Section 4. Outcomes for children Section 4. Outcomes for children 4.1 At the time of our inspection, managers in all five YOIs had records of 64 children who were subject to separation under rule 49. This was more than one in 10 of the 606 children held in a YOI during the inspection. Across the estate, the number of days that these children had spent separated ranged from one to 89. There were 42 children separated on normal location and 22 who were separated on dedicated units. This figure is an underestimate as managers were not aware of all children who were separated. 4.2 Our inspection looked at outcomes for children who had experienced separation assessed against the specific detailed expectations that we developed for this review (see Appendix II). 1. Safe outcomes for separated children are supported by effective leadership and management 4.3 We found that national and local leaders did not share a consistent view of the purposes of using separation and how separation achieved those purposes, which was a fundamental failing. In the absence of a consistent purpose of separation, a variety of specialist units and models of separation have been developed. 4.4 The rationale for separating children in different types of locations (an enhanced support unit, a segregation unit, on normal location or within a designated landing on normal location) was not clear to us. Different establishments had differing models of separation which used some or all of these locations in different ways. None of the models currently delivered met our expectations, and the variety of different methods of separation had become unmanageable and led to poor implementation across all sites. 4.5 We found a lack of leadership at both national and local levels, such that it was not possible to ensure that children were only separated for appropriate reasons, and that when separated they received a decent regime, including education and meaningful human contact with staff. In addition, with the exception of Parc, local managers did not plan effectively for children to reintegrate to a more normal regime. 4.6 While separation of children in designated units was always authorised, we found that several children were separated by frontline residential staff without management authorisation. This happened when staff failed to tell managers about children who were separated pending an adjudication, or when they did not recognise the cumulative impact of different punishments implemented at the same time as separation (for example loss of association or being on the lowest level of the incentives scheme while not attending education). As local managers were not aware of what was happening to these children, they were unable to ensure they received what they were entitled to. 4.7 The children’s estate has a significant number of management safeguards designed to protect children in separation. However, we found that adherence to these safeguards had all too often become cursory and that they were not fulfilling their stated role. Daily and weekly checks of separated children by managers, doctors, nurses, chaplains and governing governors did not always take place, and chaplains and nurses often did not insist on the cell door being opened during their visits, which impeded contact with the child and observations of their condition. Area manager authorisations of separation were often not returned to the establishments on time, and in some cases were completely absent. However, our main concern was that in most cases we could not find evidence that these safeguards improved the regime separated children received. Separation of children in young offender institutions 23