A joint report between the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Probation (HMI Probation) was published on Friday 29th July 2011. The report demonstrated that children and young people who offend are more likely to receive the health services they need following improved working by youth offending teams.
‘Re:Actions, the third review of healthcare in the community for young people who offend’ looks at how Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) help provide health services to the children and young people they work with.
The report found that access to and management of health services for this group of individuals have improved since the last review was completed in 2009.
The review assessed whether young people had their physical, emotional and mental health needs assessed on contact with YOTs, as well as their need for alcohol and substance misuse support programmes.
It also looked at how YOTs work with health partners and how well children and young people’s health needs are provided for as they move in and out of the criminal justice system.
One of the most notable changes is that YOT boards now include a health worker and nearly all YOTs have a service level agreement with their respective PCTs.
Primary care trusts' (PCTs) financial contribution to YOTs has also increased from 3.4 per cent in 2008 to an average of 5.4 per cent of the overall YOT budget.
However further progress is still required. YOTs are still not planning and integrating offending services with health services enough and the physical health needs of the children and young people they work with are still not always sufficiently assessed.
Insufficient numbers of YOTs are monitoring how effective support from health services can be, meaning they’re not always learning what works well for future planning or justifying the money they’re spending on health services.
There remain problems with services such as alcohol or substance misuse programmes or mental health support being provided consistently when children and young people move between a secure setting and the community and from young people’s services to adults’ services.
This is important because the young person’s contact with their support programme can stop altogether, and the programme thus fails to have any positive impact.
On behalf of CQC and HMI Probation, CQC chief executive Cynthia Bower said: ‘Children and young people who offend are more likely to need community-level health support, such as assessment for mental health or learning disability services, alcohol or substance misuse services, but are often one of the hardest groups to reach.
‘This report shows YOTs are now challenging the misconception that young people’s health needs are a GPs responsibility. We know where youth offending workers can provide a holistic assessment of young people’s health needs and develop support programmes to support these needs, this can in itself help to address offending behaviour, providing immense benefit to the young person, their future and to their local community.
‘We’re delighted to find considerable improvements in this review but concerns remain that they’re not hampered by future cuts made in relation to the economic climate.’
This review uses evidence collected from 19 inspections, case assessments by HMI Probation from its regular inspections of youth offending work, and questionnaires returned from around 50 per cent of all the 140 YOTs in England.
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