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ITEM CM6

COMMUNITY SAFETY SCRUTINY COMMITTEE – 3 JULY 2006

YOUTH OFFENDING SCRUTINY REVIEW

EVALUATION 12 MONTHS ON

The former Executive considered recommendations from this Scrutiny Review. The Committee now has the opportunity to consider the implementation of the Cabinet’s response over the last twelve months and whether any further action is necessary.

This paper summarises:

1. Scrutiny Review objectives
2. Key themes and issues of the Scrutiny Review
3. Recommendations and Outcomes from the Scrutiny Review, including responses from the Executive
4. Update of progress over the previous 12 months
5. Scrutiny Evaluation Template
6. Lines of inquiry to address to the Cabinet portfolio holder

1. To establish where there were blocks and deficiencies in realising a truly joined-up approach to Youth Offending. To find out if the demands for partnership and integration were being delivered in reality.
2. To identify what else should be done to improve school engagement and raise levels of employment (because these are the key risk factors for offending).
3. To establish if preventative services could be better developed to reduce the quantity of youth offending and the damage it does to both the young people themselves and the community

2) Key themes and issues of the Scrutiny Review:

1. To see if there were further opportunities to be realised within the field of Youth Offending by improved co-ordination. The group considered how a relatively small injection of cash might be best spent to get the greatest benefit. The Review was important because one of the Council’s stated goals in its Best Value Performance Plan 2004-05 was to ‘improve services for young people in order to prevent them being drawn into or repeating criminal or drug-related activity’.
2. The Committee recognised that a tremendous amount of good work was being done by the Council’s own employees and other agencies working in this field. For example Oxfordshire have had a very positive YOT inspection and the County performs well at dealing with truancy and exclusion.
3. The Review Group decided to focus on school attendance and found that many schools were finding effective ways to increase attendance and that these needed rolling out across the county by better equipping more schools to be able to replicate these solutions. Similarly, many witnesses agreed that enhancing support for parents, especially those with children aged 8-13 years was likely to be cost-effective. 90% of young offenders subject to any sort of order should be receiving 25 hours per week of education – less than half are actually getting this.
4. Preventing offending is the most cost-effective solution and there is a clear expectation coming from central government for this to be made the central objective of youth justice. Because the causal factors that lead to offending are multi-faceted, prevention requires all agencies that work with children to share responsibility for preventing offending. This is set out in section 17 of the Crime and Disorder Act and echoed in the Children Act.
5. Many mainstream services are not yet adequately fulfilling their responsibility to ensure they do all they can to tackle youth offending. The Crime and Disorder Act, in creating Youth Offending Teams, seems to have enabled some agencies to abdicate their responsibilities for reducing crime and disorder to these specialist creations instead of working even harder in this respect. Stretched agencies end up responding to crises at the expense of early intervention and the development of preventative services. It is very much the Council’s job to ensure effective integration between all mainstream services dealing with children. Indicators of success in this regard would include delivering a renewed commitment from all agencies, an information sharing protocol, and the introduction of a shared Identification, Referral and Tracking (IRT) system.
6. Performance data shows that children in public care are almost 5 times more likely to have offended when compared to all children. Similarly it is shown that Oxfordshire has some of the worst results for school attendance and achievement of this client group. As corporate parents for these children this is an issue of tremendous concern.
7. Witnesses felt that the Police do not always have the resources necessary for them to be able to intervene in relatively minor offences, such as anti-social behaviour, truancy or under-age drinking. Steps have been taken to rectify this with initiatives such as bike patrols, Safer Schools Partnerships, and best of all Police Community Support Officers. By going into schools and by visiting the places that young people hang out, PCSOs and schools officers get to know local children, gain their trust and can log information to help ensure earlier intervention.
8. Community Safety teams have been formed within all Councils to help mainstream crime and disorder prevention work. Unfortunately most are small units but they are helping to assist the drive for co-ordinated action by supporting local audits, strategies and action groups. They could also usefully tackle some issues around communication that are in need of improvement, such as trading standards, the Police and District Councils not always informing each other about their under-age sales work. The message that Oxfordshire is a relatively low crime area also needs to be more widely communicated to tackle distorted levels of fear of crime.
9. Funding has not been identified as the major issue, or rather the sums needed to make a real difference are not large in relation to the current spend. Responsibility for problematic youngsters is sometimes passed from one place to another, as "everybody cares but nobody cares enough", and the system thus ends up "playing with people’s lives". Responsibilities can be passed from school to school, from S&HC to L&C, from police to school, from parent to teacher, from school to PRUIS, and in the case of children in care from placement to placement and worker to worker. A change of attitude amongst senior managers and political leaders is needed to obviate the resultant problem – such a change has no resource implications.
10. However, if a little more money was to be invested in helping to tackle youth offending, to improve support to parents and resource schools with more staff to help improve attendance, then the level of initial offending could be reduced. More literacy and basic skills schemes for those once in the Youth Justice system were also mentioned as good value for money. These cost-effective investments are not expensive; some steps we identify are costed at just £50k or £70k. This money could be found by encouraging all the YOT’s partners to increase their core-funding. Further resources may become available when national ID cards are in place to replace work on local proof-of-age cards. Moreover, investing in prevention should produce efficiency savings for all partners in the long term.
11. The overall assessment of the way youth offending is being collectively tackled in Oxfordshire is that it is a little like the curate’s egg, excellent in some ways, poor in others. It is recognised that some changes are already underway and it is hoped the recommendations contained in the Report will be welcomed not just by the Executive but also by the services themselves as we believe they will assist performance improvement. The benefits of succeeding are enormous; it will cut crime, achieve great community benefit and help to improve CPA targets. Moreover it will help protect young people themselves by improving their welfare and keeping them out of the youth justice system.

