Background
Ministers set the current youth justice agenda in June 2002 through the 10-Point Action Plan for tackling youth crime and disorder. National Standards for Scotland's Youth Justice services were developed to provide a performance improvement framework and published in December 2002 (Action Point 8). Since then considerable work has been done to improve how agencies work together to minimise and respond to offending by young people. Changes to local systems have much improved the speed and effectiveness of the system as a whole, and National Standards have largely been implemented across Scotland as at April 2006. In looking to the future we need to build on this work, but we also need to take stock, assess performance and review success. The Youth Justice Improvement Group ( YJIG) was set up to do this.
The remit and objectives of the Youth Justice Improvement Group
In November 2005, Ministers set up the YJIG, a high level group, to develop objectives for and lead on improvements in youth justice for 2006-2008.
The YJIG comprised health, education, justice, police, social work, children's reporter and the voluntary sector as well as wider CoSLA and SOLACE representation. Membership of the Group is at Annex C. The Group was asked to:
- Develop objectives and delivery mechanisms which will improve outcomes for young people who offend or are at risk of offending and reduce the impact of young people's offending on individuals and communities.
- Identify the success criteria and performance indicators for youth justice for 2006-2008 based on these objectives, as set out below.
- Identify (and develop plans to secure) what systems and processes need to be developed or supported in order to deliver on these criteria.
- Identify future arrangements for leading the new agenda and taking the work forward.
Specifically the Group was asked to identify what needs to be in place to achieve the following objectives for the Youth Justice system over the period 2006-08:
1. Prevent young people offending and coming into the youth justice system.
2. Ensure that partners, based on a robust audit of need, have effective approaches and interventions in place to prevent and address offending behaviour. Ensure staff have the tools they need (assessment, technology, programmes and approaches) and address concerns, risk factors and offending behaviour timeously, appropriately and proportionately to tackle offending behaviour and reduce its impact.
3. Improve information to victims, communities and offenders based on what people tell us they need.
4. Ensure that people working with young people who offend, or who are at risk of offending, have the appropriate skills and knowledge to make positive changes.
5. Provide leadership on consolidating and building on the improvements already achieved in Youth Justice strategic direction, practice and inter-agency coordination to ensure child-centred, integrated responses to children who offend or are at risk of offending.
6. Ensure that the right support programmes and monitoring and information exchange are in place for those young people who offend that are in both the children's and the adult systems or are transferring between them.
7. Ensure that high risk young offenders' needs and risks are properly assessed; that they receive appropriate change programmes in care or in the community; their behaviour is monitored effectively and that secure care, ISMS and other high intensity interventions are used appropriately with a focus on positive outcomes and change.
8. Secure delivery of the following, in response to the report by SWIA and HMIC into the circumstances surrounding the death of Karen Dewar at the hands of a young offender with a history of sexual and other offences:
- Measures to improve the identification, risk assessment, planning for and management of young sex offenders.
- The provision of specialist programmes to address offending, both within the community and in residential settings.
- Ensuring those working with young sex offenders have sufficient expertise for their work.
- The arrangements needed to ensure the continued support and oversight as young people move into the adult system.
- The arrangements needed to ensure appropriate information is transferred from the children's to the adult system.
- Identifying those young people most at risk of becoming serious offenders in later life.
- All supported by robust quality assurance systems.
The Youth Justice Improvement Group met on 6 occasions between November 2005 and June 2006. A number of working groups were formed to take forward detailed workstreams in relation to the 8 objectives for the youth justice system.
The reports of these workstreams with detailed proposals for implementation to achieve the objectives outlined above are available at Annex A.
This part of the document represents a high level report of the group's work outlining the key findings and areas for action.