Children and young people

Overview of the 2007/08 plan

The preceding year has been a momentous one for Medway Youth Offending Team (YOT) in a number of ways. Firstly, it became integrated within the newly created Children’s Services Directorate; secondly, it underwent a major structural reorganisation under new senior management. Finally, its performance has been transformed and nationally recognised.

Medway is, on balance, a relatively safe place to live and levels of crime and anti-social behaviour are below the UK average. Nevertheless, crime, including youth offending, is a feature of the Medway community just as it is in all parts of Britain. From a youth offending perspective it is therefore important to have a range of services to help reduce and manage the problems caused by children’s anti-social and criminal behaviour.

The performance in delivering this range of services has seen Medway YOT rise from a level 2 YOT in the Youth Justice Board’s (YJB) performance tables in 05/06 to an overall level 4 across the first three quarters of 06/07. More striking still is the fact that for the comparable three quarters in 05/06 Medway had only achieved a rating of level 1. The improvement has been due initially to demonstrating increased performance against the YJB's Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and increased Effective Practice Quality Assurance (EPQA) performance, but more lately there has also been a dramatic improvement in National Standards compliance.

Whilst much has been achieved, there are however some KPIs that the YOT is still significantly underperforming on – namely Education, Training and Employment (ETE), accommodation and mental health. Both accommodation and mental health have seen an upturn during the last six months, but ETE remains a cause for concern. This is reflected in poor performance nationally, however, an innovative strategic solution has been made possible through a successful bid for additional funding from the national and the local Learning and Skills Councils (LSC) for an Offender Learning and Skills (OLASS) Project. An OLASS Development Manager took up post at the YOT from 26 February 2007.

Another key element to highlight has been the innovation regarding partnership working. Partners have been allocated key targets against which they hold the YOT to account and for which they are accountable. This has ensured greater collaboration and ownership across the YOT partnership. Partner agencies will be supporting the YOT to deliver not only this Youth Justice Plan, but also the EPQA Improvement Plans for substance misuse and mental health in 2007/08.

The plan this year will continue to move us more toward the delivery of services that are preventative in nature, across Children’s Services, which will be supported by the development of Medway’s first youth crime and anti-social behaviour prevention strategy. 2005/06 saw the successful expansion of the Youth Inclusion Support Panel (YISP), an initiative aimed at eoght to 13 year-olds at risk of offending; in 2007/08 the project plans to support 200 young people and their families.

At the heart of all we do will be Medway’s commitment to involving young people more in decision-making processes in the public sector. This is a goal of the Every Child Matters and Youth Matters agenda, to be achieved in youth justice by consulting and engaging with young people who have experience as victims and offenders.

The next 12 months will see even closer integration of services for young people with the development of an Integrated Youth Support Service (IYSS) and Targeted Youth Support (TYS). The role of the YOT as a leader in multi-agency integrated working will be a useful role model in this development. Finally, Medway has a YOT that is performing within the top 10 per cent of YOTs nationally; we have to ensure they continue to have the support and resources to ensure the performance improvement is sustainable.

To read the full plan:

Medway Youth Justice plan (pdf 405KB). To use this file you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you do not have this on your computer, please use our advice page.

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