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Written question asked by Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat) on Monday, 6 September 2010, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 8 September 2010. It was answered by Crispin Blunt (Conservative) on Tuesday, 14 September 2010 on behalf of the Ministry of Justice.

Cookham Wood Secure Training Centre

Question
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many incidents of self-harm by children of each (a) sex and (b) age group were recorded at Medway secure training centre in each month since April 1998; and how many such incidents required external medical assistance.
Answer

The Youth Justice Board (YJB) requires every establishment to report all incidents of self-harm on a monthly basis. Self-harm is defined as"““any act by which a young person deliberately harms themselves irrespective of the method, intent, or severity of the injury.””"The YJB has collected data against this definition since April 2007. The number of self-harm incidents since April 2007 by (a) gender and (b) age is outlined in the tables 1 and 2 as follows. The third table shows the number of incidents requiring external medical assistance.These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems, which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing and may be subject to change over time.

Incidents of self harm by gender
Male Female
April 2007 12 17
May 2007 1 10
June 2007 6 8
July 2007 5 24
August 2007 5 26
September 2007 6 18
October 2007 5 13
November 2007 9 3
December 2007 4 1
January 2008 4 2
February 2008 1 1
March 2008 5 0
April 2008 7 2
May 2008 6 1
June 2008 4 7
July 2008 4 7
August 2008 4 7
September 2008 0 7
October 2008 2 4
November 2008 0 6
December 2008 0 2
January 2009 3 2
February 2009 3 5
March 2009 4 6
Incidents of self harm by age
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
April 2008 0 0 0 6 2 0 1
May 2008 0 0 0 2 0 0 5
June 2008 0 0 0 5 3 0 0
July 2008 0 0 0 0 7 2 2
August 2008 0 0 0 0 7 2 2
September 2008 0 0 0 0 0 7 0
October 2008 0 0 0 0 2 4 0
November 2008 0 0 0 0 2 4 0
December 2008 1 0 1 0 0 0 0
January 2009 0 0 0 1 2 2 0
February 2009 0 0 0 1 4 2 0
March 2009 0 0 0 1 3 5 0
Number of self harm incidents requiring hospital treatment
Number
April 2007 0
May 2007 1
June 2007 0
July 2007 0
August 2007 1
September 2007 0
October 2007 0
November 2007 1
December 2007 0
January 2008 0
February 2008 0
March 2008 0
April 2008 0
May 2008 0
June 2008 0
July 2008 0
August 2008 0
September 2008 0
October 2008 0
November 2008 0
December 2008 0
January 2009 0
February 2009 0
March 2009 2

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
14234; 515 c985-8W
Session
2010-12
Subjects
Self-harm Medway Secure Training Centre
Contains statistics
Yes
Link
View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk