NEF working paper Youth Diversion: YOT Survey …...This briefing sets out findings from a survey of...
Transcript of NEF working paper Youth Diversion: YOT Survey …...This briefing sets out findings from a survey of...
Written by: Ben Estep New Economics Foundation www.neweconomics.org [email protected] +44 (0)20 7820 6300 @nef Registered charity number 1055254 © March 2014 nef (the new economics foundation)
NEF working paper Youth Diversion: YOT Survey Briefing
2 Youth Diversion: YOT Survey Briefing
Contents
Summary .................................................................................................................... 3
Introduction ............................................................................................................... 4
About this briefing ................................................................................................... 4
About the survey ..................................................................................................... 4
Approaches to Diversion .......................................................................................... 6
Identification and Assessment ................................................................................ 7
Data and Evidence .................................................................................................. 7
Diversion Programmes ............................................................................................. 9
Emerging Changes .................................................................................................. 11
Out of Court Disposals and LASPO ...................................................................... 11
Suggestions for Practice Improvement ................................................................. 12
Clarity .................................................................................................................... 12
Funding ................................................................................................................. 12
Evidence ............................................................................................................... 12
Implications and Next Steps .................................................................................. 14
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Summary
Against a backdrop of apparent successes in the youth justice system, prevention
work risks being undervalued and, due to mounting budget pressures, lost before its
value is properly understood.
Diversion aims to redirect young people away from formal justice system processing,
while both holding them accountable for their conduct and connecting them to
supportive services. While research strongly suggests that taking this approach in
response to low-level offending generates better outcomes for young people, their
communities, and taxpayers, there is not a settled consensus on which specific
diversion strategies work best.
As the bodies charged with both preventing youth offending and providing
interventions for those who have, Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) are central to
successful diversion. But their work in this area is not a statutory requirement, and
practice is highly variable across the country. A survey of diversion practices at
YOTs suggests that:
Budgetary pressures, combined with a requirement to prioritise work in other
areas and a lack of research evidence on the effectiveness of individual
intervention programmes renders YOTs’ continued support of discretionary
prevention work precarious;
YOTs would benefit from a greater degree of practice sharing around this
work in other localities, and a greater degree of clarity around their own role in
prevention; and
More research is necessary to help consolidate positive trends in the use of
informal responses to low-level youth offending.
Survey findings indicate that many practitioners feel that non-statutory caseloads are
making up an increasingly large proportion of their YOTs’ work. Given this shift,
together with unstable funding arrangements and limited evaluation evidence, it is
increasingly important to understand and value the impacts of this work.
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Introduction
About this briefing
The New Economics Foundation and the Centre for Justice Innovation are
researching diversion practices and programmes for young people at the cusp of
formal justice system involvement: those who have come to system attention, but
who have not yet been sentenced. We hope to understand how, where, and in what
contexts practitioners are successfully working with young people to minimise their
involvement in the justice system in order to:
Identify and understand promising diversion practices and programmes with
the potential to generate better outcomes for young people, communities and
the state;
Help establish evidence for the effectiveness of diversion in terms of
preventing future offending, saving money, and generating wider positive
outcomes; and
Inform the further development and embedding of diversion in the statutory
and voluntary sectors.
This briefing sets out findings from a survey of Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) in
England and Wales about their work in this area. It may be of interest to YOT staff
and partners, local authorities, or others with an interest in this area.
About the survey
To learn more about diversion practices, gaps in services, and emerging trends, we
developed and launched a survey of Youth Offending Team managers on their work
with young people intended to prevent further penetration of the youth justice
system. Launched in partnership with the Association of Youth Offending Team
Managers (AYM), the professional group representing YOT managers in England
and Wales, the short survey was intended to be exploratory, with no sampling frame
used. It was sent to all 157 YOTs through the Youth Justice Board’s online directory;
a link was also included in the AYM newsletter. In total, it attracted 71 responses,
predominantly from heads of services and managers, but also including prevention
team managers and coordinators.
The survey focused on four areas: YOTs’ approaches to diversion, programmes in
use, emerging changes, and suggestions for practice improvement. The overall
picture that emerged was of services that, while able to report local successes,
especially around positive multi-agency partnerships, faced the future with some
trepidation. Practitioners highlighted a key tension: prevention of offending is a
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headline purpose of YOTs, but their work in this area is not a statutory requirement.
While managers report having continued to promote and undertake non-statutory
work even as overall funding has been cut, this may not be sustainable given the
obligation to prioritise elsewhere. Many YOTs report lower (though, on average,
more complex) statutory caseloads and an increasing proportion of staff time
dedicated to young people prior to a court sentence (both through increased
involvement in earlier decision-making and through higher numbers of out of court
disposals).
