I’ve been told to build up my thigh muscle through cycling and going to the gym. The accident, or rather should I say the attack, came from a sixteen year old girl, who, resides in a children’s home. Well its described as a children’s home, or rather that’s what the job description said. I imagined it to be a little like Tracey Beaker, remember her, I kid in a children's home and the antics she got up to whilst all the time wishing for some parents to take her away. Well, this place is nothing like that. You see it’s proper title is “Walthamstow Secure Unit”, it’s a place, a building, a home where “young people” are locked up. Most of the children are criminals and have committed a serious crime, I mean a serious crime, in-fact most have murdered but not all. You see the most disturbing thing is that “welfare” children are also locked up alongside the criminals, welfare is the local councils way of describing a young person that is in danger of committing suicide. So they, well, lock them up.
The secure unit is a 12 bed unit, each bed is in a secure room with a single toilet and basin. The building is also a school that attempts to teach using the British education curriculum as a guide. The building uses a three corridor system, each corridor has 4 rooms. There are also various other rooms to lock the children in when they misbehave. In total there are 60 staff to accommodate the children. Teachers, medical/health staff, project managers, care workers, co-workers, supervisors, managers, key workers, cleaners etc.
During the night there are 3 staff, that’s where I come in. Well there is a “sleep in”, a member of staff who’s job it is to sleep. Usually this member of staff has done a full shift and will have another full shift the next day. This member of staff is for emergencies! My job title is “Night care worker” and my duties include observations, medication and welfare support on a nine and half hour shift with no breaks, that’s right no breaks, secure units are exempt apparently. A typical night will be mostly taken up with observations, you see a big majority of these kids want to kill themselves, so in order to prevent that from happening we have a torch and look through the window in the door of the cell and check that they are still breathing or moving. Depending on daily assessments and past history the time scale between observations varies, a low risk child will have 15 minute observations, or eight minute, four, two or constant. Each observation is logged and may be described as something like “awake and pacing the room”, or, “appears asleep but unsettled”, a classic description is “appears asleep”, this is the night staff’s way of what’s called covering your arse, that way you see, if the child has committed suicide and is laying in the bed dead, then your description in the log is correct. It is the night staff’s constant worry that a child may be dead, sometimes we make a noise just to make them move but this can’t be done too often because it is one of the children’s perks to get you in to trouble and they will report to a manager if they have been disturbed. We tend to inform each other of a particular child's movements, so we will say, “ Sam hasn’t moved for a while, he was on his left side the last observe” or “ just pay particular attention to Sophie next time, I think she is going to do something”, “ has Josh settled now”
On this particular night, three staff had 2 girls on constant observations and the rest of the building on various from 2 minutes to 15. Constant observation means just that, constant, you sit outside the cell peering through the small glass window in the door watching the child’s every movement. The child can go in to the bathroom and shut the door to get changed or use the toilet, during this time though a verbal response should be given by the child through the speaker system. The child then may get in to bed and go to sleep, sounds simple, only most of the time it isn’t. There are a few methods in which the children try to commit suicide although the favourite and most affective is to tear a strip of clothing or bedding and create a ligature that can be tightened around the neck to the point of suffocation. The constant observation decision is made by a key worker and supervisor this is usually based on past history, mood, type of day they may of had and behaviour. The trick as a night care worker on constant obs is to look at behaviour and listen for any ripping of clothing, they are very clever these kids, they will lay under the covers as still as a mouse whilst ripping up clothing, any other clothing has been removed, bra’s belts etc. So it happened on my constant observation with a sixteen year old girl, I heard it, rip, rip, rip. The room was dark apart from a very dim night light, they don’t like it too bright you see it prevents them from sleeping. She got out of bed and went to the bathroom, the bathroom doors are locked in the open position but because of the angle you can’t see inside. I called on the tannoy are you ok, no reply.
At this point in an observation, the day staff have a procedure where they press the emergency button on the hand held device that they carry attached to the belt, this sets an alarm in the building and all available staff come running to aid. It’s a very clever system, throughout the building are a number of sensors that detect the whereabouts of the member of staff that pressed the emergency button and a light will illuminate a position on a plan of the building in the staff office, all staff then know to go to corridor 3 immediately. There are a number of reasons why we don’t have this procedure in the middle of the night. The first we have been told is that the alarm disturbs the other children and secondly that of reduced budget. Our method then is to sort of whisper loudly to another member of staff, “HELP” you see if you do wake another child that is on constant obs then 9 times out of ten they will attempt a ligature at the same time because they know all the staff are busy. In the case of a girl who has ligatured with a fully grown adult man observing her it is advised that a woman member of staff should enter the room first. Daytime policy is for two members of staff to enter the room with a third at the door with your key in the lock to prevent escape, however this isn’t possible at night time because your colleague is busy on other constant observation. At this point however after whispering loudly for help to my colleague has heard me, she has to make a decision, call the sleep in emergency person or run to the door. To call the sleep in person one needs to go to the office and use the telephone to wake them, on this occasion we had been told not to wake them as they were working the next shift. She called the sleep in and then ran to the door. I opened the door and she went in, the child was laying on the bathroom floor with a ligature tight around her neck and having difficulty breathing. We have been trained to assess the situation and determine if we can de-escalate before taking action. My colleague decided to de-escalate and attempt to talk to the child. The sixteen year old loosened the ligature slightly but then after a while tightened it again until her face went blue. I was the one carrying the ligature knife attached to my belt so I attempted talking to her but quickly decided the ligature must be cut off. The girl jumped up as quick as lightening and headed for the door. We are trained in restraining inmates, sorry, children but it is surprising how strong a sixteen year old girl can be, especially the ones that have been locked up in a prison with no crime committed other than harm to themselves. We used what is known as a conventional hold, one on each arm, but you see during training these holds are done using 4 members of staff and the day staff have up to eight people for a restraint but there you have it a sixty year old woman and a 57 year old man trying to tackle a very strong and fit young woman. My colleague got it first, a drop kick to the stomach as she cried, ‘she’s got the knife” Shit” I thought, in enters the sleep over person. My other colleague riling in pain on the bed the sleep in graps the young woman’s arm in the conventional hold whilst I try and use the technique for loosening her grip on the knife. A ligature knife is curved and only sharpened on the inside edge but still has the potential to do some harm, this is all taking place whilst trying to keep my balance on the mattress that had previously been thrown on the floor before we entered the room. I can feel myself falling, I must get this knife from her vice like grip, I’m only standing on my right leg now. It was an enormous crack, the young woman’s foot hit my outer knee with a back kick a mule would be proud of. My leg gave way beneath me and I fell to the floor, the pain was incredible, I thought I had been shot, I crawled out of the room, looked at my leg and knew I had done some serious damage, the bottom half of my leg from the knee down just didn’t line up with the top half. I shouted the other member of staff who was also on constant to come, he did. I hit the bottom half of my leg as hard as I could to re-align it, it worked my knee joint popped back in and I got myself up. Problem number two, was as soon as I put weight on my leg it popped out again. Oh dear I thought that’s not good. I hopped to the door where my colleague had been doing his constant observations and sat in his chair, she was still asleep thank fuck.
They managed to successfully restrain the girl who had kicked me and apparently when she realised the damage she had done was apologetic. Managers were called, staff came in. I called my son, can you take me to A and E please son.
That was seven months ago, I now have a date for the operation to repair the two ruptured ligaments in my knee. I have been walking with a leg brace so far but the surgeon wants me to try without. So I have been to the gym to try and build up the leg muscle before surgery.
