YOI closures 'leads to rise in care placements'

Alison Williams, director of youth support services at Gloucestershire youth offending service, said since the closure last year of Ashfield Young Offender Institution (YOI) near Bristol fewer young people in custody have been able to maintain family relationships to ensure they can return home once released. She said this is because young people are being held in facilities further away from home making it harder for families to visit.

"What we have seen is an increase in those young people coming into the care system as a result of not maintaining really good family relationships," Williams told the annual Youth Justice Convention in Telford.

"There is also a cost to the local youth justice system itself in terms of our staff having to travel that much further, the fact we do not have good connections with the local young offender institution.

"All of that means that when young people come back they are not settled in the area.

"They haven't got a strong relationship with family at home and local authorities pick up the cost of that through the care system."

As a result of declining numbers of young people in custody, hundreds of places across YOIs, secure training centres, and secure children's homes have been decommissioned in recent years.

This means many young people have to be placed in custody further away from home than they would otherwise have been.

The Youth Justice Board previously had a target of detaining young people within 50 miles of their home, but this is no longer the case.

Speaking at the same panel debate, Gareth Jones, chair of the Association of Youth Offending Team Managers, said that, on one level, the closure of a part of the secure estate is to be welcomed because it means there are fewer young people in custody. But he said the issues created by having fewer establishments can hinder resettlement.

"The evidence on resettlement is that it benefits from support networks at home, and families taking responsibility," he said.

"If you are making the journey to see a loved one horrific, which it will be in certain parts of the country, how is that going to achieve the outcome?

Jones said the issue of young people being placed far from home will be exacerbated by government plans to create so-called secure colleges, the first if which will be a 320-bed establishment due to open at Glen Parva in Leicestershire in 2017.

"If more young people across the country are going to be based in Glen Parva, that's going to make it even more difficult," he added.

Paul Candler, deputy director of the youth justice policy unit at the Ministry of Justice, said the government is clear that it wants secure colleges to be the future of the youth secure estate.

"We are doing work with the YJB to try and improve the resettlement offer and have launched new resettlement consortia," he said.