MovieChat Forums > Made in Britain (1983) Discussion > Question about Assessment Centres

Question about Assessment Centres

posted 13 years ago by AardvarkRatnik
1 reply | jump to latest

I've only ever seen this once, late at night about 20 years ago and I still think its one of the most powerful TV dramas ever made. I've been doing some reading about a real life case about a child who ended up in an assessment centre, from what I remember of Made In Britain I've always imagined that they were a kind of intermediate level between standard Children's Homes and Detention Centres/Borstals for determining what would be done with problem cases. Does anyone have any information about how exactly they worked and how long a child could be referred to them for?

"And with that sentence you've just lost the right to even talk to me, now BACK OFF!"

[–] Rozzi1 9 years ago

They were for delinquent kids who were either too old to be fostered or the right age but too unrully / toublesome. They wouldn't stay there past being 17. If they were young teens, then depending how they behaved (their assessment) the staff would try to relocate them to foster care or if they were 16 get them into bedsits once they found jobs. If they were troublesome and in between court dates (like Trevor) then the staff assessed them on grounds of whether a custodial sentence (Borstal / DC) was 'best option'. It was like a half-way house before going on somewhere else. If they were younger than 16 and too prombelmatic for foster, then they could be sent to 'Boarding Schools' which were officially boarding schools but for delinquent youth, and were basically the same as Borstals. There were also Assessement Centres where the kids were on lock-down during 'assessment' which were also more or less like Borstals.