3) Recommendations and outcomes from the Scrutiny Review: Including responses from the Executive.

The former Executive (on 1st March 2005) considered the report by the Community Safety Scrutiny Committee on this Review. The response by the Executive Member for Children and Young People was prefaced by an update which read:

Consequently, the Executive response was to make three general decisions which are listed below and to make specific comments on a number of the Review recommendations, rather than address each recommendation with a specific action.

The Executive response was to:

1. Endorse the response by the Executive Member for Children & Young People;
2. Urge the Secretary of State to give LEAs greater rights to monitor home education to check such provision is academically demanding and intervene where satisfactory standards are not met;
3. Endorse the action of the Director for Community Safety in taking up with Health Partners their underfunding of Youth Offending Service

The Review recommendations were as follows:

The former Executive’s more detailed response was therefore:

1. Monitoring of truancy is already taking place in areas where returns show the greatest need.
2. A revised Behaviour Support strategy was agreed in June 2004, and mailed to all head teachers and chairs of governors with a letter signed by the Executive members for Schools, Community Learning, and Children & Young People.
3. Revised guidance on schools' bullying policies was sent to schools in December with a request to them to review their own policies in the light of the guidance. The guidance notes that bullying can be a significant cause of truancy.
4. The 2005-06 budget contains a sum of £463k specifically for a package of measures to support both the educational attainment and the placement stability of children in care. The educational elements of this package will also benefit other disadvantaged children.
5. A 'virtual school' will be established for children in care from September 2005. The head teacher will have responsibility for monitoring all aspects of the education of children in care, including attendance.
6. As pointed out in the report, the improvement of services for young people to prevent them being drawn into offending behaviour is one of the goals of the Council's plan. As such it is always within the sights of CCMT as a whole.

4) Update on progress over the previous 12 months

An update on progress in implementing the Cabinet’s response to the Scrutiny Review has been obtained (by interviewing Sandra Bingham – Assistant Head of Service, Children Young People’s and Families) to prevent some of the basic factual questions having to be asked during the Committee meeting. This will allow more time and greater focus to be spent on questioning the relevant Cabinet Member(s) to determine how satisfied you are with that implementation.

