A joint inspection of six youth offending teams (YOTs) led by the Probation Inspectorate looked at a total of 24 cases.
It found that once children had been picked up by the justice system, their chances for rehabilitation improved because they benefitted from the “child-focused” approach of YOT workers.
However, the report found that interventions could have taken place earlier and that cases were slow to get to court, taking an average six months between detection and sentence.
As a result of this, there were “lengthy periods” where little or no work was being done with the young person.
Much of the work that was done was “characterised by poor communication” between the relevant agencies – including YOTs, children’s services, schools and police – and inspectors found staff were too often responsible for “inadequate assessment and joint planning”.
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