At the same time, increasing funding pressure makes the future of this work
uncertain, threatens collaborative working relationships, and imperils approaches
that managers feel are effective and necessary.
In the following four sections, we briefly summarise thematically grouped findings.
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“The skill set is very different for voluntary engagement [compared] to statutory.”
Approaches to Diversion
Within guidelines set by the Youth Justice Board, YOTs’ structures are determined
locally. Particularly for non-statutory work, there is not a single shared operating
model. A narrow majority of responding YOTs reported having separate, dedicated
“prevention teams,” or caseworkers who exclusively deal with these cases. Even
among YOTs without specific prevention workers, there appeared to be general
agreement that the work is indeed different from statutory work, and that specialism,
or adapted practice, is necessary.
This difference was described in terms of engagement
– in contrast with statutory work, where a young
person’s participation is generally a court-ordered
requirement, engagement with diversionary work is
ultimately voluntary in most instances, requiring staff
to use different approaches.
A small number of responding YOTs operated in areas where prevention work
occurred outside the YOT itself, and concentrated solely on statutory caseloads.
Overall, the most common estimate among respondents was that between 20 and
40 percent of YOT staff time is spent on prevention and diversion cases, though
there was a wide variance in responses.
Fig. 1: What percentage of YOT staff time with young people do you estimate is spent on non-
statutory work?
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Identification and Assessment
In contrast with work involving youth under a sentence, the population of youth YOTs
target for preventative work is not specifically demarcated; work in this area requires
a process of identification. Befitting their multi-agency makeup, YOTs reported that
their approach to identifying young people was heavily reliant on cooperation with
other agencies. Referrals from police were most common, but schools, mental health
services, health, children’s services, and housing associations were all identified as
sources, as were Community Safety Partnerships made up of representatives from
many of these agencies. Additionally, some YOTs reported undertaking outreach
work within targeted geographic areas, or with specific individuals deemed at-risk
(including the siblings of young people already known to the YOT).
Young people were most commonly assessed using the Onset tool, though several
teams also reported using locally developed tools (including screenings designed for
use with specific programmes) and the Common Assessment Framework. Although
predominantly intended for use with statutory cases, some YOTs also reported using
all or part of Asset to inform their work with non-statutory young people.
Data and Evidence
YOTs overwhelmingly reported that they would find it helpful to know more about
prevention practice at other YOTs (89 percent agree or strongly agree). Almost all
(91 percent) reported regularly sharing data with local partners.
Respondents were more divided about the difficulty of evidencing the impact of
prevention programmes – 40 percent felt that this evidence was difficult to marshal;
60 percent felt that it was not. While responding YOTs felt that they had the capacity
to manage and analyse data, there was more division around how this data
translates into evidencing the impact of non-statutory programming.
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Fig. 2: Data and Practice Sharing
Fig. 3: Data and Evidence
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“[It is] difficult to see how services can be maintained under forecast cuts from partners.”
Diversion Programmes
YOTs reported a wide range of diversion
programmes in operation. These ranged from
individualised packages delivered to young people
identified as at-risk (often informal, small-scale,
and built around “positive activities”), to programmes delivered in response to anti-
social behaviour (reparation, other work tied to acceptable behaviour contracts), to
parental programmes and linkages to substance misuse treatment. The most
frequently cited “pre-court” programmes were Youth Justice Liaison and Diversion
(YJLD) and Triage schemes.
A further category of interventions were those available for use following out of court
disposals (including mediation, offense-specific responses (remediation or
reparation), and workshops on consequences of behaviour, increased self-esteem,
and character building) some in-house, some delivered by partners. Out of court
disposals reportedly often also led to referrals to support for drug and alcohol
misuse, health issues, or other mainstream services. With the exception of
conditional cautions, young people’s engagement with programmes following an out
of court disposal is voluntary.
Fig. 4: Who do you consider to be your key partners with regard to diversion work? (scaled by
response frequency)
Identified Gaps
Gaps identified by responding YOTs included speech and communication
interventions, programming involving victims, parenting interventions, and work
targeting low-level gang involvement. Additionally, concern was raised related to
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“Agencies [are] becoming more insular. Financial conditions have promoted siloism, not collaboration.”
capacity issues in mainstream services leading to waiting lists and high thresholds
for involvement.
Respondents identified a range of key diversion partners
outside the team, in addition to agency representatives
seconded into the YOT. In both cases, budget cuts were
seen as placing mounting pressures on these working
arrangements.
