Agenda item

The purpose of the report is to review the statutory Youth Justice Plan for 2020-21, directing any comments to the Head of Service for Early Help and Prevention.

Members of Children, Young People and Schools Scrutiny Commission are recommended to review the progress made against the priorities outlined within the Leicester City Youth Justice Plan for 2020-21.

The purpose of the report was to review the statutory Youth Justice Plan for 2020-21, directing any comments to the Head of Service for Early Help and Prevention.

In addition to the information outlined in the report, the presenting Officer noted the following and responded to queries from Members of the Commission;

·         There had been positive progress for the service and the young people that the service was working with including a 10% reduction in young people becoming first time entrants.

·         A Member of the Commission hoped that a funding element could be found in the future to support the ‘prevention’ element of the service.

·         In relation to performance indicators, targets would be set, in January 2021 by looking at what was achieved in the 2020 year and what could be done for the upcoming year.

·         In relation to the pandemic this year, it was reported that locally there was a slight increase in the number of young people coming into custody compared with the previous year.

·         Currently developing a ‘POP’ pathway which was the Prevention of Offending Pathway (POP). This would also tie into the knife crime strategy piece of work taking place with the Assistant City Mayor for Neighbourhood Services.

·         It was noted that during the pandemic there had seen an initial decrease in offending behaviour but an increase in social isolation and mental health issues was reported and also young people who disengaged with the service, as the means had moved to a virtual platform for a period of time. However, the service had completely recovered from that and caught up with any back log and no issues arose.

·         In response to a Members query it was confirmed that Leicester City had not seen a notable increase in criminal exploitation during the pandemic.

·         A Commission Member commented that the partnership between the Police, Youth Service and Social Services was very positive.

·         A Member of the Commission drew attention to the graphs on p133. The Officer clarified that the graph showed results for the number of young people who completed each of the sessions in a group work programme called ‘Which Way’. For the next report the Officer agreed to make it much clearer that the blue referenced knowledge prior to completing the session and red indicated progress made after completing session.

·         In terms of priorities for the next year, one of these would be to focus on young people who had an education health care plan and open to the youth justice service. In addition, it would be aimed to ensure that the service was being inclusive in supporting those young people with any additional needs.

·         Highlighting the work of a task and finish group to explore disproportionality in relation to ethnicity, a survey was carried out with staff which showed that some members of staff would like more training in areas like racial disparity and disproportionality. In addition, staff welcomed opportunities to take part in the reverse mentoring scheme, be able to learn from colleagues from other ethnicities and be able to gain more confidence to talk about ethnicity and culture with young people.

·         The work was still underway, however initial findings highlighted that processes in place were not always routinely used to explore the impact of offending behaviour on a young person’s culture and ethnicity, an example being the ‘Case Management Diversity Panel’. This panel provided a platform for case managers to present cases for additional scrutiny and support where they were high risk or to explore diversity and culture, most officers used this platform to review risk, this has recently improved. The work was almost at conclusion with a report and recommendations being presented to the Youth Justice Management Board on 15 December 2020.

·         The Chair gave congratulations that issues in diversity were now being discussed in such an open manner.

·         It was requested that this topic was a future report to be brought on the task group.

·         The knife crime strategic delivery group alongside police, probation and heath colleagues had been a feature to influence what the priorities for the plan would look like going forward. There was a section on Children and Young People and the vast majority of the 10 indicators were supported by the Youth Justice Service and the Youth Service. The main focus was prevention and pursuit.

·         A project called ‘Safer routes for schools’ allowed for detached youth work teams to go out between 3pm and 6pm at key schools where it was known to have a higher rate of knife crime incidents. The service would then do detached youth work to focus targeting work with young people to reduce that prevalence.

·         In relation to young people and mental health, the service had a dedicated ACE team whereby Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) had provided 2 full time workers who were focused on adverse childhood experiences i.e. trauma related instances in childhood. All of the Youth Justice Service had been fully trained in ACE trauma and due to this success, it had been negotiated through CAMHS to have ACE training for all practitioners within Early Help and Prevention and later Children’s Social Care.

·         It was noted that the service was well aware that when looking at behaviours it was important that ADHD factors were being considered in addition to those ACE behaviours as responses would be different depending on the origins of the behaviour.

·         The presenting officer explained in more detail the following points; inspection recommendations and attendance at the management board.

AGREED:

1.    That the Commission welcome and note the progress made against the priorities outlined within the Leicester City Youth Justice Plan for 2020-21

2.    The next annual report to come back would be due April/ May 2021.

3.    It was requested that equalities comments in terms of the task and finish group report would be brought back to a future meeting.

4.    The Commission welcome the honesty and openness of dealing with ethnicity and diversity as a service.