Kath French Secure Care

Building Layout of The Kath French Secure Care Facility  - Australian Royal Commission

Care and support

Children at Kath French receive around-the-clock care from a multidisciplinary team. Depending on staffing and availability, this can include secure care workers, child protection staff, psychologists, nurses, education officers, doctors, mental health professionals and social workers.

The Centre uses a trauma-informed approach. This means staff are expected to consider how abuse, neglect, family disruption, repeated placement breakdowns and other traumatic experiences may affect a child’s behaviour and ability to feel safe.

The Centre provides a therapeutic care environment rather than conventional long-term psychological treatment. Staff observe the child’s behaviour, help them understand safety and emotional regulation and work with outside agencies to determine what support will be required after discharge. Any continuing therapy, psychiatric treatment or long-term support generally needs to be provided by other services after the child leaves.

This makes the transition from secure care particularly important. Children may return to foster care, residential care, family placements or other supported accommodation. When suitable accommodation and community services are unavailable, the progress made during a secure care placement can be difficult to maintain.

Children younger than the intended age group

Although the Centre was promoted as a service for young people aged between 12 and 18, children much younger than 12 have also been admitted.

In 2015, Department figures showed that two eight-year-olds, three 10-year-olds and two 11-year-olds had been among 39 children placed at Kath French during the previous ten months.

Their admission showed the level of risk and distress being experienced by some younger children but it also raised concerns about whether a secure facility designed mainly for teenagers was suitable for primary-school-aged children.

Evidence given to the Disability Royal Commission in 2021 also recognised that children were presenting with serious and dangerous behaviour at younger ages. The evidence stressed the need for earlier intervention so children could be supported before their situation reached the point where secure care was considered necessary.

Death of Child RM

One of the most serious examinations of the Centre followed the death of a 17-year-old girl legally identified as Child RM. She had experienced repeated placement breakdowns and had been admitted to Kath French on four occasions between 2012 and January 2017.

While at the Centre, she stopped drinking alcohol, attended medical appointments and participated in education about personal safety and self-care. After her final discharge, she was referred to a Midland service for young people at risk of homelessness but left after several days to live with her father.

Child RM died by suicide on 16 April 2017, less than three months after her final secure care placement.

A coronial inquest delivered on 16 July 2020 found that the Department had provided services that were available to Child RM but also identified missed opportunities where additional support may have changed the course of her life.

The Coroner made three recommendations:

• The State Government should consider changing the law to allow secure care placements longer than 42 days.

• The Department should fast-track its proposed complex community care service for young people with extremely complex needs, including those leaving Kath French.

• A cultural therapeutic specialist should urgently be employed at the Centre to improve cultural safety for children and staff.

The recommendation for a longer stay did not mean every child should remain in secure care for more than six weeks. It recognised that the fixed limit did not always allow enough time to arrange suitable accommodation, services and relationships before a child returned to the community.

Cultural safety

Aboriginal children have made up a significant proportion of admissions to secure care. The Centre’s service model has therefore faced questions about whether Aboriginal children were being supported in ways that maintained their connections to family, community, Country and culture.

The 2019 evaluation and later evidence to the Disability Royal Commission emphasised that cultural safety could not be treated as a minor part of care. It required Aboriginal involvement, consultation and properly funded specialist positions.

By September 2021, a therapeutic cultural support worker position had been introduced at Kath French, implementing one of the recommendations made through the evaluation and Child RM inquest.

At the same time, the Centre did not have a permanent on-site child and adolescent psychiatrist. Evidence to the Royal Commission stated that a psychiatrist provided guidance by video link each fortnight but did not assess or treat children at the Centre. Funding for an on-site position had been approved but the Department had difficulty finding a suitable specialist because of the limited number of child and adolescent psychiatrists available in Western Australia.

Reviews of the Centre

Quantum Consulting Australia completed a major evaluation of Kath French in February 2019.

The review examined the Centre’s service model, outcomes, staffing, cultural safety and transition arrangements. It was later published as evidence during the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability.

The Royal Commission considered Kath French during hearings about First Nations children with disability in out-of-home care.

Evidence confirmed that the Centre could provide short-term stability, safety and detailed observation of children experiencing severe distress. However, it also showed that Kath French could not address the underlying causes of trauma on its own.

The effectiveness of a placement depended heavily on what happened afterwards, including access to stable accommodation, mental health services, education, cultural support and consistent workers in the community.

Security upgrades

In 2021, the Department of Communities sought an upgrade of the Centre’s closed-circuit television system. BJ Systems was awarded a contract valued at approximately $139,447 to improve the CCTV and monitoring equipment at the Stoneville facility.

Although security is required because the Centre is locked, monitoring also forms part of staff safety, incident management and the supervision of children considered to be at immediate risk.

Child protection system pressures

The Centre does not operate separately from the rest of Western Australia’s child protection system. In July 2022, official figures showed that 1,034 child protection cases did not have an allocated caseworker. Between May and July that year, the Department activated 19 business continuity plans, including one at Kath French. Fifteen of those plans were linked to workforce shortages.

Business continuity plans allow services to reduce or suspend some normal duties so workers can concentrate on the most urgent frontline responsibilities.

The Department did not publicly explain exactly which functions were affected at Kath French. However, shortages across child protection can affect referrals, planning, communication with families and the support available after a child leaves secure care.

Current operation

Kath French continues to operate at Stoneville as Western Australia’s specialised secure care facility. Department of Communities recruitment information published in 2026 continued to describe the Centre as providing short-term, intensive therapeutic care for vulnerable children displaying high-risk behaviour. Its role remains deliberately limited, as it’s intended to manage an immediate crisis, reduce the risk of serious harm and prepare a child to return to a safer community placement.

The history of the Centre has also shown the problems with relying on a short secure placement when suitable housing, mental health treatment, cultural support and consistent community services are not available afterwards.

Kath French can provide temporary safety and stabilisation but it cannot replace the long-term care and support that many of the children entering the facility require.