The near doubling of the £45m made available by the Youth Justice Board (YJB) for crime prevention through an extra £37m from local partner organisations (YPN, 31 May-6 June, p2) shows preventing crime is no longer seen as the sole preserve of youth offending teams.
And the discussions between youth offending teams (YOTs) and children's services on how to spend the money has led to the emergence of several important crime-prevention partners.
The first is schools. In the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, a youth inclusion programme (YIP) is being set up in a secondary school; one of only three school-based YIPs in England.
The programme, which is due to start this month, will comprise a five-strong team based in an office at the school that will engage young people in after-school projects and vocational courses. The team will work closely with teachers, who will play a role in identifying an initial target of 25 young people.
Joined-up thinking
Geeta Subramaniam, the youth offending team's interim head of community safety and preventive services, says: "We're trying to link education, training and employment into everything. We're trying to keep the same ethos and response, but we want to target young people before they become excluded."
Another important partner is the volunteer, which is being tapped into in Wakefield. The Yorkshire town's YOT, which has £380,000 from the YJB for the next two years, has commissioned crime-prevention charity Nacro to run a mentoring scheme for young people at risk of offending. It will be rolled out to all young people served by Wakefield's youth inclusion support panel (YISP).
Mark Stead, YISP team co-ordinator, says: "Even though our work with young people is initially for three months, a lot of people need consistency and support longer term."
Parents are another group that have increasing importance for YOTs; Wakefield is among the teams planning to appoint a parenting co-ordinator to oversee individual and group sessions.
"There's a desperate need for a parenting co-ordinator," says Stead.
"There are a few programmes in Wakefield run by social services and other agencies, but they don't seem to be tied up together."
In Devon, parenting is among three YOT "specialisms" being developed in each of the county's three geographical areas this year. In the east of the county, team members are considering placing an advice service in non-stigmatising venues such as supermarkets.
In the London Borough of Lewisham, the team is turning to youth workers as a partner in its crime-prevention work. It has received funding under the "innovatory schemes" category of the YJB fund to train managers and frontline youth workers in restorative justice, a practice it has been developing in schools.
The method will initially be trialled within one youth club, then developed into a form of community mediation between young people attending the club and neighbouring residents.
Ann McDermott, the borough's YOT manager, says: "We want the approach to impact on the number of young people coming into the youth justice system and to help resolve issues that could spiral into offending.
"Restorative justice is not the panacea, but it does seem to have had a significant impact. The closest cause and effect we can show is the impact on fixed-term and permanent exclusions, both of which have gone down."
In Warwickshire, the youth offending team is using the YJB fund to boost the use of individual support orders (ISOs), which a recent report from the Government's Social Exclusion Unit said had been severely underused.
The team is appointing a staff member to liaise with the county's five district councils and ensure the orders are attached to antisocial behaviour orders (ASBOs) issued to young people. It has commissioned a body called Positive about Young People to ensure the use of ISO support in the district, which issues the highest number of ASBOs.
Warwickshire's YOT manager Diane Johnson says: "ASBOs are being issued often without any thought given to the consequences, so young people are subject to all sorts of prohibitions, but nobody has the responsibility to work with a young person with an ASBO."
Team spirit
Bob Ashford, head of prevention at the YJB, says he is keen to see an increase in the number of ISOs issued. In the meantime, he says he is encouraged by the increasing integration between YOTs and children's services.
An example of this can be found in East Sussex, where the county's YOT is spending part of its £440,000 allocation on developing its own county-wide YISP, which involves each of the county's five geographical areas having access to an early intervention worker - a YOT worker in most cases - who liaises regularly with a range of agencies.
"We left the decision to YOTs whether they were to be part of children's trusts," says Ashford. "But where pilots for integrated youth support teams exist, YOTs are working alongside these to make sure they align with these services."
YJB PREVENTION FUNDS - YIPs will receive £19m, increasing them from 72 to 110 - YISPs will receive £18m, more than doubling them from 100 to 220 - Parenting will have £8.8m spent on it; 87 new programmes will be set up - Safer schools partnerships will have £500,000 spent on them; eight more will be created - Individual support orders will have £600,000 spent on them; six projects will be set up based on them - Thirty-seven "innovatory schemes" will receive a total of £1.3m
