Issue - meetings

This plan (attached at Appendix 1) is a completely new plan (as opposed to the ‘Refreshed’ Plan submitted last year. The Format of the plan follows guidance and headings provided by the national Youth Justice Board in April 2021, detailing best practice in the Youth Justice Plans completion.

Discussion:

The Youth Offending Team Manager introduced the report which set out priorities and arrangements for the next two years to ensure continued delivery of the Youth Justice Partnership across Medway.

Members raised several questions and comments which included:

A comment was made that following a visit to the service and learning more about the work that was being carried out, the priorities around issues with identity were striking. The work being done to support young people in understanding social context and forging their own identity amidst deep issues of social anxiety was commendable.

• Budget - it was commented that the budget for the service had increased significantly but the number of young people being supported remained relatively low.  The officer stated that the cohort of young people supported was fluid. At present 70 young people were being supported. All of them had extremely complex and challenging needs hence the increase in the budget.

• Data - concern was raised at the data presented which was 12 months old and it was questioned how records and tracking could be maintained with data sets that were out of date. The officer stated that the re-offending data was produced by the Youth Justice Board which had a complex system of gathering and tracking data from the National data set. The issue with data was a concern for all partners and was a regular topic of discussion at the local level.

• Female Offenders – in response to questions regarding the lack of targeted support for female offenders despite a request for a Girls’ Strategy at the time of inspection and a lack of intervention for girls in alternative pathways away from crime, the officer acknowledged that most of the intervention in place was targeted towards male offenders. Whilst instances of reoffending in the female population were low, it was agreed that more intervention and a responsive approach to tackle female offending or reoffending was needed.

• LGBT – the lack of representation of intervention for LBGT offenders in the report was referenced and the officer acknowledged this and said that the National data tool did not capture data by LGBT offenders, this had been raised with the inspectorate.

• Referrals – in response to a question on what the solution should be to address a lack of referrals when the police took no further action against a young person, the officer said that low referral rates were an issue that the partnership board closely monitored. The service was trying to identify why the police had a low referral rate and find ways to build relationships and encourage them to refer when they were not taking action against young people.

Decisions:

1. The Committee noted the report.

2. The Committee recommended the Cabinet to recommend Full Council to approve the Medway Youth Justice Partnership Strategic Plan 2022 – 2024 attached at Appendix 1 to the report, including its priorities and themes and details of its consultation process (attached at Appendices 1 and 2 to the Strategic Plan).