Families paid £500 a week to give remand youths a home

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Tower Hamlets council aims to cut prison overcrowding and give the youths positive role models while they await either trial or sentencing.

Social service chiefs believe the project will give the 10- to-17-year-olds a better chance of mending their ways than if they were in a detention centre.

They say the children will be carefully screened before being recommended for participation and the courts will have to approve each case.

A spokesman for the council said: "Remand foster care can be the difference in a young person leading a life of crime or looking forward to a bright future.

"Custody will have a destabilising effect for most people, but particularly on young people, and is not the most appropriate place for them to stay as they await trial or sentencing.

"Being a remand foster carer is extremely challenging and often difficult but can be very rewarding and make a real difference to someone's life. These are young people in stressful circumstances and can be extremely vulnerable during this period. Remand foster carers will give them someone to look up to - perhaps for the first time in their lives."

Carers will be fully trained and given access to emergency hotlines and insurance against any damage to their homes.

The scheme has been tried in other parts of the country, including Kent and Nottinghamshire, but was hampered by the difficulty in finding volunteer families.

Tower Hamlets has already had one success when public order charges were dropped against a teenager who showed he had improved his behaviour after a foster placement.

Lib-Dem opposition group leader Dr Stephanie Eaton, who is a prison visitor, welcomed the initiative. She said: "Kids in custody are vulnerable and bare concrete cells should not be used to hold children before an appearance in court."