The number of applications to the family courts for children’s deprivation of liberty (DOL) orders – most of which are granted – has risen massively in the last six years, from around 100 to more than 1,200, as reported by the BBC’s File on 4 programme last week. This is testimony to a broken children’s services system. Worse still, the places children are detained in are staffed by untrained agency workers who are unsuitable to support some of our society’s most vulnerable young people.
Children affected have usually been removed from families where their safety is at high risk from physical, sexual or emotional abuse. Placements are few and far between and often unsuitable, sometimes hundreds of miles away from their friends and relatives.
