Working in Secure Accommodation
Mark Smith is a lecturer in the School of Social and Political Studies at The University of Edinburgh and worked for almost 20 years in residential child care, latterly as principal for secure accommodation in Edinburgh…
A few years ago I met a former lecturer at a conference. ‘What are you doing now’ he asked. ‘I’m principal of a secure unit’ I told him. He reflected that he had done some of his most satisfying professional work in a secure setting. ‘Yes’ I agreed, not meaning to sound trite; ‘you’ve got a captive audience.’
And that’s the reality. You do have a captive audience. When children and young people’s behaviour is deemed to be risk to themselves or others they can be placed, by children’s hearings or occasionally by the courts, in secure units where they are kept under lock and key, even to the point of being locked in their bedrooms at night. Working in such a setting doesn’t suit everyone. Some can baulk at the physical act of locking a door on a child. But it’s that act that defines secure accommodation. The kids, for the most part, aren’t significantly different from those I worked with in open residential schools or children’s homes. But the fact that they’re locked up introduces its own dynamics to the work.
Secure accommodation is an intense environment. In other residential child care settings, when things start to get on top of kids, they can take off and cool their heels for a bit. Such a release valve isn’t an option in secure accommodation. Staff need to deal with kids’ frustration, anger and pain in very immediate ways. And if kids can’t walk away when the going gets tough, neither can staff. They too are locked in for the duration of their shift, rarely able to make time for the quiet cup of coffee or fly cigarette that can afford the chance to draw breath.{mospagebreak}
This isn’t to paint too bleak a picture of secure accommodation. The very intensity of the work also provides its greatest challenges and opportunities. It demands an ability to think on your feet and for many staff there’s great satisfaction to be had in the quick-fire nature of the work. Basic processes are short-cutted. Workers need to be able to establish relationships almost immediately and to use these relationships to build up a picture of a kid, their hopes and desires, what makes them tick and what holds them back. They need to then use that information to decide what needs to be done to get kids out of secure accommodation as quickly as possible – because that’s the task. There’s tremendous reward to be had, too, in seeing youngsters with reputations that go before them very quickly reverting to the engaging, likeable and often pretty scared kids that they are, once they start to feel safe within the rhythms, routines and relationships they experience in secure accommodation and put the bravado to the side.
In many respects, secure accommodation should be a kind of ‘free-place’ for kids, where they can put a distance between themselves and past experiences. The self-defeating messages that are part and parcel of their pasts pull them down and prevent them from moving on in their lives. It’s the job of secure accommodation to help young people re-tell their stories in ways that begin to include competence, hope, and a sense that they are worthy of redemption. Those who work alongside them are companions on this journey. This involves hanging in with kids when they encounter the inevitable hurdles and setbacks. It also involves working with others in their wider families and communities to enable their transition out of secure accommodation. It’s not an easy place to ply your trade. There are failures, which can have you ask questions about why you should continue. But there are also the connections you make with kids, where you sense some sort of breakthrough. And them you know why you’re in this kind of work.
