Abolition of YJB is difficult to justify
Ravi Chandiramani
Monday, October 18, 2010
The government's decision to scrap the Youth Justice Board (YJB) in last week's "bonfire of the quangos" is bewildering. In recent years, since the welcome demise of New Labour's Respect agenda, the YJB has helped to reduce first-time entrants to the criminal justice system and the youth custody population has come down.
The YJB, which has a £504.2m budget and 318 staff, could certainly be more efficient. But no evidence has been provided of how the transfer of its functions to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) - to oversee youth offending teams, spread good practice and commission custody places - will actually save any money.
Details of the transfer will have to be worked out in the weeks and months to come. But the YJB's abolition will over time mean that management of the youth justice system in England and Wales switches from experts with frontline practical experience of working with young offenders to civil servants, many of whom will move posts every two or so years.
Decisions will be transferred from those who have built up professional expertise over many years to an isolated, centralised Whitehall department. Quite at odds with a key strain of this government's thinking, you might think.
But the decision has been made. So now it has to work. Those responsible at the MoJ for youth justice need to move forward with the YJB's efforts on prevention and rehabilitation. Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke rightly recognises that prison doesn't work and it is the effectiveness of such work that will in the long-term save money.
The duty of optimism
The comprehensive spending review has cast its foreboding shadow over children's and youth services for many months now. Just the arrival of the dreaded date of 20 October might be small relief. As John Freeman outlines on the back page, there is pain to come in the shape of good projects cut, jobs lost and a widespread reconfiguration of services, for better or for worse. It is going to be tough.
Incredibly tough.
But one golden rule must prevail in these challenging times: good, committed folk who work with children, young people and families have a duty of optimism - a duty to keep the goal of improving young lives firmly in sight and to never give up. At stake are the prospects of the next generation and the resilience of our society, no less. That optimism will count for a lot in the long term.
Ravi Chandiramani, editor, Children & Young People Now
