Remove preventative work from the remit of youth offending teams, MPs told

Currently, prevention services, which can include youth inclusion projects and targeted youth diversion activities, are provided by youth offending teams (YOTs), either directly, or through commissioned providers.

Andrew Neilson, director of campaigns at The Howard League for Penal Reform, told a justice select committee hearing into the future of youth justice, that since the creation of the Youth Justice Board (YJB) and YOTs, the system has become “a bit of a mush”. 

“There is a degree to which the machinery [of the youth justice system] is self-perpetuating the problem rather than doing anything about it," he said. "Prevention and early intervention should lie outside the youth justice system.

“Then you have a relatively small youth justice system. That system shouldn’t really be seen as the place where the solutions [to youth offending] lie."

Members of the committee were told that YOTs are increasingly struggling to fulfil their prevention role.

Alexandra Crossley, senior researcher at the Centre for Social Justice, said YOTs and directors of children’s services say this is because the ringfence on funding for preventative work has been removed, and prevention is not a statutory duty.

“This has meant YOTs are actually pinching those monies to essentially plaster over the cracks that are appearing elsewhere as a result of the cuts, not just from the YJB grant but also from cuts to other services that are withdrawing money and secondees from YOTs,” she said.

“I guess that is the flipside of the multi-agency approach that services in some areas are reducing funding to the YOTs.

“I have been hearing that in some areas the police are withdrawing monies from the YOT and putting them into a Mash (multi-agency safeguarding hub).

“That may be the best thing to do but I think there’s so much change going on at a local level that there really needs to be a rethink over their structure and what they can reasonably be expected to do in the current landscape.”

Enver Solomon, chair of the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, said there is a need to understand “more clearly” what is happening to YOTs and the impact for those working in them.

He added that he supported the recommendation of the Munro review into child protection, which called for early help to be made a statutory duty for local authorities.

View the select committee hearing below