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Introduction

38.01  Hengwrt Hall at Rhydymain, between Dolgellau and Bala, was built in or about 1870 as a large country house. It was opened as a residential school by Care Concern[520] in 1976 and it remained in that organisation's ownership until it was sold to new owners in 1991. The main hall, a three storey building, housed the residential part of the school, the main kitchen and offices. A separate school block was situated in the coachhouse to the rear of the main building and included two demountable classrooms. There were also hard and grass play areas and rooms for additional activities such as arts and crafts and domestic science.

  38.02  The original proposal put to the Welsh Office was for a school taking 30 to 40 "mentally or physically handicapped" pupils aged five to 16 years. It was provisionally registered as an independent school on 12 August 1976 and granted full registration on 24 January 1977 as a residential special school for up to 25 "physically and mentally handicapped children categorised as ESN(S)". It was indicated that, if the school recruited further staff with specific qualifications, pupil admissions could be increased to 40 children but attention was drawn to a number of instances in which the school had admitted handicapped children without the placing local education authority obtaining specific consent as required under Ministry of Education Circular 4/61. We must stress, however, that only a proportion of these children (for example seven out of 19 in January 1990) were children in care.

  38.03  In the event in July 1980 the Welsh Office increased the maximum permitted number of pupils to 35. Then, on 12 December 1983, under new legislation, the Welsh Office granted SEN approval[521] for up to 35 boys and girls aged five to 16 years with severe learning difficulties; and it appears that the upper limit of the permitted age range was later increased to 19 years.

  38.04  On 6 March 1989 notice by letter was sent to Care Concern of the intention of the Secretary of State for Wales to withdraw the SEN approval under section 11(3)(a) of the Education Act 1981 granted on 12 December 1983, subject to any representations that might be made within 21 days. Concern was expressed about the poor physical condition of the building; the quality of life experienced by pupils with a lack of basic every day comforts; inadequate staffing levels, particularly care staff; the relative inexperience of some of the staff; underdeveloped and uncoordinated educational and care programmes; and the lack of a training programme for staff.

  38.05  Despite the extent of these concerns, it was said that the Secretary of State considered that the problems were remediable and that the immediate removal of all the children might well be against their interests. If section 11(3)(a) general approval was withdrawn, therefore, he would be prepared to grant individual consents under section 11(3)(b) to enable most of the existing pupils to remain, provided that certain specified requirements were fulfilled within four and nine months respectively.

  38.06  Placing authorities were informed by letter dated 3 April 1989 that, 21 days having elapsed, the Secretary of State had decided formally to withdraw the school's section 11(3)(a) approval but that he was giving consent under section 11(3)(b) of the Act of 1981 for the existing placements to continue, with the proviso that he would wish to withdraw the consent if the requirements imposed were not complied with to his satisfaction.

  38.07  The Secretary of State was still not satisfied that restoration of SEN approval under section 11(3)(a) was appropriate when the sale of the school was completed on 19 November 1991. At that time there were 18 pupils on the roll, two of whom were without consents and none placed by a Welsh local authority. Some new pupils had been admitted with consent despite what has been said in the preceding paragraph.

  38.08  We have been given few details of the organisation of the school between 1976 and 1987. Care Concern's head office was at Sealand in Clwyd, near Chester. The Principal of the school itself from 1 October 1980 was Andrew D Britton, who had the degree of Bachelor of Education (Special Needs), and the teaching staff comprised four or five class teachers under a senior teacher, who was Sarah Britton. The care staff were headed by the Deputy Principal, Mrs M Griffiths, a State Registered Nurse, under whom there were three male Team Leaders (sometimes four). Each team had a senior care officer, one or two care officers and five to seven care assistants, working a rota system between 8 am and 10 pm. There were also up to ten night care assistants.

  38.09  When the school changed hands in November 1991 its name was changed to Aran Hall School. The company formed to own, administer and run it was called Aran Hall School Ltd and its directors were Vernon Jones and Michael Jordan. Jones had been Chief Psychologist with Care Concern from 1987 whilst Jordan, a qualified psychiatric social worker, was a former Deputy Director of Social Services for Lancashire, with experience of special education, who had served as Director of Development and Training for Care Concern. The new Headteacher (instead of Principal) was the former senior teacher of Hengwrt Hall, Sarah Britton, who had been Acting Principal for the preceding 18 months.

  38.10  The view of the Welsh Office at this time was that further work was needed at the school before general approval could be granted by the Secretary of State under section 11(3)(a) of the Education Act 1981. Accordingly, section 63 of the Children Act 1989 came into play because the school was an establishment providing boarding for fewer than 50 boarders and was not approved under section 11(3)(a) of the Act of 1981: it was thus a children's home, required to be registered with Gwynedd County Council under Part VIII of the Children Act 1989 and Schedule 6 to that Act[522].

