The Youth Offending Service (YOS) in Hounslow, a complex borough in West London with a high proportion of young people and many areas of deprivation, was rated by probation inspectors as ‘Good’ overall, the second highest rating.

Most areas of practice in the YOS were good, with some outstanding aspects, the highest rating, and only one area requiring improvement, the second lowest rating.

Dame Glenys Stacey, HM Chief Inspector of Probation, said the YOS’s management board provided “a strategic vision for the service and there is strong partnership working. There is an extensive range of partnership staff in the service to meet the needs of children and young people, and their families.”

Dame Glenys added: “We rated the work on court disposals as ‘outstanding’ for assessing and planning in the areas of desistance and risk of harm to others. Work on out-of-court disposals is good and a full assessment, including screening by specialist workers, is completed in every case. This enables the multi-agency joint decision-making panel to agree the appropriate intervention to meet the needs of the child or young person.”

A key recommendation, aimed at helping the YOS to build on its strengths, related to the use of its performance data to shape its strategies.

This focused particularly on the YOS’s ability to understand whether its current approach focusing on preventing offending, by providing an early, full and resource-intensive assessment for everyone referred to the YOS, was in fact reducing the number of “first time entrants” to the criminal justice system. These are children or young people who receives a statutory criminal justice outcome (youth caution, youth conditional caution or conviction) for the first time.

Dame Glenys said the use of management information “required improvement as it did not steer the direction of the service or help deliver its operational vision.”

The YOS, she added, also needed to improve its performance on providing opportunities for education, training and employment for young people aged 16 and above. “They need to ensure that young people are motivated and enabled to access appropriate provision.”

A further recommendation to the YOS was to ensure it followed the recommended guidance for YOSs on “co-working”, particularly relating to cases involving harmful sexual behaviour.

Overall, Dame Glenys said the Inspectorate report and its recommendations in this report “have been designed to assist Hounslow YOS to build on its strengths and focus on areas for improvement.”

-Ends –

Notes to editors:

1. The report is available at www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprobation at 00.01 on 31 January 2019.

2. Youth Offending Services supervise 10-18-year olds who have been sentenced by a court, or who have come to the attention of the police because of their offending behaviour but have not been charged and instead are dealt with out of court.
3. Hounslow is a large commercial town and district in West London, and is the administrative centre of the London Borough of Hounslow. It is a a diverse borough, where over 50% of school children have English as their second language. Areas of the borough are deprived, with 12 wards being ranked among the 20% most deprived areas in London. Further, 29% of children in the borough are regarded as living in poverty. Hounslow is also a borough with a large percentage of young people, with a quarter of the population being below the age of 19 years.
4. Fieldwork for the Hounslow inspection took place in October and November 2018.
5. HM Inspectorate of Probation inspected against new standards and all services are given one of four ratings: outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate.
6. For further information please contact John Steele, HMI Probation Chief Communications Officer, on 020 3334 0357 or 07880 787452, or at john.steele@justice.gov.uk (E-mail address), or media@hmiprobation.gov.uk (E-mail address)