Inspectors praise youth offending teams

Following a visit last month inspectors said staff at Norfolk YOT had "a high-level of insight" about the children and young people they worked with and a key strength was their work to understand and respond to diversity factors. ?

?Inspectors also praised the creative approach of the team to deliver interventions and the "good quality" of reports to courts and youth offender panels.

??In addition, the report noted that a key strength of the YOT was the work it did to support compliance with the requirements of sentencing and it praised "good joint work" with police officers to support compliance.?

In Dudley, which was inspected at the end of May, inspectors said case managers were committed to achieving positive outcomes for young people and knew them well.?

Inspectors said workers at the youth offending service wanted the best outcomes for the young people it supported and they were keen to develop new skills to achieve better outcomes. ??

Case managers were also praised for having good links with other workers and agencies and used these to keep up to date with a child or young person's life.??

However, both YOTs were told they needed to improve in some areas. Norfolk was told that plans to manage risk of harm to others and to address safety and wellbeing concerns should be precise and there should be a timely plan of work recorded in each case that is meaningful to the child or young person and is sequenced according to the priorities in the case.??

Dudley was told that assessment and planning needs to be thorough, analytical and meet all the needs of the case; case managers should make sure they review progress in their cases, change plans where necessary and document them; and oversight processes should make sure that learning is translated into practice.