Traumatised children in a young offender institution are talking to psychologists through the hatch in their cell doors as there are not enough prison officers to unlock them for therapy sessions, the Guardian has learned.
“Our ability to have children unlocked for sessions has decreased massively,” said Dr Radha Kothari, the principal clinical psychologist at Feltham young offender institution in west London, which holds boys aged 15 to 18 who have committed the most serious crimes, including rape and murder.
Many of the teenagers have suffered childhood trauma, with an overrepresentation of autism, ADHD and other neurological disorders.
She said there were about double the number of children in Feltham since she started work there a year ago, and frequently not enough officers to unlock their cells safely. The MoJ would not comment on the number of children in the institution.
“Often we are only able to speak to the children through cell doors,” said Kothari, who is employed by the local health trust rather than the Ministry of Justice. Alternatively, she and colleagues try to snatch conversations with the teenagers during their exercise time, in lieu of private sessions in dedicated consultation rooms.
“We are not delivering therapy through the cell doors or on the yard,” she stressed. “Rather, when we are unable to have a full session in a contained and confidential space, we are attempting to have therapeutic conversations to check in, risk-assess and try and support.”
She added: “I feel frustrated about being unable to … provide the young person the kind of support that they need in a safe contained environment. It’s very difficult to have conversations that are really open and honest, because there isn’t confidentiality and other people on the unit would be able to hear.”
She underlined that it is “absolutely not the fault of the prison staff” but a “broader systemic issue”.
She added: “They will try very hard to accommodate us. We operate a trauma-informed approach, which means that prison staff are trained in early attachment theory and trained in trauma. Everybody is really working together to try and enable that access to activities to therapeutic work, etc. But we are limited by the security guidelines of how many people are needed on a unit to be able to unlock safely.”
Feltham became the first children’s prison to be put into special measures in 2019 after inspectors found an “extraordinary decline in standards”. A follow-up inspection last year found marked improvements, but warned it remained a “fragile place”.
The Guardian has learned that gang rivalries are starting to cause problems again in Feltham, with an increase in the number of children on “keep apart” lists designed to prevent certain groups from mixing.
This is partly blamed on transfers from Cookham Wood, a young offender institution in Rochester, Kent, which was put into special measures in July after inspectors found a dirty, unsafe environment.
Inspectors found 90% of boys in Cookham Wood were being segregated from other prisoners, with staff managing 583 individual conflicts in a population of 77 children. As a result many children were only allowed out of their cells for half an hour a day. They came across two boys requiring protection from their peers who had been subjected to conditions amounting to solitary confinement for more than 100 days.
In Feltham, “there’s definitely more reports from the children that they are not being let out every day for the things that they should be let out for, such as education, exercise, gym, etc”, said Kothari.
She worries about the psychological damage caused to children by the lack of social interaction at a key point in their development. “They are in a developmental period that is very much focused on socialising, understanding your place in the world, understanding your identity amongst others, learning how to interact socially. And not having the space to sit with someone one to one in a confidential space can really limit all of these things,” she said.
The Guardian asked the Ministry of Justice about staffing levels at Feltham but the department did not respond to the question. Instead, a Youth Custody Service spokesperson said: “We are taking decisive action to deliver improvements at HMP and YOI Feltham and providing extra support to the governor.
“While assaults across youth custody have fallen by 12%, the number of children in custody has fallen by 77% and we have recruited and trained 4,000 youth justice workers since 2017, we know there is still work to do to support the most complex and vulnerable children in the justice system.
“The first-ever secure school will open next year and create a modern and safe environment that gives young offenders the skills and support they need to turn away from crime.”
• This article was amended on 28 September 2023. An earlier version of the subheading and text referred to “guards” rather than prison officers.
