Section two The NPM in 2019–20
The CCE continued to work with the
Children’s Commissioners for Wales, Scotland
and Northern Ireland to consult on emerging
issues and concerns regarding children in
detention or deprived of their liberty across
the four nations. The CCE has also engaged
with officials from the UK government’s Justice
and Health and Social Care departments
to represent the experiences of children
in detention.
The Care Inspectorate (CI) for Scotland
continued to conduct unannounced
inspections of secure accommodation for
children throughout the year. This included
inspecting detention settings and nontraditional detention settings such as care
homes. In line with the introduction of
new human rights-based health and social
care standards, the CI has developed new
quality frameworks for all service types,
including services for children. CI’s new
quality assurance framework will be used
by inspectors when monitoring care homes
for children and young people. The new
framework has a greater focus on the
human rights of people in detention.
Criminal Justice Inspection Northern
Ireland (CJINI) developed its police custody
inspection methodology in 2019–20. It
worked with other NPM members to develop
the new methodology, which aims to
examine the treatment of detainees in police
custody more thoroughly by looking more
closely at detainees’ police custody records.
Together with RQIA, CJINI released its report
on the safety of prisoners in Northern
Ireland.190 The report highlighted areas for the
Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS) to focus
on to ensure better safety of people in prison.
In November 2019, Jacqui Durkin was
appointed as the new Chief Inspector for
criminal justice in Northern Ireland.
In 2019–2020, the Care Quality Commission
(CQC) engaged in Independent Care
Education and Treatment Reviews (ICETRs),
following recommendations made in its
interim review of restraint, seclusion and
segregation (see ‘Secure hospitals for people
with learning disabilities and/or autism’,
p.16). CQC Mental Health Act reviewers
provide expert input to these reviews, which
are independently chaired, with work led by
the Department for Health and Social Care.
Healthcare Inspectorate Wales (HIW)
began planning a national review of mental
health crisis units across Wales. In previous
HIW inspection reports, mental health crisis
units were identified as settings requiring
improvement. The purpose of HIW’s national
review will be to identify themes, trends and
concerns across these units. The fieldwork
for this review will resume once COVID-19
restrictions have lifted.
190 CJINI and RQIA, November 2019, The Safety or Prisoners Held by the Northern Ireland Prison Service: A Joint Inspection by
Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland and the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority http://www.cjini.org/
getattachment/3a70dd41-7bb3-430d-9901-3ed7a191cf94/The-Safety-of-Prisoners.aspx [accessed 27/08/2020]
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