Staff at Newcastle Youth Offending Team were doing some good work to turn children away from crime, but senior leaders needed to work better together to drive performance, said Dame Glenys Stacey, Chief Inspector of Probation. Today she published the report of a recent joint inspection of the work of Newcastle Youth Offending Team (YOT).

This joint inspection of youth offending work in Newcastle is one of a small number of full joint inspections undertaken by HM Inspectorate of Probation with colleagues from the criminal justice, social care, education and health inspectorates. Inspectors focused on six key areas: reducing reoffending, protecting the public, protecting children and young people, ensuring the sentence is served, the effectiveness of governance and court work and reports.

 

Inspectors were pleased to find that:

• work to protect the public and actual or potential victims was satisfactory. There were some strong assessments, planning and interventions, however, plans did not always involve the young person sufficiently;
• work to protect children and young people and reduce their vulnerability was satisfactory. Inspectors saw some effective safeguarding work by individual case managers, including where complex vulnerability had been recognised and supportive action taken to address it; and
• work to ensure that the sentence was served was satisfactory. Compliance work was carried out effectively with some excellent examples of professional discretion to manage a sentence as a whole and promote engagement.

However, inspectors were concerned to find that:

• work to reduce reoffending was unsatisfactory. Planning overall was not cohesive enough and interventions did not always follow from either the assessment or the plan. A lack of appropriate and sufficient education, training and employment was a significant barrier to the YOT’s impact on reducing reoffending;
• the effectiveness of governance and partnership arrangements was unsatisfactory. Individuals were committed but there was a lack of strategic ownership at Partnership Board level to drive, challenge and support the YOT to improve service delivery; and
• the effectiveness of interventions to reduce reoffending was unsatisfactory. Some interventions were of a good quality. The victim’s perspective was a constant feature. The impact of interventions would be strengthened if they were used more rigorously and were more appropriate to individual need.

Inspectors made recommendations to assist the YOT to make continuing improvements, including ensuring that the YOT Partnership Board was more effective and accountable.
Dame Glenys Stacey said:

“Many staff at Newcastle Youth Offending Team were committed and tenacious and some good work was being done to turn children away from crime. However, the leadership and governance of the YOT needed to be stronger and the YOT Partnership Board needed to really drive forward reducing reoffending, protecting the public and keeping young people safe.”

 

– ENDS –
NOTES TO EDITORS

1. The report is available at https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprobation/ from 28 July 2016.
2. The inspection programme of youth offending work, based on a risk-proportionate approach, was agreed by ministers in December 2011. Under this programme, full joint inspections are targeted primarily on areas where there are significant concerns about the effectiveness of youth offending work, based primarily on the three national youth justice indicators, supplemented by other measures, such as recent inspections. Occasional inspections are undertaken in areas that report high performance, in order to maintain a benchmark for good practice. Inspectors chose to inspect Newcastle YOT because it seemed from published data and trend analysis that performance was deteriorating.
3. These inspections focus on issues not subject to other forms of external scrutiny: work to reduce offending and re-offending by young people; the management and minimisation of the risk of harm that a young person may pose to other people; safeguarding young people from harm (from their own actions and others); and work to ensure they serve their sentence.
4. There are four ratings which can be given: good, satisfactory, unsatisfactory and poor.
5. The inspections are led by HMI Probation, with participation by Ofsted, CQC and HMI Constabulary (and in Wales by the corresponding Welsh inspectorates, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales, Estyn and Care and Social Services Inspectorate Wales).
6. For further information, please contact Jane Parsons at HM Inspectorate of Probation press office on 07880 787452 or Alan MacDonald on 07917 073528.