Fighting for the frontline: Association of YOT Managers chair Gareth Jones

The past year has been particularly eventful for youth offending teams (YOTs). Following the publication in July of a government-ordered review of YOTs by consultants Deloitte, in September new Justice Secretary Michael Gove announced a more wide-ranging review of the youth justice system.

Then, earlier this month, the Youth Justice Board (YJB) confirmed that YOTs’ budgets would be cut by £9m due to “emergency in-year cuts”.

“There are so many things going on – it feels like it has been constant since last November’s bombshell announcement of the review of youth offending teams,” Gareth Jones, chair of the Association of Youth Offending Team Managers (AYM), says over coffee at a central London hotel.

“The contraction of services due to cuts from the centre and to local partners has been relentless,” he says. “The obsession with money is just over-whelming. At the same time, we are all trying to deliver high-quality outcomes for young people and families.”

The £9m cuts imposed by the YJB – equivalent to about £60,000 for each of the 152 YOTs in England and Wales – will be deducted from the second of two six-monthly payments to be made for the 2015/16 financial year, which is due around now.

“Essentially, for my YOT we have to find an additional £88,000, which will be deducted from what we had already expected to be paid,” says Jones.

“There are lots of colleagues from around the country who are making people redundant, knowing full well that you cannot achieve the savings in the timescale that is being demanded.

“One of the most frustrating elements of the consultation with the YJB is that they said they couldn’t make YJB staff redundant because it wouldn’t achieve the savings in the timescale required.

“So what they have done is expect local authorities to achieve the impossible. The savings have to be made by the end of March 2016. It is an absolute nonsense.”

Jones’s frustration stems from the fact that local authorities and other YOT partners have been asked to make the cuts in order to deliver savings for the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).

He says: “It is an attack on the frontline because YOTs do not have huge numbers of superfluous managers or policy advisers. What we have is frontline staff and that’s the only way we can get cashable savings.”

Jones says that in the YOT he heads – which covers Cheshire West, Halton and Warrington – the savings will be made through not filling vacant posts.

Dealing with complex needs

One of these is a “tier 3” drugs worker who worked with young people with issues around alcohol or drug misuse. This role deals with complex and often multiple needs of the child or young person, not solely substance problems. They also work towards reintegrating and including the child in their family, community, school or place of work.

Jones says it was not a strategic decision based on levels of need, effective practice or evidence. “It is simply that the person who did it moved on,” he says.

“That is not a good way to have to manage any service, but that’s what I’ve had to do.”

Latest youth justice statistics (for 2013/14) show huge progress with the youth justice system in recent years. Annual overall offending by young people fell by eight per cent compared with 2012/13, and the number of first-time entrants into the youth justice system also fell by a quarter.

Meanwhile, the number of young people in custody is currently fewer than 1,000, compared with more than 3,000 in 2008.

However, Deloitte’s review of YOTs used the fact that average caseloads for staff fell from 21 to 11 between 2009/10 and 2013/14 as one of the reasons for recommending that funding for YOTs be reduced.

Jones says the purported caseload drop does not take into account work by YOTs to actively divert young people from the youth justice system, and provide help and support before they end up in court.

“We get no credit for that or funding for that from the MoJ,” he says. “I pointed this out to Michael Gove when he asked me the question and, to be fair to him, he did look quite surprised when I told him his own ministry didn’t regard that as a core function for YOTs.

“Also, the cases we no longer have are the ones that were relatively more straightforward. Each case doesn’t take up the same amount of time. The idea that if you have smaller caseloads you need less money is ridiculous.

“Some of the people making the decisions have no understanding of the context of the youth justice system.

“Virtually every YOT in the country is trimmed back to the bare minimum and they’ve still produced the goods, but it is going to change. It’s going to shift. All this good work is going to get ruined.”

Jones says that with cuts likely to persist in the future, YOTs are increasingly likely to adopt different forms.

Earlier this month, CYP Now reported that West Mercia YOT – which was formed following a merger of the youth offending teams of Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Telford & Wrekin in 2012 – is set to be handed over to a police and crime commissioner in the first arrangement of its kind.

“Local authorities are the ones that are statutorily responsible for providing a youth offending service, but who actually delivers the service itself could be outsourced to any number of providers,” Jones says.

He points to his own YOT as one of a number of areas to merge services and cites Oldham as an example of a community interest company.

“There are lots and lots of different models that work in different areas. AYM wouldn’t say that you should have to do it in any particular way, because not every approach will work in every area.

“My worry is that the incentives for change are about saving cash, rather than about service delivery. What is the point of delivering cheap youth justice services if they don’t actually achieve anything.”

Aside from budget cuts, it is the youth justice review, which is to be led by former government adviser on school behaviour Charlie Taylor, that has been exercising Jones and the AYM.

As part of the review, Taylor will look at current practice in preventing youth crime and rehabilitating young offenders, as well as exploring how the youth justice system can most effectively interact with wider services for children and young people.

The review will not consider the age of criminal responsibility, the way young people are dealt with in the criminal courts or the youth sentencing framework.

Jones says he would like to see a “reduction in the attack on frontline delivery”. “It is the YOTs that have produced the big wins,” he says.

This would involve a “more consistent and focused way in which YOTs are funded”, and some of the savings made from the youth justice system in recent years being reinvested, potentially in either a different form of youth secure estate.

Part of the review will also look at the YJB, which had previously been earmarked to be scrapped under the Public Bodies Bill, before being given a late reprieve in November 2011, following strong opposition to the move in the House of Lords.

Role and responsibility

It is now subject to examination again, with the remit of the review including reference to the “role and responsibility” of the YJB, alongside those of government departments and local authorities.

Jones questions whether the organisation is still affordable in light of ongoing cuts.

He points to the fact that the vast majority of cuts the YJB was asked to identify by the MoJ (the total came to £12.5m) were made to forms of frontline delivery.

“As part of the review, and I don’t think I’m being particularly clairvoyant or psychic, you would have to beg the question, can the YJB exist in its current format, and should it? Are there other organisations that can deliver the same sorts of things?”

Jones says AYM is keen on the peer review process as a way in which YOTs can help each other to assess their own quality without the requirement for a formal inspection.

“There may be other areas where there can be transference of responsibilities for various services,” he adds.

“There are some very good people working at the YJB, but you do have to wonder whether it is a luxury that can still be afforded.

“If I can’t afford drugs workers, can we afford policy people, and communications and HR in the YJB? There are so many duplications of functions within the MoJ and the YJB, surely there could be some savings made there.

“As an association, we are not having a pop at the YJB at all, but they are not the frontline – we are.”