  38.11  Aran Hall School eventually applied to Gwynedd County Council to be registered as a children's home in May 1994 because the Secretary of State for Wales continued to withhold general approval under section 11(3)(a) of the Act of 1981. The application was granted on 1 September 1994, subject to a list of conditions, covering a wide range of matters such as staff supervision, staff training, complaints policy and procedure and the physical state of the premises.

  38.12  On 15 July 1996 the school was informed by the Welsh Office that the Secretary of State had decided to grant general approval for the admission to Aran Hall School of statemented pupils under the new relevant statutory provision in section 189(5)(a) of the Education Act 1993. This approval followed an inspection by HMIs in February 1996. Sarah Britton had left in the autumn of 1994 and had been replaced as Headteacher by a member of the teaching staff after an interregnum during which a director had acted as Headteacher. The teaching staff comprised the equivalent of three full time teachers. A new head of residential care had been appointed in May 1992, following a national advertisement, and the residential care staff under him totalled 30.

  38.13  The grant of general approval under section 189(5)(a) of the Act of 1993 was again made subject to conditions under which the school had to produce an action plan to address identified deficiencies and to improve certain identified aspects of its provision, including timescales.

Complaints of abuse

  38.14  The Tribunal has not received directly any allegation of abuse at this school from a complainant and we have no evidence of any alleged abuse there since it became Aran Hall School. There was a complaint in 1988, however, by the mother of a pupil, about Hengwrt Hall School, which was taken up by the Spastics Society and by her Member of Parliament and which led ultimately to the withdrawal of general SEN approval for the school in 1989.

  38.15  The Welsh Office first became aware of this complaint in October 1988 when a clinical psychologist employed by the Spastics Society telephoned the Welsh Office Education Department about it. Two days later the Society notified Care Concern that it was withdrawing its staff, who were giving outreach support to the pupil (A) pursuant to a tri-partite agreement between the Society, the school and Cheshire LEA. A report by the Society, dated 18 October 1988, was then sent to the Registrar of Independent Schools in the Welsh Office Education Department and to an SWSO.

  38.16  That report, which was highly critical of Hengwrt Hall School, was prepared by staff of the Spastics Society's Beech Tree School (North) in Preston, which A had attended before his transfer to Hengwrt Hall School, and based on observations between 10 and 14 October 1988. They criticised the physical environment and many aspects of the quality of care provided by the school; they were critical also of the school's educational standards and provision; and they alleged physical and verbal mistreatment of pupils by members of staff, itemising 13 observed incidents. A had not been involved in any of these incidents but it was said of him that he had sustained unexplained bruises and marks on his arms and legs during the period and separate reference was made to an occasion on 13 October 1988 when a woman teacher had had to restrain A, according to her own account, by putting her knee on the back of his neck.

  38.17  The report concluded:

"We have attempted to present our observations in a factual and unemotional manner. We nevertheless feel bound to record the shock and anger we felt to see such vulnerable children mistreated and denied planned and effective education.

We readily appreciate the stress involved in working with such demanding children and know all too well that staff can have bad days. However, what we observed was too all pervasive to be accounted for by such explanations. Nor can the incidents be explained as simply the malpractice of a few individuals--the ethos of Hengwrt Hall appeared to be repressive with a common feeling that the childrens' behaviour was the result of 'naughtiness'. This is a simplistic analysis which denies the complexity of the conditions which lead severely mentally handicapped children to produce challenging behaviour.

Our concern in writing this report is not only for the welfare of A but for all the children presently attending Hengwrt Hall and for any children who might be enrolled in the future."

  38.18  The complaint by the Spastics Society led to an inspection by Welsh Office HMIs and SWSOs in November 1988, at which time there were 31 pupils on the roll, aged 11 to 18 years, who had been placed there by 18 different local authorities; but only one child had been placed by a Welsh local authority. The view of the inspectors was that they constituted an extremely difficult and demanding group of pupils, most of whom had been placed at Hengwrt Hall because of the inability of previous schools to cope with their behaviour or the breakdown of residential or family support. A number of the children had little or no contact with their homes.

  38.19  The inspectors found that few of the staff at Hengwrt Hall School on either the teaching or the care side had experience of special needs and that there was a high turnover amongst young and inexperienced care staff. Little had been done to improve the accommodation since a previous inspection in 1986 and many areas showed signs of neglect: the building was cold and in a generally poor state of repair and its general appearance was austere and depressing. Altogether the accommodation imposed severe limitations on both children and staff and made it difficult for pupils to be treated on an individual or family group basis. The school's poor state of repair, unsuitable scale and depressing decor were all in urgent need of review.

