Agenda and draft minutes

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The Chair referred Members present to agenda Item 1 as shown on the agenda in respect of filming at this meeting, and Members noted the information contained therein.

Apologies had been received from Councillor Zena Brabazon and Councillor Nick da Costa.

The Chair will consider the admission of any items of Urgent Business. (Late items of Urgent Business will be considered where they appear. New items of Urgent Business will be considered under Item 8 below).

There was no urgent business.

There were no declarations of interest.

To confirm the minutes of the meeting held on 26 March 2024 as a correct record.

RESOLVED: That the minutes of the meeting held on 26 March 2024 be agreed as an accurate record.

Noted.

To consider a series of presentations regarding reducing re-offending.

Mr Joe Benmore, Mr Russell Symons, Mr Paris Michael, Mr David Charlotte and Mr Jason Brown introduced the item.

The meeting heard that:

·      In relation to reoffending, the Youth Justice Service had seen a reduction and a key to this included addressing disproportionality and tailoring interventions and responses. Work had been done with men regarding employment, training and aspirations. This had a positive impact.

·      One established strength was how the borough approached some of the issues in a partnership way including working with more vulnerable individuals that may have alcohol dependencies or may be homeless without criminalising the cohort.

·      There were some exemptions around certain offence types. The criteria for being released early was if a person could be managed safely in the community ten days or 20 days earlier than the offender was going to be released anyway, so staff would be preparing for the earlier release in advance of the release date. Individuals were only released if there was a robust risk management plan that could manage the risk. If a position was taken that the risk could not be managed then the individual would not be released.

·      Statistics were being collected regarding how many people re-offended.

·      The VAWG Operational Forum had informed that perpetrators (for domestic abuse) were being released early, but victims were not being informed about it. Relevant Council officers could be informed so that services could be appropriately made aware. The biggest challenge was usually accommodation, mental health and substance misuse.

·      A presentation keynote on Probation Reset would be circulated to the Partnership.

·      There was some work in progress with Pan London regarding the IOM scheme. Haringey had explored the use of youth IOM and consideration had been made to implement it across London. Based on data, IOM approaches appeared to work with offenders. It was challenging for the professionals working with those offenders, but it did make a difference in communities.

·      Efforts were being made to ensure that the number of people being released early from prison without much notice and sometimes no notice at all was working in conjunction with ensuring that the individual was given accommodation.

·      In response to a strategic approach aligning different services, the meeting heard that various services putting together a sub-group could be put together and a discussion could be held between all parties to consider this. 

·      A successful IOM scheme would have a steering group that reports to the CPS. The IOM team would do the day-to-day work and the cases, but a steering group needed to deliver community safety. The steering group would look at what partners were needed around and getting the correct cohort in addition to looking at if people were getting treatment quick enough.

·      In relation to the probation reset, when people were released on licence, if there were licence conditions for them to do an accredited program or to be electronically monitored, then this would not end when supervision contact was suspended. The work done by Probation would continue, but the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

Ms Jackie Difolco introduced the item.

Youth Justice Plans had to be signed off by Full Council and plans were to be endorsed and approved by the Strategic Management Board for Youth Justice Services. This was completed on the 26 June 2024. These had to be published annually by 30 June each year. The duty was to publish a plan that discussed how Justice Services were provided and funded, how they were composed and how they would operate. A three-year plan would be put in place. The plan was approximately 120 pages long and had been condensed down to around 70 pages. A focus of the plan discussed the successes in the last year. There had been a focus in how the borough could engage its strategic partners in being closer to the work of Youth Justice Services. Strategic Board members had been involved in the national standards. There had been opportunities for board members to visit the Youth Custody Estate and Wood Green Custody Suite. A session had been held on children with SEND. The most recent board meeting was for children in custody. Health had been a big priority within the Youth Justice Service. Recruitment had been made to key posts such as a CAMHS Nurse and a Speech and Language Therapist.

Collaborative work had been done with the wider voluntary sector partnership to have a bespoke training program for children and young people within the Youth Justice service to focus on employment, education and training. Some of the young people then went on to have successful paid placements from some of the programs. There had been a reintroduction of parenting workshops to consider child exploitation.  The building which Youth Justice occupied was being redeveloped on the inside to make it more welcoming and more friendly to staff and partners.

The Council had been successful in acquiring funding to access mentoring through the Disproportionality Challenged Fund. This had been used to implement some mentoring, but also to support some workforce development on disproportionality and health inequalities.

The borough had achieved the Youth Justice and Quality Lead status.

In terms of national statutory indicators, for first time entrants, the borough had an increase of 6% compared with the previous period. In terms of reoffending, there had been a significant reduction and a year-on-year reduction for the last four consecutive quarters. Haringey was the seventh lowest in London. In terms of custody, the borough had always performed towards the bottom as the borough still continued to have children in custody often for the most serious offences. In the last year, there had been a decrease of 44%.

In terms of plans for the next three years there would be a focus on child-first- offender-second approach, restorative justice, having a robust health offer that improved health outcomes, increasing focus of disproportionality and targeting children in care to improve education, employment and training outcomes. A third of children within the youth justice service were also children who were within care and those  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8.

To consider any new items of Urgent Business admitted under Item 3 above.

The meeting noted that upcoming meetings would be held in person.

To note the dates of future meetings will be agreed and sent out to all parties.

The next meeting would be held in October 2024.