Issue - meetings

Carolyn Entwistle, Senior Manager, Hannah Blower, Team Manager and Michael Nunn, Senior Manager, Fostering, Adoption, Residential and Youth Offending Team Services (FARY)

To receive an update on what the Youth Offending Team and other services are doing to prevent the criminalisation of young people in care and care leavers and to approve the strategy and action plan.

Carolyn Entwistle, Senior Manager, Hannah Blower, Team Manager and Michael Nunn, Senior Manager, Fostering, Adoption, Residential and Child and Youth Justice Services were welcomed to the meeting to raise awareness of the statutory guidance and agencies responsibilities in the reduction of criminalisation of children looked after and care leavers.  The Board were also updated with Lancashire's response to the statutory guidance and to have a shared understanding of the impact of the criminalisation of children and strategies in place to divert and prevent criminalisation of children looked after and care leavers.

Carolyn Entwistle outlined that within the service there are three principles:

i)  Take a child first approach

ii)  A trauma informed Service

iii)  Take a restorative approach

Detailed in the presentation was some background as to what the In Care and Out of Trouble agenda is.  As of 4 November 2020 children looked after open to Lancashire's Child and Youth Justice Service is 58 (27%) of the caseload including out of area children.  Lancashire children looked after is 43 (22%).

Further details in the presentation were:

·  What have we done so far?

·  Strategy – what do we want to do to achieve our long term goal? (included with the agenda papers)

·  Our goal is to reduce offending by Lancashire children by…

·  Action Plan – how are we going to do it? (included with the agenda papers)

Hannah Blower presented the "Reducing Criminalisation through Prevention and Diversion" PowerPoint and provided further information on:

Lancashire Child and Youth Justice Service's Offer

·  What is the Lancashire Prevention Service?

·  Who can refer?

·  What can the Prevention Service help with?

Child-First, Trauma-Informed, Restorative

·  Key Service principles

·  The model

·  Child and Youth Justice Service is tracking all children supported by the Diversion Service and Between 1 October 2019 and 1 November 2020 (83 children were supported via a Community Resolution with Child and Youth Justice Service Intervention (Diversion Programme) of which there were 11 children looked after that were prevented from entering into the criminal justice system and receiving criminal outcomes.  Of the eight children that went on re-enter the system, none were children looked after.

·  Next steps

Hannah also presented a case example of some work that was carried out in conjunction with Residential Services to keep a child out of the criminal justice system.

Mike Nunn concluded the presentations with a PowerPoint "Preventing the criminalisation of looked after children in Residential Care" and it was noted that within Residential Services, the Police call out was still too high and there was more work to do on this.  Contained within the presentation were further details on:

·  Core principles – these are being revisited.

·  Knowing our children – the in-house service has the lowest number of call-outs to the Police across Lancashire.

·  Listening to our children

·  Principles in Practice – Extracts from reflective conversations with child and staff during debriefs

Sharon Hubber, Director of Children's Services commented that it was really refreshing to see that as an organisation it is accepting that things need to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5