  38.20  The inspectors were critical also of the school's educational provision. The educational experiences provided for pupils varied considerably in range and quality. Work was not generally well matched to pupils' level of development and there was little consistency or continuity in pupils' work. As for the quality of care, each child was allocated a key worker but some of them were not clear about this role and the part that they should play in planning a care programme for each child. Moreover, many of the reports supplied with pupils on admission were inadequate and referred to educational and social requirements "in a highly generalised way"; and SSDs or LEAs were represented at less than 50 per cent of the first reviews held usually six weeks after admission.

  38.21  In relation to A, the inspectors noted that he was extremely aggressive and liable to react violently without prior warning. He had been subjected at Beech Tree House to an intensive behaviour modification programme to which he had responded from time to time but he was also used to a one to one teaching and caring situation on a 24 hour basis. He made inordinate demands upon the time and resources of the teacher and care staff: for parts of the day his needs could not be met and teaching staff admitted to being afraid of and unable to cope with his more violent outbursts.

  38.22  The inspectors' conclusion was that it was unlikely that A's needs could currently "be well met within the present school situation". He required considerably more skilled individual attention than he was receiving. They were critical also of the Spastics Society's conduct in withdrawing A from the school without making alternative arrangements for him and without discussing with the Principal of Hengwrt Hall how best A's needs might be met.

  38.23  Overall the opinion of the inspectors was that the school had a significant number of shortcomings, although pupils were not "at risk" in the sense that they were likely to be subjected to abuse or serious neglect. They did not comment upon the examples of ill-treatment referred to in the report presented by the Spastics Society the previous month. In the inspectors' view the quality of life provided for pupils and the amount of education and development planned on their behalf was inadequate. If the school were being considered for approval, it was unlikely that a positive recommendation would be made and the school had accepted pupils presenting difficulties that it did not have the staff and expertise to deal with.

  38.24  There was some internal discussion within the Welsh Office about the appropriate response to this report before the decision to withdraw general approval under section 11(3)(a) of the Act of 1981 was taken. The parallel decision to grant omnibus individual consents under section 11(3)(b) of that Act was not, however, satisfactory, except (perhaps) as a stopgap measure, which should have been of specific limited duration. It did not face up to the problem referred to by the inspectors of pupils who should not have been accepted by the school. It appears that A, for example, was within this category, although Cheshire LEA expressed satisfaction with Hengwrt Hall School even after the Spastics Society's report; and A remained there for at least five years further, whilst general approval was still withheld by the Secretary of State. In October 1989 21 pupils remained at the school. Their ages ranged from 13 to 18 years and they had been admitted between February 1981 and October 1988, the last being A on 3 October 1988. One only had been placed by a Welsh local authority (Mid Glamorgan).

  38.25  The extraordinarily unsatisfactory situation was further highlighted in 1990 when it appears to have been recognised belatedly by the Welsh Office that, in respect of placements by English local authorities, it was the Secretary of State for Education and Science who had sole authority to approve, under section 11(3)(b), a specific placement. This was recognised when applications for further admissions to the school were made.

  38.26  On 16 March 1989 Hengwrt Hall School was one of three schools featured in an edition of the "This Week" programme produced by Thames Television. The programme referred to the allegations made by the Spastics Society and to the subsequent Welsh Office inspection of the school. It referred to the profit being made by the proprietors and criticised alleged management failings, bad practice and the employment of inexperienced and insufficient staff but it did not suggest that ill-treatment was a problem, according to a Welsh Office note.

  38.27  An unfortunate accident occurred at about 2.25 pm on 29 March 1989 when a 15 year old boy resident at the school (who was not in care) was run over by an ambulance on the main A494 in the vicinity of the school and sustained fatal injuries. Ten minutes or so earlier the boy had left a small group of residents who had assembled in a school building before being taken on a minibus trip to Dolgellau. It seems that the boy emerged from a recess in a gateway by the road, obscured by a wall, and ran, without looking to either side of him, into the path of the ambulance. A verdict of Accidental Death was recorded by the Coroner at the Inquest on 17 May 1989. The circumstances of the death were the subject of protracted subsequent correspondence involving the Member of Parliament for the constituency in which the boy's parents lived, the Rt Hon Paddy Ashdown, the Welsh Office and Care Concern International Ltd amongst others; and we do not know the outcome.

