C6
All prison staff working in Management units, At Risk units and any other unit where
prisoners are segregated, should receive regular mental health awareness training. This
will help them to recognise warning signs of distress and deteriorating mental health
of segregated prisoners, and to better manage prisoners who are experiencing such
difficulties.
C7
Prison managers should consider the introduction of food serveries in Management
and Separates units, and enabling prisoners to leave their cell to collect their food tray
from the servery. This will allow the prisoner another short time outside their cell, and
a degree of control over this one activity. Serveries could be staffed by prisoners from
the unit, providing them with an opportunity to demonstrate improved behaviour and
staff with an opportunity to assess their behaviour and ability to appropriately engage
with one another.
C8
The Department must ensure that all forms of segregation and restraint are
appropriately documented in an electronic register which is regularly quality assured
and examined for trends, issues, and protected characteristics including ethnic origin,
disability, age and gender. Monitoring should be done on the institutional and national
levels. Registers should also include a clear indication of when the segregation or the
restraint had been applied and when they ended, as well as a clear summary of why it
was deemed necessary to use segregation or restraint in any one case.
C9
Segregation documentation / forms should be less cumbersome and more focused, and
review mechanisms must be strengthened to ensure that placements in a segregation
unit are regularly and robustly reviewed. All documentation must be regularly quality
assured for compliance with procedures and guidelines.
C10
The Department should consider replicating the Ministry of Health’s’ seclusion
reporting template’, which requires documentation of alternative measures attempted,
events, reasons for seclusion and so on.
Ministry of Social Development (Child, Youth and Family): 2017 recommendations
Y1
Secure Care unit rooms, as observed on visits, were inappropriate for housing children
and young people in a Care and Protection residence or in a Youth Justice residence.
The Ministry should consider alternatives.
Y2
All rooms where children and young people can spend any length of time locked up
(including ‘time out’ rooms) should be equipped, as a minimum, with call bells or other
means for the young person to communicate with staff, and these should be checked
regularly to ensure that they are in good working order.
Y3
Where the Secure Care Unit is used, children and young people should be allowed
to have some personal belongings with them including the means to study and/or do
some writing.
Y4
The ‘time out’ rooms at the youth justice residence are identical to Secure Care rooms
and should be identified as such. These rooms must not be used as overflow due to
shortage of beds.
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