Some councils are said to be considering merging the multi-agency teams - which co-ordinate efforts to prevent reoffending - into children's trusts, which are a key part of the Government's green paper Every Child Matters.
Speaking at a Local Government Association conference on youth justice, Sir Charles Pollard, acting chair of the Youth Justice Board, said mergers would mean councils would lose their focus on the justice element of children's services and would concentrate far more on the welfare side.
"If they were integrated to the extent that the social workers in the youth offending team went back to social services, so there was no team identity, it would be a total disaster," Pollard said.
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