Background
Serenity Welfare came to Whitehouse Communications to found and run their political campaign to end the use of handcuffs and physical restraints on children in care by private transport providers.
Children and young people living in, or on the edge of, care often need to be transported between care settings, taken to school or to hospital. Local authorities regularly hire private secure transportation providers to carry out these journeys. Many children found that they were automatically put in handcuffs by their transportation provider.
Stakeholders in this sector, including Ofsted, the Office of the Children’s Commissioner and the Department for Education are aware of private secure transportation providers using handcuffs on the children in care. Worryingly, the scale of the problem remained unknown as transportation providers are not required to report any instances of handcuffing or restraint to the appropriate authority. The practice remains unregulated, unmonitored, and this data gap puts vulnerable children at risk.
Our Campaign Strategy
Whitehouse created the Hope Instead of Handcuffs campaign with an original report launch; as well as identifying issues in this space which the Serenity team could comment on to build their reputation as thought leaders.
We developed a detailed core political briefing, setting out a clear narrative around what the issue was, and how the lack of regulation was allowing vulnerable children to slip through the gaps. The briefing also included our policy objectives on how the challenges can be addressed.
With our narrative in place, we put together an extensive stakeholder map and began a plan of engagement, reaching out to key figures within government, the care sector, MPs, Peers and politicians in the devolved nations. After some initial discussion with key stakeholders laying out our concerns, we gained the support of Ofsted, the Children’s Commissioner’s Office, the Restraint Reduction Network and the Children’s Home Association.
We also gained the support of several MSPs and members of the Senedd, holding meetings and drop in-events, and gaining additional support through drafting and sending letters to the Children’s Ministers on behalf of our political supporters. Our PR team used these meetings and the support of high-profile politicians to generate extensive national coverage, including Sky, the Independent, the Daily Mail, the BBC and the Daily Express. We had opinion pieces published calling on governments to change the law in England, Scotland and Wales.
Outcome
Following an extensive integrated campaign, our first major success came when the Senedd published the Reducing Restrictive Practices Framework (RRPF), a framework to protect vulnerable children from harmful handcuffing and restraint practice, making Wales the first nation in the UK to recognise the need to address the use of physical restraint against vulnerable children during transportation.
The new RRPF includes a specific section for such secure transportation settings, stating that ‘Welsh Ministers are clear that it is not appropriate to use handcuffs of any kind during such journeys’.
The campaign saw even greater success in Scotland in 2024 where, after engaging with several MSPs and Scottish Ministers, we secured legally binding protections via an amendment to the Children’s Care and Justice Bill tabled by our supporter Ross Greer MSP, making Scotland the first nation in the UK to introduce statutory protections to end restraint of children in care during secure transportation.
This amendment means that the Scottish government is now legally obliged to publish national mandatory standards on secure transportation that will address the unnecessary use of restraint on vulnerable children and young people. Secure care providers and commissioners will now be legally bound to adhere to these standards, meaning that vulnerable children in care will be protected from being brutally and unnecessarily handcuffed when being transported between care settings.
