Issue - meetings

The Buckinghamshire Youth Justice Strategic Plan 2021-2022 provides details of progress made against agreed outcomes for Children and Young People. It outlines priorities, alongside potential future challenges for the partnership over the coming year.  It also highlights the partnership arrangements and budget position for the Youth Offending Service Partnership.

RESOLVED –

That the Buckinghamshire Youth Justice Strategic Plan 2021-22 be endorsed and Council recommended to adopt it.

Councillor Cranmer, Cabinet Member for Education and Children’s Services introduced a report on the Buckinghamshire Youth Justice Strategic Plan 2021-2022 which provided details of progress made against agreed outcomes for Children and Young People. The plan outlined priorities, alongside potential future challenges for the partnership over the coming year.  It also highlighted the partnership arrangements and budget position for the Youth Offending Service Partnership.

Buckinghamshire Youth Offending Service was a multi-agency partnership between the Police, Children’s Services, Health Services, Probation, Community Safety and both voluntary and private sector providers.  The Youth Offending Service (YOS) played a key role in keeping communities, families, children and young people safe through the prevention of offending and reoffending, reduction in the use of custody and through contribution to multi-agency protection and safeguarding.

The Youth Justice Strategic Plan had been produced in compliance with the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, Section 40 which required each local authority, after consultation with the relevant persons and bodies, to formulate and implement for each year a plan (a “youth justice plan”) setting out:

(i)                  How youth justice services in their area are to be provided and funded; and

(ii)                How the Youth Offending Team (YOT) or teams established by them (whether alone or jointly with one or more other local authorities) would be composed and funded, how they would operate, and what functions they would carry out.

The plan also incorporated guidance from the Youth Justice Board (YJB) and had to be submitted to the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales and published in accordance with the directions of the Secretary of State.

Members were informed that Multi-agency YOT/YOS had been established in 2000 following the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act with the intention of reducing the risk of young people offending and re-offending, and to provide counsel and rehabilitation to those who do offend. The act stipulated the composition of the YOT and identified statutory partners to work alongside the Local Authority.

The Youth Justice Board (YJB) had set three national outcome indicators for all YOTs which formed the baseline for performance information included within this year’s plan. These were as follows:

·                     Reduce the number of First Time Entrants (FTE) to the Youth Justice System.

·                     Reduce Re-offending

·                     Reduce the Use of Custody

The Cabinet report provided local context information for Buckinghamshire on areas including first time entrants to the youth justice system, re-offending rates and on the use of custodial sentences.  The statistics on sentencing showed that Buckinghamshire’s figure was lower than the National average and the South East figure but slightly higher than the Thames Valley figure.

There had been an increase in both the number of young people remanded to custody and the number of bed nights accrued in 2019-20, that was reflective of the seriousness of offending which was a national trend. 

Members were informed that all young people offered a Prevention programme by Buckinghamshire YOS had been tracked for 12 months to monitor whether they commit any offences and subsequently become a  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8