "A lot of these children have done terrible things and they need a structured existence. They have not been given that. The attitude has been too conciliatory. "

Antony Lillis, a Hammersmith councillor and Mrs Alford's predecessor as Tory social services spokesman, visited Stamford House in June. He said: "Around £7 million was spent on a new unit and this was supposed to be a fresh start. But it just hasn't happened."

Mr Lillis accepts his authority has tried hard to improve Stamford House but said it must now succeed. "I accept that it is difficult to get staff but these problems are over three years old. There are no excuses. The buck stops with the council."

 

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