Agenda item

·        Youth Justice Board update

·        Troubled Families,

·        Cohorts were there are links to the Safer Communities Partnership Strategy – including Domestic Violence and VAWG, Crime and ASB and demand pressures.

·        (Relevant to Priority 4 of the Community Safety Strategy)

Tina McElligot

Assistant Director of Family Services

The Strategic Lead, Partnerships and Engagement, Family Services LBB spoke to the slides on the Troubled Families Programme and youth offending.

The Phase 2 Troubled Families Programme would come to an end on 31^st March 2020 The Ministry of Housing, Local Government and Communities has indicated that there would be developments to and a continuation of the Programme beyond March 2020.

The Strategic Lead, Partnerships, Family Services reported that there had been a slight increase in open cases brought to the Youth Offending Team (YOT) in Barnet, likely due to the summer holiday period. The primary age of offenders was 17 with a disproportionate number of these being black British. The offences were mainly violence against the person, drug offenses and robberies.

The Troubled Families Programme focused on the influence of adverse childhood experiences; one fifth of the offenders had witnessed domestic violence. Physical abuse, housing problems and neglect were also issues for this cohort. Drug misuse (mainly cannabis and alcohol) was present in close to half the offenders.

51% of acts of violence against the person had involved a knife. Some of these were committed outside Barnet by offenders from Barnet.

15% of the youth offender cohort were currently identified as being at risk of exploitation.

The Strategic Lead added that with the YOT now co-located with family services, coordination was better and the team had a clearer view of the impact of earlier life experiences on this group. Home Office funding had been provided in 2018 for Barnet to work with MAC-UK, Art Against Knives, (AAK) and Growing Against Violence Education (GAV-Ed) to deliver a preventative school-based programme for Year 6 as well as Creative Safe Spaces within the community. MAC-UK was providing therapeutic minded conversations with young people and the partnership working was increasing opportunities and diversion for the young people. Currently 290 young people were engaged in AAK in Barnet, which could be attended by drop-in or referral. The projects were largely nail bars, combat academies and music labs. The team continued to work keep the cohort in mind to ensure the services were appropriate.

The team has given briefings in 120 primary school assemblies in the borough. The schools had been chosen in relation to their proximity to offences. The aim was to strengthen partnerships with the schools and to enable staff to understand the experiences of young people in Barnet. Head teachers had expressed concerns about the future trajectories of pupils in some areas and were asking for help. The team ensured that school officers attended Growing Against Violence training sessions.

The Strategic Lead reported that data on county lines activity has been made available through the MOPAC-funded Rescue and Response Project. This provided four intelligence analysts in each London quadrant. St Giles Trust is providing support following referrals from police and social services. 83% of county lines victims referred to Rescue and Response across London were male. There had been 568 young people referred in Year 1, with 13 of these being from Barnet.

Mental health support, education and training opportunities were a key focus for 2019/20.

Barnet had submitted a bid to the Young Londoners Fund to facilitate transitional safeguarding arrangements for 16-21 year olds.

In partnership with St Christopher’s, Barnet had successfully bid to the Youth Endowment Fund to set up an out-of-hours Sibling Mentoring Programme. The aim of this was to work preventatively with siblings of youth offenders.

The Chairman noted that there was an underlying theme of problems in familial relationships, lack of opportunities and links with grooming and asked how young people were supported to exit gangs and county lines activity. The Strategic Lead, Partnerships, Family Services noted that schools’ resilience was a factor – sometimes they were quick to exclude pupils. The team was looking at multiple levels to offer opportunities for young people.

The Assistant Director Community Safety and Regulatory Services noted that she and the Family Services team had presented to senior management about the out-of-borough offences, and more understanding was needed on the cause of these. This was part of the risk management process and intelligence would be stepped up to help to manage this risk.

DI James Rawlinson enquired whether any support from peer groups and the community, such as had been trialled in Scotland, had been considered. The Strategic Lead, Partnerships and Engagement Family Services responded that earlier in the year serious incident response meetings had been held in relation to incidents that had occurred with young victims in Grahame Park. Community and statutory partners had been invited to provide a coordinated response and to give a context to how the individuals were relating to their peers.

The Assistant Director Community Safety and Regulatory Services noted that Barnet has a strong operational partnership in which the aim is to safeguard both victim and offender. This could be challenging for the police as they had to prosecute whilst being aware of safeguarding. Housing issues could be a problem as a move would be at the family’s discretion, but the council was providing access as housing was a key element as it was for other boroughs. The Assistant Director Community Safety added that some victims of crime did not want a prosecution to go ahead and in the next 12-18 months the partnership needed to focus on community engagement to try to support people to report offences.

The Reducing Offending Officer reported that MOPAC is piloting GPS knife tags for adults released into the community, from January 2020. This was also open for youth offenders if proportionate and necessary. He asked whether the Community Safety Team had plans in relation to this. The Assistant Director Community Safety and Regulatory Services suggested an action: that the use of tagging be considered for hard to reach knife crime offenders, both adult and youth. She asked that the Reducing Offending Officer to send details on the knife tags to the Director of Family Services.

Action: Reducing Offending Officer