Inspectors praise YOT's work to reduce offending
Joe Lepper
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
A youth offending team has been praised by a joint team of probation, health, and social care inspectors for its work to prevent reoffending.
Inspectors found that staff at Cambridgeshire Youth Offending Service were "committed to the delivery of high-quality work to make a positive difference to those affected by offending".
The report, which followed a visit last November, says that staff "had a clear focus on understanding the perspective" of young offenders and priority was given to cases with the highest likelihood of reoffending.
Meanwhile, the use of restorative justice was found to produce positive outcomes and the service worked well with families to develop positive relationships between young people and their parents or carers.
"These were important to effective work to reduce offending," the report adds.
The service's work to ensure sentences are served was found to be good, with work done well enough in 84 per cent of cases. The service was particularly strong at paying attention to cultural and religious issues, inspectors found.
The report cites the example of the team's work to ensure a Muslim young offender called Ahmed could take part in Friday prayers and observe Ramadan while awaiting sentencing.
"These were important steps contributing to a substantial change in attitude towards those working with Ahmed, helped convince him of his case manager's commitment and led to early indications of progress in his attitudes to offending," the report states.
Chief inspector of probation Dame Glenys Stacey said the inspection team was pleased to see that reoffending rates for young people in Cambridgeshire are among the lowest in England and Wales over the last two years, adding that staff understood the importance of forming positive relationships with children so that they could help them to change their lives.
Despite the praise the inspection team, which included representatives from Ofsted, Care Quality Commission and HMI Constabulary, a number of improvements have been recommended.
This includes boosting the education, training and work prospects of young offenders. Inspectors were concerned that half of young people were not in school or college, in work or on a training placement.
They also wanted to see improvements to IT systems which were found to be hampering information sharing.
