Vulnerable young people are being sent to secure units as far away as Scotland because of a lack of facilities in and around Essex.

Essex County Council People and Families Policy and Scrutiny Committee has also heard of looked after children who need specialist mental health care in Essex being placed on paediatric wards due to “extreme placement pressures”.

And Paul Secker, Director for Safeguarding at Essex County Council speaking to the committee on April 14 also described the difficulty in finding foster placements for more older children as “incredibly hard”.

He declined to criticise the closure of Leverton Hall in Brentwood that had until 2014 provided secure care, education and clinical therapy for 16 vulnerable young people but said more national intervention was needed.

Mr Secker also said it is “incredibly hard” to find foster homes for young people. And those with mental health issues and challenging behaviours are being send to paediatric wards due to a lack of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services – known as Tier 4.

He told the committee: “There have become extreme placement pressures for children looked after. I have been in social work for a long time. It has never been as difficult as this.

“We would normally find placements relativity straight forwardly for very young children.

“We still have those placement availabilities in foster homes. but if you are trying to find a residential placement for a young person it is not quite impossible but it is incredibly hard.

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“You will have read about the difficulties of tier four beds for psychiatric adolescent units. There are no beds in secure accommodation for young people who frequently go missing and who are considered to be at very high risk.

“What we are ending up with is young people with mental health issues and challenging behaviours ending up on paediatric wards sometimes for quite a few days or weeks.

“And we are having many meetings with our partners to try to identify the most appropriate provision for those young people.”

He added that more national oversight over how many secure beds is needed.

Essex County Council provided 16 secure beds at Leverton Hall in Brentwood before its closure in 2014 to make way for housing.

He said: ”The real problem has been that we have not had national oversight of how many secure beds do we need and how are they going to be provided.

“I don’t think the decision to close Leverton was not the right decision but what it did was take 15 to 20 beds out of the system.

“And lots of other authorities have done something similar.

“So everyone has been able to do that but what we have not had is overview.

“The last couple of young people who have been in secure have been in Scotland and one was moved down in England “When they are in secure they are often quite a long way from home.

“We try to make sure they are in secure for a short a period as possible but they are at extreme risk “When I talk about the safeguarding system many of those are national issues that we need to address collectively.”