Issue - meetings

The Local Authority has a statutory duty, in partnership with Health, Police and Probation, to produce an annual Youth Justice Plan. The Plan sets out how services are to be organised and funded and what functions they will carry out to prevent youth offending and re-offending across Bath and North East Somerset. The Plan will be submitted to the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales.

The Council considered a report presenting the Youth Justice Plan 2022-23.

On a motion from Councillor Dine Romero, seconded by Councillor Paul May, it was unanimously

RESOLVED to

1.  Agree the Youth Justice Plan fulfils the requirements of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and can be submitted to the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales;

2.  Adopt the Youth Justice Plan as part of the Council’s Policy and Budget Framework that can be accommodated within the Council budget; and

3.  Note that the Youth Offending Service Management Board is responsible for ensuring delivery and ask the relevant Development and Scrutiny Panel to oversee performance.

The Local Authority has a statutory duty, in partnership with Health, Police and Probation, to produce an annual Youth Justice Plan. The Plan sets out how services are to be organised and funded and what functions they will carry out to prevent youth offending and re-offending across Bath and North East Somerset. The Cabinet is asked to recommend full Council to approve the Plan.

Cllr Dine Romero introduced the report, moved the officer recommendation and made the following statement:

“As you will know the Local Authority has a statutory duty to produce an annual youth justice plan which is submitted to the national board.

The main objective of the youth justice system is to prevent offending by 10–17-year-olds.

The plan before you has been drawn together with input from the multi-agency team including police, social services, education, probation and health.

These partners have a shared responsibility not only for the plan itself and the part they play within it but for resourcing the youth offending service. The council pays the most, 54% of the budget. We are reliant on core national funding from ministry of justice and as far as I am aware we’re still waiting the actual sign off but have been told it won’t be less than before

In terms of how well we are doing again at the statutory purpose, the Youth Offending Service worked with 89 out of 36.7k children in B&NES in 2022 which is fewer than in previous years but there is concern that opportunities to intervene may have been missed and more children may enter the formal justice system in the future as a result.

Despite such low numbers and like many other places across the country a greater proportion of those entering the youth justice system are from black backgrounds, and as you will recall from my answer to Councillor Kumar earlier, the board are proactively looking at how we can increase representation on the board, and also within partner organisations to understand better why this is the case.

There is much more that I could draw your attention to but hope having read the plan cabinet are happy to endorse the plan, to appreciate the work that has gone into drawing it up, and finally but most importantly be supportive of the child first principle that is underpinning work in the youth justice system locally and nationally.”

Cllr Tim Ball seconded the motion and stressed the importance of keeping children out of the youth justice system and out of trouble.  He also highlighted the need to recognise conditions such as autism, ADHD and poor mental health.  He thanked all those working with children in the Youth Justice system and those working to prevent children from entering the system in the first place.

RESOLVED (unanimously):  To recommend approval of the Youth Justice Plan to full Council, conditional on satisfactory confirmation of the budget.

The Plan sets out how services are to be organised and funded and what functions they will carry out to prevent youth offending and re-offending across Bath and North East Somerset.

The Director of Children's Services & Education introduced this report to the Panel. She explained that the Local Authority has a statutory duty, in partnership with Health, Police and Probation, to produce an annual Youth Justice Plan and that the Plan sets out how services are to be organised and funded and what functions they will carry out to prevent youth offending and re-offending across Bath and North East Somerset.

She stated that the Plan is also due to be presented to Cabinet, then Council for approval and then submitted to the national Youth Justice Board (YJB).

She also gave the Panel a presentation on the matter, a copy of which will be available as an online appendix to these minutes and a summary is set out below.

Crime and Disorder Act 1998

·  Establishment of multi-agency Youth Offending Teams (YOT)

·  Council as lead partner, with Health, Probation and Police Services having a duty to co-operate and help resource

·  Statutory purpose to prevent children offending

·  Requirement to produce an annual Youth Justice Plan

·  Receipt of national grant dependent on submission of the Plan

Child First Principles

1.  See children as children – Prioritise best interests of children, recognising their particular needs, capacities, rights and potential. All work is child-focused and developmentally informed

2.  Develop pro-social identity for positive child outcomes – Promote children’s individual strengths and capacities as a means of developing their pro-social identity for sustainable desistance…. All work is constructive and future-focused, built on supportive relationships that empower children to fulfil their potential and make positive contributions to society

3.  Collaboration with children – Encourage children’s active participation, engagement and wider social inclusion. All work is meaningful collaboration with children and their carers

4.   Promote diversion – Promote a childhood removed from the justice system, using pre-emptive prevention, diversion, and minimal intervention. All work minimises criminogenic stigma from contact with the system.

Prevention and Diversion

• Rate of children coming into justice system is lowest it has been since 2000
• More children go to Out of Court Disposal Panel or are diverted by Police

Re-Offending after 12 months

• Latest comparative data is for July 2019 - June 2020 cohort
• 32% children re-offended, lower than all comparators apart from ‘family’ group (31.5%)
• Of those who did re-offend, the average number of new offences was 2.88, much better than all comparators (range from 3.61 – 3.9)

Custodial sentencing

·  Number very low – none in the last 12 months. Also, no custodial remands in the last 12 months

·  Strong community proposals have enabled Court to sentence in the community

·  Wider context of considerably reducing child custodial population

Strategic Priorities

1.  Strengthen participation – Children’s, parents’/carers’ and victims’. YOT Management Board meetings to begin with either a case study or an item that highlights the ‘Voice of the Child’.

2.  Address disproportionality – Black and dual heritage children, girls and those with SEND

3.  Extend practice models – Trauma informed, systemic and restorative practice

4.  Tackle exploitation – Contextual safeguarding audit, serious violence duty  ...  view the full minutes text for item 37