Plans to transform the secure facility that houses some of the island’s most vulnerable children into a “specialist campus” are finally moving forward – more than half-a-decade after independent inspectors said the “prison-like” building should be demolished.
Responding to a written question from former Education Minister Inna Gardiner, Children’s Minister Richard Vibert outlined a proposal to transform Greenfields, creating a children’s home with step-down unit, emergency bed, and remand bed.
The site, he said, would also benefit from a multi-disciplinary team, including staff from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), to provide additional support.
“The island must have secure provision for those young people who are remanded, those who receive a custodial sentence, as well as young people made subject to secure accommodation orders on welfare grounds,” the Minister said.
While some development has already taken place at Greenfields, the Minister acknowledged that more work is needed to create a sustainable, long-term secure provision for young people.
A chequered history…
The island’s only secure unit for children, Greenfields has had a chequered history, and been the subject of numerous critical reports.
One of the units was previously Les Chênes, where children were allegedly beaten, kept from seeing their families and placed in solitary confinement for weeks at a time.
Opened in 1979 and running until the 2000s, Les Chênes was supposed to be a residential home for children with a remand function. However, the Independent Jersey Care Inquiry report published in 2017 noted that all residents – whether young offenders or not – were, “in effect, serving sentences” there.
Even after the facility became known as Greenfields and some changes were made to its operations, the IJCI panel said in a follow-up report in 2019 that it was still falling short and that they were concerned to have found during an inspection that a young man had been held there “alone for some time” before being moved to HMP La Moye when he reached 18.
The IJCI panel therefore recommended that all residential child care be moved away from Greenfields, describing the building has “entirely unsuitable for the care and welfare of distressed children and young people”.
They went as far as suggesting the “prison-like” building be demolished, suggesting that it would not be “capable of being transformed into a more appropriate facility”.
“A population of the size of Jersey does not require this type or scale of secure facility,” they added. “Although the building is relatively new, it should be demolished and replaced with small homely units within which close support can be provided when necessary.”
The Children’s Minister at the time, then Senator Sam Mézec, said he agreed with the panel.
“As a government, we’ve committed to moving away from a punitive youth justice model towards a welfare-based model and that facility, as things stand, is not appropriately built for that,” he said.
Following inspections in 2020, the Independent Children’s Homes Association reported in 2021 that the facilities were inappropriate for looking after vulnerable children and recommended the facility be closed and turned into a therapeutic ‘Resource Centre,’ alongside building another home for intensive treatment.
It described the bedrooms as “cell-like” with “noisy” metal doors. Concerns were also expressed that the environment was not ‘risk-free’, with unsecured televisions meaning that power cables and smashed fragments could be used either for self-harm or as a weapon to hurt others.
Improvements were made to the surroundings, but inspections by the Jersey Care Commission the following year found that the care provided there was falling short in other ways.
Other urgent actions related to a failure to provide care leavers with a “transition plan” for leaving care, “thus compromising the care receiver’s potential to be rehabilitated to his home successfully.”
The findings led to the issue of an urgent improvement noticed with several recommendations for action attached – all of which were completed by February 2023, when the notice was lifted.
In line with previous independent reports, there have been enduring calls from the community for a therapeutic facility for dealing with the island’s most vulnerable children, and those in need of secure care.
‘Hope House’ was set up in early 2021 at the former Brig-y-Don following investment of £250,000 by charity Silkworth to provide an alternative for such children, but the facility was forced to close at the end of the year due to a lack of Government support.
At the time, the Children’s Commissioner called out the Government for ‘gatekeeping’, potentially because it wanted to create its own “intensive support service”.
In 2023, Kristina Moore’s government said they had set aside £6.8m over the next four years to run two new children’s homes “to meet the unanticipated urgent needs of children in care”, after Express revealed that more than £3.5m had been spent the previous year on placing local children into homes off-island.
However, no concrete plans have been proposed since the change of Government.
Business case in development
Constable Vibert said this week that the latest plans form part of a wider review of Jersey’s children’s residential estate, with officials modelling what will be required over the next five years.
The proposals were considered by the Council of Ministers on 11 February, and work is now underway to prepare a business case, including a funding plan to support the redevelopment, the Constable said.
He added that the government is exploring alternative options to secure accommodation orders, which could change the way young people in crisis are cared for.