Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, which institutions accommodate young people aged 14 years or younger; and how many such children are accommodated at each such site.

Young people aged 14 and under who are sentenced to or remanded in custody are placed in either Secure Children’s Homes (SCHs) or Secure Training Centres (STCs). SCHs accommodate young people aged 10 and over, and STCs accommodate young people aged 12 and over.

The Youth Justice Board (YJB) makes placement decisions on the basis of individual need, taking account of factors such as risk of harm to self and others, health (including mental health and substance misuse), learning, emotional and social difficulties, welfare and resettlement needs.

Statistics on the number of young people in custody by age are published in the monthly youth custody report (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/youth-custody-data) and annually in the Youth Justice Statistics publication (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/youth-justice-annual-statistics-2013-to-2014). The number of young people aged 14 and under in custody fell by 54% between 2010/11 and 2014/15.

Table 1 shows the establishments commissioned by the YJB for the placement of young people aged 14 or younger and the number of children aged 14 years or younger at each site, as of 1 May 2015. The YJB commissions places in secure accommodation for young people sentenced or remanded by the courts, therefore Secure Children's Homes data only contains figures for these types of placements.

Table 1: The Number of children aged 14 years or younger in each establishment on 1st May 2015

The information comes from the YJB's Secure Accommodation Clearing House System (SACHS) database and eAsset database. These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems, which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing and can be subject to change over time.