Youth justice system fails looked-after children, say MPs
Joe Lepper
Thursday, March 14, 2013
The youth justice system is letting down children in care and care leavers, according to a damning report by MPs.
The justice select committee’s report says councils and the youth justice services are not doing enough to prevent young people who have been in care being drawn into crime.
Alan Beith MP, the committee’s chair, said: “We were shocked by evidence we heard that vulnerable children across the UK are effectively being abandoned by children’s and social services.
“Public authorities have a duty to ensure looked-after children are not at greater risk of being drawn into the criminal justice system than other children simply because they do not live in family homes.”
He added that too often children in care are made to feel like criminals for poor behaviour that would usually be dealt with in families.
“We heard one example of the police being called to a children’s home to investigate a broken cup,” he said.
The committee’s report recommends that all councils, children’s homes and prosecutors have strategies in place to stop children in care from being criminalised for trivial incidents.
The MPs also want to see more social workers supporting care leavers and children in care in young offender institutions. This, they said, would help better co-ordinate support when they leave custody.
Custody, the committee added, should be limited to only “the most serious and prolific young offenders”.
The Youth Justice Board (YJB) was also criticised for focusing its budget on youth detention rather than early intervention work and alternative sentencing in the community.
The committee found that while the number of young people in custody halved over the past decade, two thirds of the YJB’s budget was still being spent on detention.
Councillor David Simmonds, chairman of the Local Government Association’s Children and Young People Board, welcomed this recommendation.
“The committee is right to highlight the crucial importance of early intervention,” he said.
“However, by cutting councils’ early intervention grants, government has made it harder for local authorities to intervene early to provide support for children growing up in difficult circumstances.
"Councils support the committee’s call for the Youth Justice Board to invest more in early intervention.
"Local authorities will want to work closely with the board to target and provide this support to help improve the life chances of vulnerable children and reduce the risk of them getting into trouble.”
John Drew, the chief executive of the Youth Justice Board (YJB), said he welcomed the committee's acknowledgement that there have been "significant reductions in the numbers of first-time entrants to the youth justice system and the numbers of young people in custody".
"The YJB shares the committee's concern about the over-criminalisation of looked-after children," he added.
"We agree with the committee's view that this group of young people are among the most vulnerable and we believe strongly that more can be done to prevent them entering the youth justice system, as well as improving outcomes once in the system.
"Local authority children's services are responsible for the care of looked-after children and we are keen to work closely with local authorities, the police and the Department for Education to ensure that young people who do enter the youth justice system have their needs appropriately met."
The committee also raised concerns about the 17 per cent increase in the use of physical restraint in youth custody between 2010/11 and 2011/12.
In 254 cases during 2011/12 young people were injured while being restrained.
Deborah Coles, co-director of the charity Inquest, which supports families of young people who have died in custody, said: “Many of the issues of concern highlighted in this report are raised time and again at inquests into the deaths of vulnerable young people.
“As the committee has recognised, failings in the system of looked-after children, high levels of restraint, self-harm and ultimately death, are persistent features of the current youth justice system.”