Northamptonshire Youth Offending Service (YOS) has received an overall rating of ‘Good’ following an inspection by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation.

We also inspected the quality of resettlement work – the key services which need to be in place when a child is released from custody, for example to meet accommodation needs – which was separately rated as ‘Outstanding’.

Interim Chief Inspector of Probation Sue McAllister said: “Northamptonshire Youth Offending Service offers children under their supervision every chance to succeed.

“We were impressed with their approach to providing services for each child to access specialist support services, such as for substance misuse, speech, language, and communication and to meet their educational needs. The local community should know that the service is making every effort to stop children committing offences and provide opportunities towards a brighter future.”

We found the delivery of work with children was to a consistently high standard and that the positive efforts by Northamptonshire YOS to actively involve each child and their parent/carer resulted in children being positively engaged with the service. We carried out a survey of the children at the YJS, which resulted in a range of positive responses, including:

“My YOS [youth offending service] worker not only taught me why what I was doing was wrong, but also treated me with respect and supported me mentally as well. [They are] helping me to understand my emotions better and how to deal with things that have happened in my past, while she’s also helped me and my mum with school issues and is now supporting me with college.”

We made five recommendations which we believe will have a positive impact on youth offending services in Northamptonshire, including a more consistent approach to ensuring all children have access to health-based services.

We would also like to see the service give greater consideration to children’s diversity. We found instances where a child’s heritage, learning ability or sexuality were identified but not included in plans for how they would be supervised.

ENDS

Notes to editor

1. This service works with children aged 10 to 17. The YJS supervise children with complex needs and some in the care of the local authority.
2. The Inspectorate uses a four-point scale: ‘Outstanding’, ‘Good’, ‘Requires improvement’ and ‘Inadequate’, rating specific aspects of each service and giving an overall rating.
3. The inspection looked at standards of organisational delivery (leadership, staffing and facilities), their management of children serving court sentences (court disposals) and children serving cautions or community sentences (out-of-court disposals). We rated work on resettlement separately as ‘Outstanding’
4. The report is available on the HM Inspectorate of Probation website on 13 October 2023 00:01.
5. HM Inspectorate of Probation is the independent inspector of youth offending and probation services across England and Wales.
6. Fieldwork for this inspection took place in July 2023.
7. For media enquiries, please contact Head of Communications Diane Bramall media@hmiprobation.gov.uk (E-mail address)