Lack of secure accommodation – ‘blood on our hands’?

It is sometimes necessary for local authorities to seek to place a looked after child in what is called secure accommodation. This is designed to protect them from injuring themselves or others and/or absconding from other types of accommodation and suffering significant harm as a consequence.

Unfortunately, many family law practitioners will have been involved in cases where an application has been made for a secure accommodation order but at the initial hearing of that application no suitable secure accommodation unit has been identified.