So-called “serious incidents” involving young offenders in the community, can include deaths, attempted suicides and offences such as rape, or attempted murder.
Youth offending teams (YOTs) are currently obliged to notify the YJB of any serious incidents and compile reports detailing what happened. But following a consultation held last year, a series of pilots will be launched to trial a new reporting process.
Lucy Dawes, director of performance at the YJB, said the existing reporting process was introduced before the creation of local safeguarding children’s boards, leading to a degree of duplication that has not previously been addressed.
The new system means that YOTs will be able to feed their findings into local serious case reviews, except for when there is an extraordinary incident, for which they will still have to provide full reports.
Reporting will also be geared more towards lessons that can be learned, rather than a running commentary on the circumstances.
Dawes said this is in line with the findings of the Munro review of child protection, which said that serious case reviews were too focused on errors rather than looking at good practice and reflecting on what could be improved.
“We are hoping the changes will mean a reduced burden for YOTs by taking out the duplication,” she said.
“The whole approach of this is to focus much more on the learning so we can pull that out very quickly and share it.”
Work to pilot the new reporting process will begin from July, when youth offending teams in the South West, South East, West Midlands and North East will trial the system.
From September, YOTs in the North West, East Midlands, the East of England, and Wales, will take on the new requirements, followed by all YOTs in London from November.
The findings of the pilots will be reviewed in the autumn when any final changes will be made, ahead of the changes being applied nationally early in 2013.
There were 23 deaths of young offenders in 2010, the most recent year for which figures are available.