The former Executive’s response to the Youth Offending Review was to note six bullets points of activity that were either underway or already planned by the directorate and that these should be allowed to progress rather than diverting attention towards the Review’s recommendations. Consequently, the Cabinet is now being held to account for progress that has occurred in relation to these actions.

TO SUMMARISE, significant progress has been achieved in the area of Youth Offending. Rates of truancy and permanent exclusions have improved, and the virtual school has been established as per the former Executive’s statement. Action has been taken regarding bullying although monitoring information has yet to be recorded. The process has received support from the County Council Management Team (CCMT) and a strong lead from the Cabinet, specifically the members with portfolios for Children & Young People (C&YP), and School Improvement.

Evidence of much of the recent activity in this area can be found in the Children & Young People’s Plan which was recently presented to Cabinet for approval.

1. Monitoring of Truancy

The benchmark for attendance is 92% and Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) keeps in close contact with schools that appear to be struggling to achieving this. If a school is identified as falling below this target, a tailor-made action plan is developed which attempts to rectify the situation. Activities include the ‘First Day Response Strategy’, which is also in place for Children Looked After (CLA), through to county-wide sweeps in conjunction with the police. This situation is monitored by the relevant Education Social Worker (ESW) and close partnership between the schools and OCC. Data analysis for truancy is very detailed and can now reach individual children and result in specific parenting orders. There are also developments in electronic monitoring.

Because the system is bespoke, best practice can be shared rapidly such as through the behaviour and attendance strategies.

The ESW is allocated on a specific formula which is revised annually, to be located towards the areas of highest need. This ensures that resources are targeted efficiently. Other multi-agency approaches exist, such as MAST in Oxford City.

Children Looked After and Young Offenders have specific action plans and are the focus of OCC activity.

Absence in secondary schools fell from 7.57% in 03/04 to 7.27% in 04/05. Unauthorised absence in secondary schools fell from 1.21% in 03/04 to 1.01% in 04/05. Nationally, unauthorised absence rose during this period to an average of 1.23%. This places Oxfordshire in the top quartile of authorities in relation to school attendance, showing improvements for a 3^rd consecutive year.

2. Behaviour Support Strategy

This strategy has now been absorbed into the Children and Young People’s Plan. It provides a step-by-step plan of the stages of support and intervention. The thrust of the plan is to target prevention. This was produced in consultation with schools.

The Behaviour Support Service monitor fixed term exclusions and help schools in advance of them asking for OCC assistance. Again, this policy of being proactive shows signs of working. Permanent exclusions in primary schools for example have reduced.

There were a total of 35 permanent exclusions across the county in 04/05, down from 71 the previous year. This psa target achievement has led to a £1million increase in funding over a two-year period.

The long term strategy in this area, particularly for 14-19 is to promote alternative methods of engagement. Working alongside organisations such as Connexions, the move is towards equipping young people with skills rather than persisting with the existing curriculum.

3. Bullying

OCC are currently auditing the uptake of the revision of bullying policy.

The C&YP Plan explains how both a proactive and reactive approach is in place to tackle bullying in schools. A monitoring group has been set up to drive this process and try to address what the scale of the problem actually is. Their work is to involve attitudinal surveys of young people. The Director of Children Young People and Families (CYP&F) and the Cabinet Member have engaged in consultation with pupils and schools over the direction of this policy.

There is an education officer with specific responsibility for behaviour.

R4) Use of £463k allocated specifically for children in care

The Placement Matters Strategy benefited from funds allocated from this budget.

The REACH team, led by Sandra Bingham, used money to employ learning mentors for every child in Council care at Key Stage Four (KS4). This utilised the Traffic Light system for warnings of attendance. There are now a range of rewards and targets for CLAs and their foster carers to achieve psa targets. With further funds, the idea would be to extend the project beyond KS4.

