Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre - two months after inspection 

An Ofsted-led inspection into Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre was published two months ago, which reported the overall effectiveness of the centre to be inadequate.  It devastated the confidence of everyone connected to the centre and led to many youth offending team managers to question whether the Youth Justice Board should place young people at Rainsbrook at all.  

The most damaging parts of the report concerned staff conduct and behaviour and it highlighted a number of incidents between Ofsted inspections, which caused inspectors grave concerns.  Although these instances were disclosed to Youth Justice Board monitors and tackled at the time they took place, they clearly undermined the good work of the vast majority of colleagues at Rainsbrook who are motivated to turn around the lives of some of the most troubled young people in the country in their care.  

We’re working hard to address the concerns of stakeholders, including social workers and youth offending teams across the country.  We welcome external scrutiny and since the report was published we have received many visitors including independent experts, government representatives and health and social care agencies.  Overwhelmingly their response to the centre, the staff and most importantly the young people has been positive.  We recognise we need to do more to inform the wider public as to what we have done at Rainsbrook since inspectors visited and we will be publishing our action plan – which has been largely completed – later on this week.      
   
It’s also important that colleagues – who were criticised so strongly in the Ofsted-led report – are able to share their view on the report and what drives them to work at such a challenging place.  Many of the young people they look after come from troubled, chaotic backgrounds and many have never been involved much in education before, never mind achieve the sorts of basic qualifications that we expect from all young people.  Today, for the first time ever, staff working at Rainsbrook have talked on film about their efforts to educate, train and rehabilitate the young people in their care. 

The response of colleagues at Rainsbrook to the report has been hugely gratifying.  While they found it shocking, they have also risen to the challenge it presented and re-doubled their efforts to provide the very best quality of care.   

We urge Ofsted to come back and review the centre.  It has already been five months since inspectors visited and I am firmly of the view that given the seriousness of the report, the centre should be reviewed as soon as possible in order to check on our progress.  This will provide much needed certainty for young people, their parents and our staff.  In the meantime, we continue to work with stakeholders, including the Youth Justice Board and charities like Barnardo’s – who visit twice a week and are part of the centre's admissions process – in order to provide young people at Rainsbrook the best rehabilitation, education and training possible to prepare them for life back in their communities. 

You can double click on the image above to view the film in full screen.

The action plan referred to in this update was published on the G4S website on 28 July 2015.