The future of secure care and the single point of contact (SPOC) for victims in the Children's Hearings System

The way Scotland funds and commissions secure care determines not only financial sustainability but also equity of access, quality of care, and the long-term sustainability of the charities operating in the sector. The current model has strengths in flexibility and responsiveness but has also created challenges in consistency, cost, and national oversight.

Key features of the current secure care provision include:

• Spot-purchasing and local commissioning arrangements by individual local authorities and Scottish Ministers.
• Secure providers require high occupancy thresholds (around 90%) to break even, limiting flexibility when individual children present with exceptionally complex needs, and making centres financially vulnerable to demand fluctuations.
• Lack of central oversight, limited data on who is being placed or not placed, and no national mechanism to monitor demand, progress or outcomes across the system.
• National variation in the use of secure care by placing authorities.
• Recruitment and retention challenges within the secure care workforce.

Given these systemic challenges and building on the government’s ‘Reimagining Secure Care’ response, it is timely to consider more fundamental reforms – up to and including the nationalisation of secure care, new funding models, and more flexible models of care.

Commissioning and co-ordinating secure care placements

Scotland’s secure care system does not have a national placement commissioning mechanism or national oversight of placement decisions, the demand for secure care or an individualised assessment of the needs of each child for whom secure care places are being sought and how those might map to current or emergent vacancies in each of the centres. This creates the following challenges:

• Inconsistent placement availability: Local authorities may compete for limited secure care beds without a shared view of national capacity or centre-specific matching and capacity constraints.
• Lack of real-time data: No centralised system to track or coordinate placements.
• Inequity in access: children’s needs may not be matched effectively with available resources, especially in urgent or complex cases.

Coordinating secure care placements in Scotland is challenging because of the split responsibilities and limited national oversight:

• Local authorities are responsible for placing children whose placement in secure care has been authorised through the Children’s Hearings System, based on welfare and protection needs, children remanded to secure accommodation or sentenced to detention in summary cases by the Courts. 
• Scottish Ministers are responsible for placing children who are sentenced on indictment by the courts to a period of detention in secure accommodation.

It is essential that Scotland maintains sufficient and sustainable capacity within  secure accommodation. Depending on the route into secure accommodation, there may be no lawful alternative available (for example, in the case children sentenced by a court to detention in secure accommodation). The recent reforms by the Children (Care and Justice)(Scotland) Act 2024, which prohibit the use of Young Offenders’ Institutions for under-18s, further increase the demand on the secure care system to ensure that every child that requires a safe, secure environment can access it without delay, especially when there is no lawful alternative.

While community-based supports can and should prevent many children on the edges of secure care from needing a secure placement, there will always be a small number of children whose safety, wellbeing or legal status necessitates secure accommodation. For these children, secure care must be immediately available and their placement in secure must be sustained for as long as required.

Maintaining adequate secure care capacity is therefore not optional – it is a fundamental part of safeguarding children’s rights, meeting legal obligations, and ensuring that Scotland delivers a child-centred response to its most vulnerable children.

There is also no cohesive and holistic overview of the impact, experiences and outcomes for children who are being considered for, are in, or are leaving secure care.

The Promise calls for planning and provision to be based on understanding of need and data – including understanding the effectiveness of community-based supports - and the previous Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee inquiry report noted the lack of a centralised monitoring system for the number of places or referrals to secure care. Within current approaches, such monitoring and data provision is impossible.

While published statistics on secure accommodation in Scotland are essential for understanding broader trends, they have limitations in capturing the fluid nature of secure placements and the immediate effects of acute capacity challenges and fluctuations in demand. Addressing these limitations will require a national approach.

The 2022 consultation on the policy proposals leading to the Children (Care and Justice) Bill sought views on whether a new national approach for considering the placement of children in secure care was needed. 90% of respondents agreed that a new approach was required. Many respondents believed a new national approach for considering the placement of children in secure care to be necessary based upon the consistency that it would offer, along with the associated benefits resulting from centralised monitoring and data practices. However, several respondents did highlight the significance of the localised dimension in any consideration of the proposal, particularly around how local knowledge and expertise, along with understanding of resources, would sit within or alongside a national approach. A number of respondents did feel that further scoping and exploration needed to be carried out before any decision around a national approach was implemented.

National placement mechanism

A national placement mechanism could co-ordinate secure care placement referrals, and provide a more robust oversight and monitoring, similar to, or a mixture of, the following comparative models in the rest of the UK:

1. England’s model Secure Welfare Co-ordination Unit

• Central point of contact for all local authorities looking to place children in secure accommodation on a welfare basis in England and Wales.
• Referrals are made available to all homes where a secure place is available. Each home will then indicate whether they can accept the child.
• No role in placement decisions.
• Ability to collate data/trends which supports data modelling and forecasting capacity requirements.
• Ability to report on complexity of children being referred to ensure appropriate supports are in place – sustaining/supporting placements.

2. Northern Ireland’s model

• National function with central oversight of placements and planning.
• Operates a Multi-Agency Panel – including professionals from across health and social care, health boards, education and justice - which makes decisions about admission to secure accommodation, encourages the use of alternatives, determines which specific location best meets the needs of the child  and monitors data to support planning.
• Independent advocates are involved which ensures decisions are child-centred and participatory.

As well as providing a more robust oversight and monitoring service, a national placement mechanism could address some long-standing issues relating to data, regional disparities, co-ordination and resource efficiency.

The National Social Work Agency

The National Social Work Agency (NSWA) will launch in spring 2026, leading excellence and driving positive change across the social work profession in Scotland.

Including a national secure care placement coordination role within the NSWA’s remit presents a strategic opportunity to improve the effectiveness, fairness and accountability of secure care access across the country.

 A phased approach could allow defined elements of the function to be explored and assessed within the NSWA while further engagement and takes place to determine whether statutory powers are required. Additional scoping will be needed to define the remit, identify resource requirements and costs, and shape how the function will operate.