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“As [the] level of sentenced work reduces this is an opportunity to review and re-direct resources back to diversion/prevention. However, parent agencies are looking to save money and there will be pressure to delete posts to achieve this.”
Emerging Changes
When prompted to reflect on recent developments, respondents observed that their
out of court caseloads had increased (often “significantly”), and that YOTs were
becoming increasingly involved with earlier decision-making, provision of
information, and identification of interventions. This is typified by Triage and YJLD
schemes, both of which locate YOT practitioners earlier in the justice system to
accelerate the identification of young peoples’ risks and needs, to divert appropriate
cases, and to offer access to supports.
At the same time, fewer young people being
charged at court were leading to smaller statutory
caseloads at a number of YOTs (with some
observing that the resulting profile was becoming
older and more complex, with, on average, more
serious offending behaviour). Lower statutory
caseloads have not directly equated to less
demands on staff time, as in addition to the
complexity of the remaining statutory caseload,
increasing amounts of resources have been
dedicated to “pre-sentence” young people.
Out of Court Disposals and LASPO
Specific to change brought about by the Legal Aid, Sentencing, and Punishment of
Offenders Act (LASPO), there was a strong consensus that the new out of court
disposals framework was leading to more demands on YOTs’ time, with increased
YOT involvement in decision-making and more referrals. Particularly increased
demands on YOT police officers’ workloads were noted.
In terms of use of specific disposals post-LASPO, most respondents felt it was too
early to identify emerging trends in usage. LASPO-induced changes were newly
implemented at the time of the survey. Overall, however, several respondents
reported that the new framework generated more partnership work (especially with
police and social care). Others noted that local magistrates seemed more willing to
trust and accept these disposals.
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“Our effectiveness has been proven [FTE decline] but as pressures increase on the team we will have to prioritise work and be forced to reduce or totally withdraw aspects of the service we know to be effective.”
“Too often the focus is centred on policy changes and changes to policing…YOTs and their managers have continued to promote diversion and prevention when funding has been cut and the provision is not statutory.”
“YOTs spend a lot of time individually developing interventions and I doubt if any have sufficient volume to truly test resource impact.”
Suggestions for Practice Improvement
Reflecting on changes that would make their non-
statutory work with young people more effective,
respondents suggested a range of ideas,
including many specific to local contexts. These
included better information sharing agreements
with local partners, access to specialist
assessments (especially mental health), and
increased access to mainstream services. More
broadly, responses fell into three related groups:
Clarity
Several respondents noted a degree of uncertainty around the parameters of YOTs’
preventive role and responsibilities. This has implications for team structures,
working arrangements, and relationships with partner agencies. If prevention was to
become a formal statutory requirement of YOTs, respondents felt that this ambiguity
would be alleviated.
Funding
While reduced budgets were a near-universal
concern, respondents also noted that In addition
to the amount of their funding, stability was an
additional worry. In light of a number of recent
and continuing changes to funding streams
(particularly including the removal of ring-fenced
prevention funding), respondents felt that more
certainty would allow for better forward planning,
including retention of specialist staff and
programmes.
Evidence
Respondents expressed confidence that their
targeted prevention and diversion work is making
a difference, frequently citing the dramatic and
sustained fall in first time youth justice system
entrants as a strong indication of this success.
However, there remains little direct evidence of
the direct contribution of specific programmes
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and practices to this development. Several respondents noted that an improved
evidence base was necessary, but that formal programme evaluation seemed
impractical for reasons of cost and volume.
14 Youth Diversion: YOT Survey Briefing
Implications and Next Steps
Our findings suggest that further research is necessary to document and value the
effectiveness of currently operating prevention and diversion strategies.
While respondents report that there have been positive changes in how the youth
justice system deals with low-level and first time offending, much of this may be
motivated by fiscal pressure rather than an ideological shift away from default use of
the formal system. As such, it is potentially susceptible to a rapid reversal. This
makes it especially important to establish improved evidence of the effectiveness of
non-statutory work.
With this in mind, we are currently developing a research project intended to support
YOTs in valuing their preventative work. This is intended to explore leveraging data
already being collected at YOT-level to improve the evidence base around existing
prevention and diversion work. This will inform the development of a toolkit intended
to support YOTs’ capacity to demonstrate the value of these services, and to make a
stronger case for their preservation.
If you would like to discuss this with us, or to inform us of practice at your YOT, please contact:
Ben Estep
Criminal Justice Researcher
New Economics Foundation
T: (0)20 7820 6341