Children and young people were held in separation from others My key concern with both types of facilities visited was the very fact that they had a 'Secure Care' unit where children and young people could be held in separation from others, even if for relatively short periods. As previously noted, international human rights law and principles of good practice call for a complete prohibition on the use of solitary confinement with children. Insufficient safeguards I was also concerned to find that the call-bell system in the Secure Care unit in the care and protection residence was not working. Not only was this a serious failing, it also pointed to wider issues: insufficient safeguards; overreliance on staff availability (previously discussed); acceptance of unacceptable situations (e.g. a child having to wave their hands in the air or bang on a door to attract attention); and for the different monitoring bodies who visited the unit but did not observe this shortcoming. Drab conditions and prison-like appearance Secure Care unit rooms in both facilities were barren and drab, with nothing to distinguish them from prison segregation cells in adult prisons. The Secure Care unit in the care and protection residence also had two ‘timeout’ rooms which contained nothing but a concrete slab. In the youth justice residence, the ‘timeout’ rooms were adjacent to the general units, but they, too, contained nothing other than a slab and had no call bell, and I was concerned to hear that these rooms are sometimes used as bedrooms. Rooms had no curtains and in the Youth Justice residence, young people could not access pencils inside their rooms. We were told that the reason for this was to prevent them from ‘tagging’ or drawing graffiti in the room, but this also meant that they were unable to, for example, do homework or write when they were inside their room. This seemed counterproductive and unnecessarily harsh. A Secure unit room in a Children's care and protection residence 39