Section 4. Outcomes for children 7. Relationships between children and staff are warm, compassionate and helpful but staff maintain appropriate boundaries 4.88 In our survey, only a third of children who had been separated on a designated unit said they felt cared for by staff. In interviews, children who had experienced separation held mixed views about staff: some thought they were treated differently when separated while others thought there was no difference, depending on their relationship with staff. Staff entries in electronic case notes and rule 49 logs often focused on the practicalities of the daily regime that children had received rather than demonstrating good quality interaction with them through the day, or an understanding of their background, needs and targets and the staff role in helping the child to progress. There was little evidence that staff worked with children towards ending their separation. However, staff did sometimes acknowledge good behaviour. Examples included: ‘had an exceptional day’, ‘did well enough to earn himself some merits. Well done’, ‘displayed good behaviour throughout the day’, ‘has behaved all week and worked extremely hard in his outreach sessions’, ‘has asked to come out to clean the landing and help staff’, ‘Green card issued - Encouraging another YP to come down and helping to de-escalate a situation’. 4.89 Operational staff (prison officers) often appeared more focused on keeping the regime running than on the individual needs of separated children for regular, consistent interaction and activity. This was a particular issue when children were separated on normal residential units, with little staff appreciation of the frustration for children held in a small cell for most of the day. One entry on the electronic case records for a child who was separated and also being managed through ACCT illustrated this: X continues to tell us he’s bored but has had what he has been entitled to. The minimum regime provision of between 30 and 90 minutes a day out of cell was seen as the target to achieve, and there was little understanding of any child’s need for stimulus and interaction with other human beings. Staff on the wings placed more importance on meeting the daily requirements of the rule 49 separation process than understanding and addressing the issues that had led to children being separated. The latter was usually undertaken by specialist teams (such as conflict resolution, psychology or interventions staff) rather than staff on residential units, so children did not benefit from the valuable input that residential staff could have made. 38 4.90 Staff were often too busy to do more than facilitate a basic separation regime of daily exercise, shower and a telephone call, and possibly some outreach education. This limited their ability to spend time with and develop relationships with children. Children talked about this in their interviews. One said he appreciated that staff were busy but he only needed basic communication. Another said that while he could ask for cleaning materials every other day busy staff might not be able to facilitate this. One child said he saw outreach education for only around 10 minutes every few days and he would have liked more education but he knew staff were busy seeing other children. None of these were unreasonable requests, but the children’s perceptions were that staff did not have time to do them. Our observations during the site visits confirmed this. We saw some residential unit staff struggling to keep on top of all the tasks that needed to be done during core activity periods. At one site, staff appeared overwhelmed with the sheer number of children who were kept apart from others because of an unresolved conflict (often referred to as ‘keepaparts’) and one-to-one regimes they had to facilitate each day for separated children. Many staff wanted to do more but were unable to deliver even the basics of everyday life. 4.91 Across the sites we were told that children who were the most demanding got more staff attention to the detriment of others who were separated. We observed this during site visits, where we saw some staff giving time to responding to those who were loudest and Separation of children in young offender institutions