It isn't often that we have to call the police at the day unit, but it happens. They’re contacted when staff are unable to contain unsafe situations; glass might be broken and used as a weapon, students can be thrown into windows. Sometimes the police are called if a student leaves the building. A few months into my first term, I arrived for a shift and found squad cars outside the school. When I went inside, I discovered Junior sitting at the foot of the wooden staircase. The head teacher was speaking with one of the police officers, while another constable muttered into his radio. Junior had triggered the fire alarm and absconded. The police had found him walking round the local area without a jacket or shoes. He’d been brought back and his mum had been informed. He was glaring, balefully, unblinkingly at the head teacher and ignored me when I greeted him. The police left shortly after my arrival, but the heaviness remained, the crackle of radios, the forced whispers. Drummond Hall is supposed to be a safe space, but it is a state space too.

Typically, the state leaves birth parents to their own devices. They’re allowed to raise their children in whatever way they see fit, unless by doing so they harm the child. The “harm principle” is a central feature of political liberalism, captured in John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor's On Liberty: “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others”. Assuming they refrain from harm, citizens are free (at liberty) to build a family however they like. This view of parental rights is common, featuring prominently (for instance) in the World Health Organization policy on families: “Everyone has the right: to choose whether to have children or not; to decide freely the number, spacing and timing of children”. This right is only revoked when the child is at risk of harm.