Oberstown could be a world-leading example of how to treat young people in detention

Helping young people make choices about their time in detention has transformed life at the Oberstown facility, write Professor Ursula Kilkelly and Pat Bergin

Tue, 07 Jun, 2022 - 02:06

Professor Ursula Kilkelly and Pat Bergin

According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, detention must be a last resort for children in conflict with the law and every child who is detained must be treated with dignity and respect, taking account of their age and the desirability of promoting their integration into society when they leave.

The UN Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty, published in 2019, highlighted the challenges of translating these principles into practice around the world.

Ireland has not been immune from these challenges but in recent years significant advances have been made reducing the use of detention for children under 18 years and putting in place an approach that aims to ensure that the circumstances that led to their offending behaviour are addressed in line with international standards.

Our new book – Advancing the Rights of Children in Detention: A Model for International Reform – published by Bristol University Press, documents the associated process of change in Oberstown Children Detention Campus, the national facility for the detention of children, in recent years, and highlights what others can learn from what Ireland has achieved.

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The Children Act 2001 established a clear legal intent to reduce the use of detention for children following decades of over-incarceration, poor conditions and fragmented services. Successive national policy documents set an expectation for how that was to be delivered – building a customised facility and implementing a model of care provided by residential social care workers in order to ensure that the complex needs of children in detention, often associated with their offending, were adequately met.

Along with many others, as the Oberstown Director and Chair of the Board of Management, we were charged with delivering on that ambition. What followed over several years was a period of immense, incremental change as the building blocks towards a more progressive model of detention for children were put in place.

International standards mandate an approach that focuses on the rights of the child and building on our legislative care model - CEHOP (care, education, health, offending behaviour and preparation for leaving) our book sets out the framework for translating these standards into reality. The rights-based model explains that there are five key elements to a child-centred approach to detention:

protecting children from harm;
providing for their basic needs;
promoting their participation in decision-making;
developing a partnership approach with families and communities;
and preparing young people for leaving in order to prevent re-offending and promote positive outcomes.

Step by step, over several years, measures have been put in place to promote this approach. In 2020, it was captured in the Oberstown Children’s Rights Policy Framework as the organisation’s holistic policy base - and the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa), which inspects the service annually, has in successive public reports documented the progress made.

The result – in 2022 – is that all young people under 18 years in Ireland, regardless of the nature of their offending, are detained in a modern, purpose-built, child-centred facility. Imprisonment of children no longer takes place – the much-maligned St Patrick’s Institution closed in 2017.

The numbers in detention have fallen to an annual average (in 2020) of 36 young people, mostly boys between the ages of 15 and 17, with a documented level of disproportionate and heightened complexity of need that includes educational disadvantage, substance misuse, mental health, disability and significant experience of violence, loss and trauma.

When is a ‘young offender’ also a ‘child in need' - and can the system tell the difference?

Many of the young people in Oberstown have suffered but also caused great harm making it imperative that while there, they receive specialist care provided by talented and committed staff with a focus on maximising their potential to live fulfilling adult lives.

As part of the experience, young people are involved in decisions that affect them, they receive specialist therapeutic inter-disciplinary services, pursue education and develop life skills and undertake programmes that address their offending behaviour, while being supported every day to make better decisions.

The result of all this is that operating increasingly in line with the highest international standards, Oberstown Children Detention Campus now has the potential to be a world-leading facility of its kind.

The building blocks for this process of change included an explicit commitment in national law and policy to the goal to be achieved and the allocation of budget to resource that ambition. The appointment of leadership with drive and determination was key and a clear statement of strategy was important in generating support, internally and externally, for the change envisaged.

Better systems, recording and monitoring, all helped to track progress and management practice and governance oversight also improved throughout this period. The recognition of the importance of staff safety and wellbeing has proved transformative and the commitment to staff care and development, verified by an IBEC KeepWell award, continues to be a priority.

Learning from the period has revealed the value of stakeholder engagement, of bringing the outside world in and of seeking the support of critical friends and neighbours. Media attention and the scrutiny by the Oireachtas and civil society all played a part, shining a light on the deficits and the urgent need for continuous improvement.

Rising number of young people in Oberstown are detained there for 'very serious offences'

While this did not always make for a comfortable environment, public attention was crucial in maintaining momentum for change. Needless to say, the work is not done – like a garden that needs to be tended to every day – as is to be expected in a complex and difficult environment with responsibility for detaining 24/7 young people who have very complex needs and circumstances.

Indeed, it will probably never be finished as new challenges emerge, demanding even greater sophistication, agility and accountability. But now is as good a time as any to stop and reflect, to value what has been achieved and to share that learning with others.

Our book documents Ireland’s story of reform, as it happened, and as we experienced it, from our perspective. And what we have learned from this process is that in the midst of change and challenge, operational and strategic, young people must always be central.

While this may mean different things at different times – leadership development to support staff, investment in IT to gather data or securing facilities management to maintain the physical environment – it is the clarity of this core objective – set out in law both nationally and internationally – that has been the driver.

Professor Ursula Kilkelly is professor of law at University College Cork and chair of the Board of Oberstown.
Pat Bergin is the former director of Oberstown.