Youth Justice Plan
Once again it has been a challenging year for the Youth Offending Service in Salford, and positive progress continues to be made in tackling the issues of youth crime within the city. The Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership within Salford has been set a challenging target to reduce crime within the city by a further 21% by 2008. The Youth Offending Service will play a critical role in attempting to meet this target, by engaging with and utilising opportunities presented by the RESPECT agenda.
Last year the Youth Offending Service moved up from performance level 2 to performance level 3 and it is encouraging to see that this degree of improvement has been maintained. I am pleased to see that there has been a reduction of almost 30% in the use of custody for young people in Salford. This is against the national trend, which has seen an increase in the use of custody for young people and a reduction was set as one of the key priorities in last year’s plan. The recidivism rates are also a cause for optimism with performance in 3 of the 4 cohorts exceeding the 2002 baseline target, and the overall 12-month rate down from 42% to 37%. There has been an increase in the number of first time entrants to the Youth Justice System, but the actual numbers compare favourably with many of our neighbouring authorities. Nevertheless a reduction in the number of first time entrants will be a key priority in the city’s prevention strategy.
Lack of engagement with Education Training and Employment, continues to be one of the most significant risk factors identified by the ASSET assessment tool used by operational staff. The development of the new Children’s Services Directorate in September 2005 has helped to develop a more co-ordinated approach to the issue of the school age cohort not accessing provision, as well as meeting the Every Child Matters agenda. The service maintains constructive links with Connexions and there has been an increased involvement both locally and at a Greater Manchester level with the Learning and Skills Council. The Youth Offending Service continues to receive funding from Positive Activities for Young People to employ a key worker to provide extra support in this area.
The increased capacity introduced last year to enable the service to engage with victims of youth crime and to meet its obligations under the victims charter has led to a significant increase in the number of restorative conferences that have take place this year, and all young people who participate will be tracked to monitor the long term outcomes. The service has also been very active in the development of the Youth Empowerment programme to develop Restorative Justice initiatives in 6 Secondary schools within the City and a number of feeder schools, as well as a number of residential units.
The service continues to perform well in meeting the Effective Practice Quality Assurance Framework, with self-assessment scores of 2 for Mental Health and Substance Misuse being validated by the Youth Justice Board’s regional performance monitor. The monitors have also approved action plans for improvement. A review of the action plans for Remand Management, and Resettlement has been submitted with improved scores and have been validated. All the indications are that the service is performing effectively in these areas.
The most encouraging development over the past year has been the reduction in the use of custody and a clear priority for the coming year will be to at least maintain and if possible to further reduce the numbers going into custody. The number of first time entrants to the Youth Justice System last year, which has now been revised to 408 against a target of 514, was a tremendous achievement, and whilst the number of 439 for this year is a concern it is still below the original target. There has been a significant investment in preventative services within the city, and there is a commitment in particular to further develop evidence based parenting services linked to the RESPECT programme. The key to reducing youth crime is early intervention to address risk factors and to prevent such behaviour becoming entrenched. The main priorities for the Youth Offending Service in Salford will continue to be prevention and the low use of custody.
Downloadable documents
- Salford Youth Justice Plan (Adobe PDF format, 380kb)
- Salford Youth Justice Plan (Microsoft Word format, 690kb)
If you are unable to view documents of these types, our downloads page provides links to viewing software.
This page was last updated on 24 July 2008
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