Minutes:
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 with Education Health and Care Plans. Prevention work would also be part of the programme.
The meeting welcomed the report and congratulated the Youth Justice Service on the progress it had made so far.
RESOLVED:
That the presentation be noted.