  38.28  A was again the subject of a complaint in or about the Spring of 1990. He was taken with some other residents at that time to Bideford in Devon for a week's holiday in the care of four members of staff led by a Senior RCCO. It was alleged that, during this holiday, one of the staff (X, a male RCCO) had kicked A in the testicles or stomach. It was alleged also that X had kicked another child resident in the stomach and had thrown a rock at the head of yet another child. These allegations were reported at the end of the holiday by the Senior RCCO in charge of the group to her Team Leader, who gave oral evidence to the Tribunal about his dissatisfaction with the way in which the matter was subsequently dealt with.

  38.29  John ap Iwan, the Team Leader in question, had been employed at Hengwrt Hall for ten years and had been a Team Leader since 14 May 1984. He told the Tribunal that he instructed the Senior RCCO to make a written report of what had happened and to take statements to accompany it from the two members of staff who had reported the allegations to her. An internal inquiry was then carried out by Vernon Jones and John Donovan, whom he described as directors. The alleged victims were not questioned, on the ostensible ground that "they might lie", and the two members of staff who had made statements were not asked to give oral evidence. The decision was that X should be severely reprimanded. No social worker or other outside representative of the children was informed of what had occurred.

  38.30  Ap Iwan regarded these proceedings as a whitewash. He said that X had submitted his notice but then withdrew it on learning of the directors' decision. Ap Iwan had in mind that Donovan had dismissed a member of staff a year before for striking a child and on 20 June 1990 he wrote to the two directors querying both their decision and the procedure that had been followed. In response he was invited to meet them and, at that meeting, he was told that, if he remained dissatisfied he could seek employment elsewhere. Thereupon Ap Iwan gave notice on 19 July 1990 terminating his employment on 31 August 1990. He was then employed at Ynys Fechan for the following two years.

Surveillance by the Welsh Office

  38.31  In the course of the history that we have summarised there were not less than nine visits to Hengwrt Hall School (later Aran Hall School) between January 1986 and February 1996 by HMIs and SWSO/SSIWs. During the same period there were inspections also by Gwynedd Fire Service and in August 1994 by the Inspection Unit of Gwynedd Social Services Department.

  38.32  The two HMIs who carried out the inspections after general SEN approval had been withdrawn from the school were A R Large and J Griffiths; and the latter had been a party to the 1988 inspection prior to the decision to withdraw approval. Various SWSOs accompanied the HMIs and contributed to the reports between 1988 and 1993 but the last two reports were by the two HMIs only. Over the period from 1988 to 1996 the number of resident pupils declined from 31 to 13 (two from Wales). Of the 13 pupils (ten boys) resident in February 1996, four were about to leave, having attained the age of 19 years, but there were 11 inquiries for places under consideration at that time, of which eight were in respect of younger children, aged 14 years or less.

  38.33  The reports submitted by the Inspectors were full and balanced but they make gloomy reading. We have summarised in paragraphs 38.19 and 38.20 the major criticisms made in the report of the 1988 inspection and progress subsequently to remedy these main defects was very slow. In 1991 the school was still relying upon an unsatisfactory water supply from a well. The demountable classrooms had not been replaced or refurbished adequately. The premises were still cold. Care staff were being paid less than local authority rates and none of them had professional qualifications. By 1993 a new water supply had been provided and fire safety requirements met but further work was needed on both the residential and classroom accommodation and there were still substantial improvements to be made in the education and care regimes to bring them up to acceptable standards. By January 1995 the school had effected significant improvements and the opinion of the inspectors then was that "the quality of teaching is at least satisfactory, and often good, across a range of lessons and activities". But there were still unsatisfactory features of the residential accommodation and site that affected the quality of life of pupils adversely. Moreover, priority needed to be given to developing and implementing the programme of in-service training and a proposed system for individual staff support and supervision.

  38.34  In our judgment, on the basis of the reports that we have seen, the Secretary of State was fully justified in withholding general SEN approval from this school from 1989 to 1996. Furthermore, he would, in our view, have been justified also in refusing during this period to approve specific placements by Welsh local authorities under section 11(3)(b) of the Education Act 1981 and its successor provision. As it was, a degree of confusion reigned, at least for a period, after general approval had been withdrawn because the Secretary of State for Wales did not have jurisdiction to approve placements by non-Welsh local authorities. Some of his advisers were rightly apprehensive, therefore, about the possibility of an application for judicial review of the Secretary of State's decision made known on 3 April 1989 to give consent for existing placements to continue. Quite apart from the lack of jurisdiction we find it quite extraordinary that a regulatory authority should have purported to give blanket approval in this way for placements to continue indefinitely in an establishment considered to be unfit for general approval under the Act of 1981 on both educational and welfare grounds.

38.35  We do not criticise the Secretary of State for Wales' decision eventually to restore general SEN approval under the new statutory provision on 15 July 1996. It is to be noted, however, that an action plan was still necessary because some failings still had to be remedied after seven years of close scrutiny of the school.