What this is
The Independent Inquiry into Abuse at Kerelaw Residential School and Secure Unit, commissioned by the Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council in November 2007 and chaired by Eddie Frizzell. It reported in May 2009 [1].
Kerelaw opened at Stevenston in Ayrshire in 1970 as a residential school for 72 boys, added a mixed-sex secure unit in 1983, and from 1996 was run by Glasgow City Council [1].
The inquiry examined how abuse was able to continue over years, the council’s stewardship of the school, its investigation of what happened, and the arrangements after the school closed between 2004 and 2006. Its team conducted 166 interviews [1].
What it records
Between 350 and 400 allegations from 159 people, complaining of emotional, physical or sexual abuse, were reported to the inquiry by Glasgow City Council in 2007 [1].
On restraint, the inquiry found that “a significant number of staff and young people saw TCI solely as a method of restraint and some used physical intervention as a first rather than last resort”.
Restraints were “often inappropriate and poorly executed”. Young people said they had been “poorly restrained and hurt”, and some said they had been assaulted without any pretence of restraint.
Strathclyde Regional Council adopted the Therapeutic Crisis Intervention model in 1995, a framework built around de-escalation. The inquiry found a workforce that read it as a restraint system [1]. Some staff accepted that restraints they applied had caused pain. Others had been trained in the 1980s and early 1990s in pain compliance techniques of the kind used in prisons, and those habits did not disappear when the model changed.
Complaints that restraint had hurt a young person were not consistently investigated.
How to read it
The finding is about what staff believed the training was for, not about whether the model was sound. TCI was a de-escalation framework, and the inquiry did not conclude otherwise. It concluded that a significant number of the people using it treated it as a set of holds.
That is the reading rule. A curriculum does not govern practice by itself. What governs practice is what the workforce thinks the curriculum is for, and whether anyone corrects them when they get it wrong. At Kerelaw nobody did.
This is a system finding. It tells you nothing about any individual restraint or member of staff, and it should not be cited as though it did.
Where it stops
The inquiry covered allegations from the 1970s to the 2000s and reported in May 2009. It is evidence about Scottish residential child care before that date, not about current practice in any school or unit.
It did not adjudicate individual allegations or re-run police investigations. Two staff were convicted of physical and sexual abuse and one of physical abuse after separate police investigations, and a further allegation of sexual abuse was not proven. Those outcomes belong to the criminal process.
No resident or member of staff is named here.
Confidence: probable. The report PDF was read, including the chapters on abuse and physical restraint, but it was the only source read, and the Scottish Government publication page was not retrieved.
Sources
[1] Scottish Government, Independent Inquiry into Abuse at Kerelaw Residential School and Secure Unit (Frizzell), May 2009 · https://lx.iriss.org.uk/sites/default/files/resources/0081066.pdf
If you train staff in a school or a children’s home, our restraint reduction training for schools starts from what staff believe physical intervention is for.
Reviewed 20 October 2026.