Sandwell Youth Offending Service (YOS) in the West Midlands was assessed by probation inspectors as good overall, with some outstanding areas of practice alongside aspects that required improvement.

The YOS, though it was going through a period of organisational transition, was creative in its work with children and young people.

Dame Glenys Stacey, HM Chief Inspector of Probation, said the YOS provided an excellent range of interventions to support those it supervised in “desistance” from offending. The work with court orders was good; assessments and planning that looked at a child’s safety and wellbeing and their risk of harm to others were outstanding. The YOS, however, needed to improve the reviewing of cases to ensure that these accurately reflect the changes in a child or young person’s life.

Inspectors found that the work undertaken with out-of-court disposals required improvement to ensure that it resulted in a positive outcome for children and their families. Its work with victims also required improvement so that the victims’ wishes were considered across all interventions.

Over and above this performance assessment, Dame Glenys Stacey took the unusual step of urging agencies in the large, densely populated and deprived borough to investigate whether discrimination is a factor in local criminal justice for children and young people.

In the Sandwell report inspectors noted that the YOS management board had “specific concerns about the over-representation of black and mixed-race young males in the youth justice system in Sandwell.” This had led to several projects being commissioned, including from a company specialising in the engagement of young people from minority ethnic groups.

Dame Glenys stressed the importance of further investigation of these issues: “Sandwell YOS supervises a disproportionately high number of black and mixed-race young people and has a high custody rate. Consultations had been undertaken with young people and innovative projects and interventions developed to better improve their engagement. From a strategic perspective, partners need to be confident that the disproportionality is not because of possible discrimination within the justice system.”

– Ends –

Notes to editors:

The report is available at justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprobation at 00.01 on Thursday 1 November 2018.

1. Youth Offending Teams (YOTs), which deliver youth offending services, supervise 10-18-year olds who have been sentenced by a court, or who have come to the attention of the police because of their offending behaviour but have not been charged and instead are dealt with out of court.
2. Sandwell YOS covers six towns and is part of the West Midlands Combined Authority. Sandwell received a statutory direction to create a children’s trust. The trust, which came into effect in April 2018, is operationally independent from the local authority. It is commissioned to provide a number of services, including the YOS. Historically, the YOS Management Board was a sub-group of the Community Safety Partnership, but its relationship with the children’s trust has not yet been decided. According to the Index of Multiple Deprivation for England published by the Department for Communities and Local Government in 2015, Sandwell was the 13^th most deprived area.
3. This inspection is part of HMI Probation’s new programme of YOS inspections. Sandwell was inspected and rated across three broad areas: the arrangements for organisational delivery first, and then the quality of court disposals work, and out of court disposals work.
4. We inspected against new standards and all services are given one of four ratings: outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate.
5. Fieldwork for the Sandwell inspection took place in August 2018.
6. For further information please contact John Steele, HMI Probation Chief Communications Officer, on 020 3334 0357 or 07880 787452, or at john.steele@justice.gov.uk