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Cover Story: For many of its pupils, Aldine House offers the type of high-quality education, individual attention and nurturing relationships that are in scant supply in their home environment. But they spend their time under lock and key because it is to institutions like this that some of England's most notorious young offenders, including the killers of James Bulger, are sent. Kerra Maddern spent a day inside. Photos by Paul Floyd Blake.
Pictures of smartly dressed children beam from the walls. Colourful charts record perfect attendance and behaviour. Evidence of prowess in woodwork, art and cooking is spread around the classrooms. Pupils are getting the sort of one-to-one attention most parents can only dream of - except most would never want their son or daughter to end up here.
This is Aldine House, one of 19 secure children's centres in England and Wales. They are home to some of the country's most notorious young criminals, children who have been responsible for acts of violence, arson and even murder.
It is to centres such as Aldine House that Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, the killers of James Bulger, were sent after their conviction. They also house the two brothers who savagely beat and tortured two boys in South Yorkshire last year.
At the end of a leafy lane, nestled on the edge of the Peak District near Sheffield, Aldine appears more Big Brother house than Victorian prison. Modern, bright and spacious, the brick building is surrounded by cameras and fences. All doors are kept locked. Visitors are screened and enter through airlock-style doors. Walking through the centre requires every door to be unlocked and then locked behind you.
At Aldine, the staff's job is not only to rehabilitate some of Britain's most disturbed young people, but also to act as parents, friends and teachers. But if the idea of trying to teach children who have committed sometimes horrendous crimes is daunting, those who work here seem unfazed.
Dave Newman was a youth worker and then a teacher at challenging schools before he arrived here, so he is used to dealing with problem pupils. "We have the same ethos here as in any other school - we want the children to do well," he says.
Judi Booth...