Agenda item

Report of the Director of Children's Services. Cabinet Member for Children, Schools, and Families.

The Youth Justice Plan is a Budget and Policy framework document and requires scrutiny comments for consideration by Cabinet The report will include this and formally refer the plan to Full Council in November for adoption.

The Cabinet Member for Children, Schools and Families introduced the report which sought approval to recommend the Annual Youth Justice Plan to Full Council for adoption.

The Cabinet Member outlined that the Council and partners were working to prevent young people from entering the youth justice system, and to support those who have to be rehabilitated was vital, complex, and detailed work.

The local authority was working with a range of partners to support young people who are at risk of entering the system or who are going through it.

The Youth Offending Service was a statutory regulated service, and the Local Authority was required to produce an Annual Youth Justice Plan. This was a statutory requirement and securing the endorsement of Cabinet was an important part of the process and gave this overarching plan the attention and priority within Council and partnership activities.

The local authority had a statutory duty to consult with partners to develop and implement this Annual Youth Justice Plan. As a statutory regulated service; Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation (HMIP) inspected youth offending services. The plan set out how youth justice services were to be provided and funded, and how the Youth Justice Service will run. As a strategic document, the plan covered and linked to several associated partnership strategies, which were set out in the report, including the Young People at Risk Strategy 2019-2029, Community Safety Strategy 2019-2023, and Haringey’s Corporate Delivery Plan. To ensure delivery of the aims and objectives, there was a more detailed operational delivery plan, with progress being reported to the Haringey Youth Justice Strategic Partnership Board.

In response to questions from Cllr das Neves, the following information was noted.

-       The Police had an instrumental role in developing the plan and were committed to working with young people in a positive way.

-       The Detective Superintendent for the Metropolitan Police was the vice chair of the Youth Justice Strategic Management Board and the Police lead a key part of the action plan. This was detailed within the appendix with actions allocated to the Police leads as well as other partners such as the Probation Service.

-       The Cabinet Member highlighted the primary focus of the Council and partners on the ‘child first’ approach and then dealing with the issues of offending. The Police had been committed to this approach and were working with the Council and partners to ensure that young people did not enter the Youth Justice system but if they did that, it was managed as effectively as possible.

-       Within the service, there was an operational delivery plan that had a clear section on the work that the Council were doing on disproportionality. This contained information on of the work that the Council had commissioned to support predominantly young black males because they tended to make up over half of the cohort within the Youth Justice Service. There were also details on the training taken forward in the Council workforce in order to understand disproportionality, identify it, and then provide interventions in response to help reduce this going forward. The Assistant Director offered to provide this further detail to Cllr Hakata after the meeting.

RESOLVED

1. To note that the Children and Young People’s Scrutiny Panel have no changes to the annual Youth Justice Plan and recommend cabinet note their comments in accordance with Part four Section E paragraph 2.2 of the Council’s Constitution as outlined in paragraphs 5.6 – 5.11.

2. To note that Cabinet recommend to full council adoption of the Annual Youth Justice Plan.

Reasons for decision

In England only, statutory youth justice plans must be signed off by full council. However, the plan can be submitted with the approval of the Board Chair with confirmation of full sign off submitted later. The ‘sign off’ by the Chair is an indication that the wider management board have approved the submitted plan which must be submitted to the Youth Justice Board (YJB) and published annually by 30 June 2023. This plan was approved by the Youth Justice Strategic Partnership Board on the 21^st June with the plan submitted to the YJB prior to the deadline.

Alternative Actions

None