Inspection of youth offending work: Rochdale making progress and working well with others

This joint inspection of youth offending work in Rochdale is one of a small number of full joint inspections undertaken by HM Inspectorate of Probation with colleagues from the criminal justice, social care, education and health inspectorates. Inspectors focus on five key areas: reducing the likelihood of reoffending, protecting the public, protecting children and young people, ensuring that the sentence is served and the effectiveness of governance.

Inspectors chose to inspect Rochdale primarily because their performance showed higher than average reoffending rates. As with other YOTs in England and Wales, work to prevent children and young people from entering the criminal justice system has been effective, with the result that those who are convicted of offences are more likely to have complex lives and present challenges when trying to reduce reoffending. In Rochdale 47% of young people reoffended, while the average for England and Wales was 35.8%.

Inspectors were pleased to find that overall:

• work to protect the public and actual or potential victims was good. Initial assessment of the risk of harm to others was accurate in over 70% of cases. There was solid partnership work with the police to help manage children and young people who posed a risk of harm to others. Victims of crime were generally pleased with the service they had received, but protecting them was not always a high enough priority;
• work to protect children and young people and make them safer was good. There was effective work with children’s social care services. All children and young people had been screened to identify whether they were at risk of sexual exploitation and this system appeared to be effective in identifying key issues and bringing everyone together to work to protect the individual; and
• work to ensure the sentence was served was good. Diversity factors and barriers to engagement were not always identified and planned for. A number of children and young people reported difficulties in establishing effective relationships with some staff, but it was clear that there was also some very effective engagement too.

However, inspectors were concerned to find that overall:

• governance was unsatisfactory. The YOT Management Board did not provide sufficient challenge and was not fully effective in supporting the YOT. Health was not effectively represented at board level. The Board did not collate outcome data in order to demonstrate what the YOT was doing well and areas for improvement. Effective practice was being driven by the YOT manager, who worked very effectively with partner agencies to deliver new projects.

Work to reduce reoffending was mixed. The quality of assessments varied, and while some were very good, others lacked analysis. This meant that in some cases the reasons that lead to offending were missed or not clearly understood, leading to plans that did not focus on the right work to address offending behaviour. More positively, there was a keen focus on education, training and employment resulting in high numbers of children and young people being placed in good quality provision.

Inspectors made recommendations to assist Rochdale in its continuing improvement, including: on collecting and using data on local outcome measures to improve services, on having appropriate health representation at the YOT Management Board, on quality assurance arrangements and on ensuring initial assessments and their reviews are completed to a sufficient quality.

‘Overall the work of the YOT was progressing, and staff worked well with most partner agencies to deliver a range of interventions that were designed to help children and young people stop offending. This was matched by good engagement by children and young people and their parents/carers, particularly in the early stages of contact. The YOT Management Team had shown a flexible and responsive approach. Although there were good relationships with children’s social care services, education and the police at both strategic and operational levels and good working relationships between the YOT health worker and YOT staff at a practice level, services from health urgently needed to be improved.

‘Most of the work we saw was generally good enough but about one-third of cases examined required improvement and greater attention in a number of different areas. This work needed to be tackled by the YOT Management Board, which was falling short of the role we expect of a governance body in providing both challenge and support. The absence of any meaningful health involvement at a strategic level was a particular concern.’

Notes to editors:

1. View the report (PDF, 985 kB).
2. The inspection programme of youth offending work, based on a risk-proportionate approach, was agreed by Ministers in December 2011. Under this programme, full joint inspections are targeted primarily on areas where there are significant concerns about the effectiveness of youth offending work, based mainly on the three national youth justice indicators, supplemented by other measures, such as recent inspections. Occasional inspections are undertaken in areas that report high performance, in order to maintain a benchmark for good practice. Rochdale was inspected primarily because of performance against the national youth justice outcome indicator for reoffending.
3. These inspections focus on issues not subject to other forms of external scrutiny: work to reduce the likelihood of offending and re-offending by young people; the management and minimisation of the risk of harm that a young person may pose to other people; safeguarding young people from harm (from their own actions and others); and work to ensure they serve their sentence.
4. The inspections are led by HMI Probation, with participation by Ofsted, CQC and HMI Constabulary (and in Wales by the corresponding Welsh inspectorates, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales, Estyn and Care and Social Services Inspectorate Wales).
5. For further information or to request an interview, please contact Jane Parsons in HMI Probation press office on 020 7035 2123 or 07880 787452.