Vulnerable children with complex needs are being locked away in unregulated placements and are being “gravely damaged by the state” while their parents are driven to despair, according to England’s former top family judge. Sir James Munby terms the lack of provision of safe and therapeutic homes “a shocking moral failure”. According to the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory, the number of applications for “deprivation of liberty” orders for children suffering from psychological and behavioural difficulties reached 1,368 last year.
Writing in the Observer, Munby, the immediate past president of the family division of the high court, said that soaring applications for this draconian measure were a sad reflection of the catastrophic failure to support children whose complex needs frequently lead to self-harm and suicide attempts. Lambasting the government, which he said has “failed to address the dire lack of suitable provision”, Munby referred to “dozens and dozens” of judgments expressing his fellow judges’ concerns, which have been published since his own “blood on our hands” ruling about a 17-year-old girl called “X”, which made national headlines in 2017. Reporting by the news site Tortoise Media last year showed that “any help X received came far too late to save her”, Munby said.
Barely into her 20s, X – not a criminal – was ultimately incarcerated in a high security mental health hospital, where she remains. “Seven years on from.