Visit to Oakhill Secure Training Centre

7 Aug 2023 11:43 AM

Visit to Oakhill Secure Training Centre.

In July, I visited Oakhill Secure Training Centre in Milton Keynes to talk to the children and young people who live there about their lives. It is central to my statutory role to hear from all children, particularly those who are living in some form of institution rather than in a family. 

I believe that everyone working with children should talk to children living in a setting such as this. They have often seen more of the statutory support services than those of us who work on them will ever know.

From education to the police and criminal justice system, from children’s social care to mental health services: these are children who have experienced what services for children really look like in our country. Too often, they also can tell you about the times that they have been let down by those services and adults in them whose job it is to keep them safe. 

While there, I was very pleased to talk to young person who had sat 22 exams for his GCSEs while at Oakhill. However, many of the children in the youth justice system have not had good relationship with education. I talked to a 15-year-old boy about his experience with school before he was in Oakhill. He told me that “school was never good” and that he had been largely absent from education from when he was in primary school. 

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