Agenda item

This report presents the outcomes of the Youth Justice Service inspection undertaken by HM Inspectorate of Probation in June 2022.

The Chair congratulated the team for their work delivering, what the inspectors judged to be, a ‘confident and capable service’.

Jacqui McShannon (Strategic Director of Children’s Services) introduced the item on the inspection of the Youth Justice Service. She said the Council welcomed the positive outcome and noted that it was a credit to the frontline professionals in the service and their skill, expertise, and perseverance. She also paid tribute to the service’s community partners who enabled a rich extended offer. She added that Hammersmith & Fulham was one of only two local authorities in London with an overall rating of ‘outstanding’ and that should be celebrated.

Amana Gordon (Operational Director, Children and Young Peoples Service) presented the report and discussed the inspections recommendations. One area for improvement was around volunteer training. During Covid it was done online but there were plans in place to return to a hybrid model and improve engagement.

Councillors congratulated officers on the inspection outcome.

Councillor Aliya Afzal-Khan, in reference to recommendation 3, asked for more information about the disproportionality mentioned. She also asked what was being done to address diversity needs. Amana Gordon said there was an over-representation of black and mixed-heritage boys in the service, though it was broadly in line with the general population going by the latest census data. There were also a significant number of young people with special educational needs and disabilities. Officers were working on that area with the Education team.

The Chair asked what data other than stop-and-search data was being used to determine over-representation and how it compared with other areas. Amana Gordon said stop-and-search data was difficult to work with because it wasn’t broken down in the right way. It was a priority for the partnership though and officers were working with police colleagues to resolve this problem. Jacqui McShannon added that, through the Community Safety Partnership, officers had challenged the police to provide that data.

The Chair asked how Councillors could support officers to move this forward – and suggested a note from the Committee. Amana Gordon said that would be helpful. She added that officers were also working with community voice on the impact of stop-and-search and how traumatic it was for children. She said it was effective for police officers and children to speak to each other about their experiences.

The Chair, in reference to recommendation 2, asked if the Youth Justice service had benchmarking data. Amana Gordon felt the inspection didn’t reflect the service as well as it should have. The inspectors were specifically looking for data analysis, but practice had moved on. Officers were planning to reflect this back to them.

Councillor Lucy Richardson asked if the mentors were in house or agency. Amana Gordon said they used a range of third sector organisations to serve different needs like education or criminal exploitation.

Councillor Richardson asked if the issue with volunteer training staff was purely due to Covid or if there were other issues. Amana Gordon said it was to do with Covid. The volunteers wanted to get back to face-to-face meetings. The training record before Covid was strong and officers were confident it had already been addressed.

The Chair asked if the gangs unit was new since the previous inspection. Jacqui McShannon said it was and it worked closely with the service and community-based partners. It was focused on developing community resilience and capacity.

A resident attending the meeting noted that she had picked up a lot of initiatives in the report that she wasn’t previously aware of. The Chair asked officers to think about how to disseminate this work to community leaders – in residents’ meetings for example.

ACTION: Jacqui McShannon / Amana Gordon

Councillor Daryl Brown asked about the age range of the young people in the service. Jacqui McShannon said it ranged from 10 to 18 years old, the national criminal age of responsibility.

Councillor Mercy Umeh congratulated officers for their hard work and said she was happy to see co-production pay off.

Councillor Richardson discussed signposting young people at risk and suggested putting materials on the Council’s website for parents or teachers who were worried about someone. Amana Gordon said there were resources on the website already and she offered to share them with the Committee.

ACTION: Amana Gordon

Nandini Ganesh asked if the inspection looked at the role of schools. Amana Gordon said it looked at education routes for children. Amana Gordon and Peter Haylock (Director of Education) worked closely to ensure there was a good education offer available – and alternative provision when necessary.

Nadia Taylor asked about peer mentoring and if there were any opportunities for the Youth Council or Youth Parliament to mentor young people.

Jacqui McShannon said mentoring was a rich offer – the service tried to ensure it was listening to young people. She said it might not be appropriate to match them with the Youth Council. They were mainly interested in people who had been through the system themselves.

RESOLVED

1. The Committee noted the outcome of the inspection and the five recommendations made by HMIP to support continuous improvement of our delivery.

2. The Committee asked officers to consider how they could disseminate the good practice from the inspection report into local communities.