Millenium Lodge - Environmental Sensing System

Millenium Lodge is a pathfinder 28 bedded Local Authority Secure Children’s Home, it is designed around the learning taken from visits to all secure children’s homes in the UK as well as the secure estate in Norway. The home will provide care for the most traumatised, vulnerable children in our society whilst catering for children placed through the Youth Justice System and children placed on Welfare Grounds.

LCC is considering the instalment of an in-room environmental sensing system across 28 children’s rooms within the secure unit. Any requirement would be for the provision of the system hardware, guidance and support of installation (which will be carried out by the LCC contractor responsible for the build) system configuration, guidance, training and support for staff in the use of the system, operational support and maintenance of and updates of the system.

The Council needs to establish how to balance the imperative to keep children safe with the equally important duty to preserve dignity, privacy, and relational care. Children placed in secure settings are among the most vulnerable in the care system, and as such, any intervention, particularly one involving human monitoring, must be held to a higher ethical and practice threshold than would apply in other contexts.

The rapid uptake in the adoption of new technologies has generated a growing concern around privacy, transparency, inclusion, and confidentiality. Within inpatient and custodial settings, there has been intense scrutinization around the use of restrictive and intrusive practices, for example, camera-based monitoring systems