Agenda item

Report attached.

The Team Manager, Youth Offending Team (YOT) attended the meeting to advise members of progress towards meeting the recommendations of the Core Case Inspection of statutory Youth Offending Work in Havering. He advised the Committee that the Inspectors had examined a representative sample (38 cases) of youth offending cases for the area. .Most of the cases inspected were community cases with a small number (9) of custody cases. Most cases involved court orders which commenced with or were transferred to Havering YOT between September 2010 and January 2011.  The exception to this sample involved custody cases where the low numbers of available cases meant inspectors had to look at work that was nearly two years old.

They reviewed case records and met case managers to reach a judgment as to how often the Safeguarding, Risk of Harm (to others) and Likelihood of Reoffending aspects of the work were undertaken to a sufficiently high level of quality.  This was judged against a 136 point questionnaire used for all Core Case Inspections

The Inspectors judged each of the main categories of the inspection as follows:

·          that the Safeguarding aspects of the work were carried out competently 58% of the time.

·          that work to keep to a minimum each individual’s Risk of Harm to otherswas undertaken competently 54% of the time

·          that work to address the likelihood of reoffending or make each individual less likely to reoffend was undertaken competently well enough 69% of the time.

Within their foreword, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation described this as a disappointing set of findings. However, the inspectors did also note a number of positive aspects to the Team’s work. In particular, Inspectors felt that case managers and Youth Offending Service (YOS) managers were keen to develop their practice and had responded positively to the inspection feedback.

A full report was issued which included eight recommendations for improvement, these are attached as Appendix ‘A’.

The Committee were informed that an Improvement Plan had been drawn up and agreed by the YOS Local Management Board and this was provided to the Committee with an indication of how well the service was responding to the report.

The Committee asked a number of questions to enable them to assess how well the YOT were responding to the report. They requested a report back to the next meeting on 16 February 2012 so that they could be satisfied with progress.

After officers left the meeting the Committee discussed the report and the actions taken to meet the recommendations. They felt that the report had damaged the reputation of the Council and were not convinced that officers had grasped the seriousness of the report. They felt that the Improvement Plan and the work being taken to meet the targets was unsatisfactory.

The Committee AGREED to establish a Topic Group to review progress and assess the processes. As part of the work the Topic Group would review the outcome of Core Case Inspections of other London Authorities paying particular attention to neighbouring boroughs and those with similar demographics. A scoping meeting would be held early in the New Year by which time members would have had an opportunity to assess the results of other authorities reviews.