Section two Focus on detention issues to 24 hours in a special cell or room (YOI Rule 51). The YOI Rules prohibit governors from imposing cellular confinement as a punishment (YOI Rule 60 (1) (f))71. In YOIs, children would be held in a designated ‘care and separation unit’, but may also be isolated in their rooms if on basic regime or ‘losses’. Secure Training Centre Rules and regulations relating to children’s homes73 govern isolation practices in STCs and SCHs in England and Wales. Some individual establishments have their own policies, which may require more detailed recording of instances of isolation that might not be recorded in other establishments. 72 In STCs and SCHs, NPM members found both formal and informal isolation occurring in children’s own cells/rooms or other areas, including corridors, education rooms and health care units. Isolation practices in SCHs are usually defined as elected, directed or enforced, following guidance developed by the secure accommodation network74. Directed and enforced separation are used as part of behaviour management techniques and to prevent injury to the child or another, or to prevent significant damage. In STCs, isolation often occurred as a consequence of restraint. Recently implemented children’s homes regulations and associated quality standards have made it clear that a further restriction of liberty in secure children’s homes constitutes a restraint.75 Specific issues identified through monitoring Terminology Isolation and/or solitary confinement were a main feature or defining characteristic of the following practices and ‘statuses’: • YOIs: separation, care and separation, unemployed disruptive, single unlock, loss of association, ‘losses’, basic for violence, basic (regime), reintegration and support; • STCs: single separation, time out, time away, removal from association; • SCHs: group separation (where a child is separated from the rest of the group but continues to engage in one-to-one activities with staff), risk management. Length of isolation: formal and informal practices The majority of instances of formal isolation in STCs and SCHs are short (less than an hour), although NPM members found informal practices, where children are isolated from their peers but have some limited interaction with staff, that lasted for several days. In one YOI, the average period of formal segregation was nine days, with the shortest recorded lasting one day and the longest 60 days. NPM members identified practices amounting to solitary confinement outside formal isolation facilities. In many cases, isolation outside the formal care and separation unit lasted for more than 22 hours a day, and could last for several weeks. 71 See also: Prison Service Order 0101, The Young Offenders Institution (Amendment) Rules 2000. 72 The Secure Training Centre Rules 1998, at: www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1998/472/contents/made (accessed 14/10/15). 73 The Children’s Homes (England) Regulations 2015, at: www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/541/contents/made; The Children (Secure Accommodation) Regulations 1991, at: www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1991/1505/regulation/6/made (accessed 14/10/15). 74 See: http://www.securechildrenshomes.org.uk/secure-accommodation-network/ (accessed 14/10/15). 75 Department for Education (2015), Guide to the children’s homes regulations, including the quality standards, paragraph 9.42. 31