Agenda item

The current Plan was adopted as part of the Council’s Policy and Budget Framework on 16 July 2015 and has subsequently been approved by the national Youth Justice Board.

The Chair commented that she was concerned that the report didn’t cover the risks presented to the agreed local plans by proposed in-year cuts to the funding for youth offending teams in England and Wales. She said that the LGA has warned that the number of children in custody risks increasing if plans to reduce in-year funding for Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) by an additional £9 million go ahead. She stated that YOTs have already had to find efficiency savings, through staffing and support costs, to cope with 40 per cent less money to run services in recent years. She asked how much scope was there for further efficiencies.

The 11-19 Prevention Service Manager replied that the in-year cuts have already been implemented, having been confirmed in November. They were managed without any reduction in staffing but, several development initiatives were halted, as indicated in the progress report on the annual work plan. She was concerned over the prospect of further reductions as the Youth Offending Service is funded by a number of statutory partners, some of whom are reviewing their contributions.  The National Probation Service will be reducing its contribution to Youth Offending Services from April. We have been advised that the level of Ministry of Justice (YJB) funding for the year ahead will not be confirmed until mid-April.

The Divisional Director for Safeguarding & Social Care added that information relating to any merger of services or reconfiguration of the Youth Offending Team could be brought back to the Panel.

Councillor Liz Hardman asked if the financial contribution from the Council to the Youth Offending Team remained the same.

The Strategic Director for People & Communities replied that the contribution was as expected and reported within the current round of budget proposals.

Councillor Liz Hardman commented that it was good to see that there were currently no young people from Bath and North East Somerset serving custodial sentences and that no such sentences had been passed for 2 ½ years.

The 11-19 Prevention Service Manager replied that there is a strong Custody Review Panel in place to review all uses of detention for young people and that the work with this multi-agency group and the quality of report-writing in the Youth Offending Service has been particularly significant, as a number of cases could have  resulted in a custodial sentence. She added that the local custodial rate is currently zero, one of only a handful of Services in England and Wales with this level of performance. However, the Service is not complacent about this and is working with a small cohort of concerning young people.

The Chair commented she was pleased to see the number of first time entrants into the youth justice system was falling steadily, but disappointed to find out it might only be due to a different approach to the reporting of the possession of cannabis and therefore may not reflect any real reduction in criminal activity. She asked if it was possible to measure what progress had been made to the number of first time entrants if the new approach to reporting possession of cannabis hadn’t been introduced.

The 11-19 Prevention Service Manager replied that having looked at the local data she was confident there had been a reduction despite the new approach to the reporting of cannabis possession. The current improvement and rate are better than all comparators and also reflect the value of early help work with young people at risk of offending (Compass and Mentoring Plus). The Cannabis diversion initiative means that young people who would previously have had an immediate Police Caution with no intervention, now have the opportunity of assessment and intervention with Project 28, a substance misuse service for young people. The Police and Crime Commissioner has expressed an interest in seeing this sort of approach introduced in other Authorities.

The Chair asked for the Panel to be provided with a copy of the AssetPlus framework.

The 11-19 Prevention Service Manager replied that the framework document was quite substantial in size and offered to send them rationale document instead.

The Panel RESOLVED to:

(i)  Note the progress made in the partnership’s statutory work of preventing youth offending.

(ii)  Support the identification of priority areas for the Youth Justice Plan 2016-2017.