R5) Virtual School

The Virtual School has been established.

The idea has been to establish the school with a ‘club’ feel to it but also maintain the ability for it to act as corporate parent. Every single child through the VS is tracked.

R6) Youth Offending / Links to CCMT & Cabinet

The target to reduce youth offending was met. The 16-19 range is a cause for concern however. The challenge is to ensure long-term employment / training opportunities rather than watch young people move frequently between positions.

OCC is leading the approach to deal with youth offending through the Local Area Agreement.

CYP&F report quarterly to CCMT on performance Indicators.

The Cabinet Member for Young People is very active in the role and within the C&YP Plan, for example taking part in the Sounding Board exercise. Keith Bartley & Charles Waddicor contacted all children in Council care before and after last year’s GCSEs to offer their support and best wishes, through their role as corporate parent. There is strong support from the Cabinet in this area.

Other:

Crucial to Sandra Bingham is the idea of prevention. If we can prevent children from entering care we have a much better chance of preventing problems further down the line. Much good work is going on at the moment but a lot of it is fire-fighting. If we could target the margins, those falling just below the radar we would be able to do even better.

TO CONCLUDE, the Review wanted to ensure that youth offending was mainstreamed into all children’s services and that OCC was operating a joined-up approach to the issue. Through the actions taken independently of the Review’s recommendations, it appears that significant progress is being made in this area. The recently published Children and Young People’s Plan provides a comprehensive action plan for tackling issues of Youth Offending across agencies and will now provide a focussed point of reference for monitoring and reviewing developments.

5) Lines of inquiry to address to the Cabinet portfolio holder

General

• The Review concluded that prevention is ultimately the most effective objective in regard to tackling offending. The Committee may want to explore the Cabinet’s understanding of this issue and its proposals to develop that element of policy.
• There are suggestions that tackling the 16-19 years cohort for young people offending still appears to be of concern. The Committee may want to know why this is and what level of improvement the Cabinet would view as a success.
• The Committee may ask for an indication of the level of cooperation between outside agencies, e.g. police, during the process of implementing the existing strategy to reduce offending by encouraging all services to acknowledge their responsibilities under section 17 of the Crime and Disorder Act.
• The former Executive on 1 March 2005 agreed to endorse the action of the Director for Community Safety in taking up with Health Partners their underfunding of Youth Offending Service. The Scrutiny Committee may want to know what progress has occurred regarding NHS funding of the Youth Offending Service.
• The former Executive on 1 March 2005 agreed to urge the Secretary of State to give LEAs greater rights to monitor home education to check such provision is academically demanding and intervene where satisfactory standards are not met. The Scrutiny Committee will want to know what response has the Cabinet had from the Secretary of State

Specific points on the Executive’s actions

Action (i)

The Committee have been given some examples of actions taken to tackle truancy. They may wish to know more about how recent and innovative the specified responses are – for example, which of the Council’s responses to the government attendance benchmark have occurred after 1 March 2005, and which were already taking place before that Executive meeting.

The Committee may like to know how the allocation of Education Social Workers has been revised annually – what new areas have emerged, what previous areas have been revised as no longer in highest need, or have things stayed the same?

Action (ii)

The Committee may like to know the Cabinet’s intentions as to how to progress the Behaviour Support Strategy’s longer term aim to promote alternative methods of engagement that equip people with skills rather than persisting with the existing curriculum.

Action (iii)

The Committee may like to know if bullying has increased, decreased or stayed the same as a result of all the work that has gone into revising the bullying policy.

Action (iv)

The Committee may like to hear more about the evidence of improvements to the service resulting from the increased funding.

Action (v)

The Committee may like to know what expectations the Cabinet has from the establishment of the Virtual School; what degree of improvement would they deem a success?

Action (vi)

The Committee may like to know how the Cabinet feel they are performing in terms of preventing young people from being drawn into offending; are they getting an acceptable level of results from their investment?

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