Targeted youth support: redesigning services - youth inclusion and youth services link to prevent offending

Issue

There was a lack of coherence in Hampshire between initiatives aiming to reduce youth offending.

The Youth Justice Board (YJB) provided funding through the youth inclusion support panel (YISP) to support multi-agency preventive activities for children aged 8-13, but there was little multi-agency coordination beyond the age of 13.

Background

The YJB provided funding for Hampshire-wide and Isle of Wight prevention programmes, run by YOT, to support new provision for 8-13 year olds.

This built on successful children's fund projects in Rushmore, Gosport and the New Forest. New programmes were set up in Andover, Basingstoke and Havant. The YISP has appointed a parenting support coordinator as part of an early intervention pathfinder which is running in parallel with the targeted youth support (TYS) pathfinder.

In addition to the TYS changes below, a local review of the process to directly fund Connexions by the local authority, concurrent with the TYS project, is likely to lead to a merger of Connexions and the youth service. Connexions will continue to provide services until March 2008.

Actions prompted by TYS

The YJB and TYS projects started at the same time in Andover and were linked together to increase their effectiveness. The need for more coordinated preventative activities for young people became very clear during the early stages of the TYS change process.

A TYS change team was formed to look at developing more coherence around youth offending. The change team included representatives from the local positive activities for young people programme which was supported by Connexions, the youth inclusion support panel (YSIP), social care, the local pupil referral unit, behaviour support and the local borough services. 

The TYS team asked the YISP prevention manager, appointed full-time in April 2006, to lead the prevention team.

The change team has identified a number of key preventative panels including the behaviour support team, YISP, community safety and educational psychology and is exploring how to improve information sharing and coordination between these panels to reduce duplication and improve resource management.

The team is also working to engage and include other necessary agencies, such as child and adolescent mental health services, in this process.

Benefits and results

From 1 January 2007,a multi-agency, multi-function Every Child Matters panel for 0-19 year olds (separated into three age groups: 0-7; 8-12; and 13-19) will replace all the other panels.

A post, jointly funded by the youth service and the YISP, will be set up to support activities that provide service continuity across young people's transitions from 8-13 and 13-19. The work of the change team has helped to forge better relationships between youth offending services and youth service.

The panels and agencies are sharing information and focus on the support needs of the individual. For example, providers of targeted youth support can now access information through the parenting support coordinator on parenting programmes as well as support for parents. The focus is more on working with individual parents rather than groups.

TYS has helped forge better relationships between youth services and youth offending teams. This allows the good work that is developing within the YISP to continue and helps provide a continuum of support for individual young people

YISP prevention manager Andy Chartres

The local authority

Hampshire is a large county authority. The TYS pathfinder is focusing on the Test Valley, which includes a rural area and an area of deprivation. Hampshire's statistical neighbours include Gloucestershire, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Dorset, Oxfordshire, Devon, Bedfordshire, Kent, North Yorkshire and Worcester.

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