Agenda item

To receive an oral report from officers.

At the invitation of the Chairman Councillor Keith Darvill addressed the Committee on concerns which had been raised with him concerning the way Barking and Dagenham had provided the Youth Offending Service since October 2012.

Councillor Darvill had indicated that he was happy to support the proposal to bring the management of the Youth Offending Service back in house. However, he wished to highlight one particular area of the service which in his opinion had been poorly managed by the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. This was the process around the management of Referral Orders.

When the court makes a referral order the young offender is referred to a youth offender panel. The initial panel meeting, which the young offender is required to attend, and which parents or carers may be required to attend, should be held within 20 working days of the order being made.

Youth offender panels must comprise at least two volunteers who are representative of the local community, plus a member of the youth offending team, who should act as an adviser. The community panel members should take the lead in the panel meeting and one of them will chair; the youth offending team panel adviser should provide background information and advice to the community panel members.

Prior to the move of the service to barking and Dagenham there had been a post of Co-ordinator for Referrals. This post had been removed from the establishment and problems began.

On many occasions only one volunteer was appointed to serve on the Panel and support was provided by either an Education specialist or a Social Worker. Since the move to Barking and Dagenham no training had been made available to keep the volunteers up to date and there had been no attempt to recruit new volunteers,

At the Panel hearings, contracts had been written out in hand writing rather than properly prepared and volunteers had raised concern at the location and security of the premises used for the Panel meetings.

After Councillor Darvill had addressed the Committee, the Chairman invited a member of the public to address the meeting. This member of the public was one of the Volunteer members and he confirmed what Councillor Darvill had said. Prior to 2012 the Volunteer panel members had met on a quarterly basis to discuss issues. After 2012 this never happened.

Volunteers were advised that they needed additional training but this was never followed up.

Since the service moved back in house Panel Meetings had been cancelled if two volunteers were not available.

The Chairman advised the Committee that he did not believe it was the role of this committee to look back and investigate what had gone wrong. The Committee should be looking to officers for an assurance that the problems had been identified and steps taken to rectify matters and ensure the problems do not reoccur.

Officers admitted to the Committee that Barking and Dagenham had failed to provide adequate resources to ensure the Referral Order process had worked correctly. Bringing the service back in-house provided the opportunity to rectify these failings and steps were already being taken to address all the issues. The Council had already initiated a recruitment procedure to identify new volunteers. A comprehensive training programme was being introduced for both new and existing volunteers.  Support was being provided to the Panels and the volunteers.

The Committee welcomed these initiatives and asked officers to report back in six months’ time on how the process was running once everything was in place.

The Committee wished to receive a report on the entirety of the work of the Youth Offending Service so they could see how the referral order process fitted in with its work and receive an assurance that it was adequately resourced to meet the boroughs needs.