Protocol reduces police callouts to children's homes

ACTION

An approach known as "slow time" is helping to reduce the criminalisation of young people in children's homes in Dorset.

The principle - embedded in the pan-Dorset protocol drawn up in 2016 in response to the level of inappropriate police callouts to care facilities in the county - stipulates that police should be called only when there is an immediate risk to people or property. Otherwise the decision to call police should not be decided there and then but instead should be made the next day.

Figures from the Department for Education for 2017/18, reveal that looked-after children who have been in care for at least 12 months are five times more likely to offend than all children. The pan-Dorset protocol - a forerunner of the national protocol launched in November 2018 - was established to tackle the criminalisation of those in care by providing guidance to carers about when to involve the police, thus reducing looked-after children's contact with the criminal justice system.